On 21 August 1940 this 5.594-ton British tramp freighter, owned by The Nitrate Producers Steamship Company, on her way to Argentina with a cargo of Welsh coal, and a crew of 41, was sighted.

Ruckteschell decided to employ the same style of sudden attack without any warning that had brought success against Beaulieu and Oostplein and so retired to wait below the horizon until after dark. It was not pitch dark until 8 o ' clock , and with moonrise due at 08:18, Widder's captain had only 18 minutes during which to surprise the enemy.

Having approached on a directly opposite course, the raider opened fire at 08:08 from 2.500 yards, immediately hitting the freighter’s deck gun and setting its ready-use ammunition on fire.

Ruckteschell then fired a torpedo, causing a large explosion, which sank the ship.

Lights were observed in two lifeboats, as Morse signals were briefly seen passing between them, but as no one appeared to be seeking assistance, and as it appeared as if the boats were attempting to evade capture, making any rescue impossible, Ruckteschell decided not to wait to pick up the survivors. Besides, the explosion that sank the freighter would have been seen for a great distance, and, as he recorded in his war diary, the boats were "only 800 miles from the Canaries" and "the wind was favourable".

Anglo Saxon's Seaman Robert G Tapscott testified at Ruckteschell's trial that the Widder had opened fire on the boats as they moved away from the sinking ship. Ruckteschell's defence countered that due to the noise of the guns firing over the men in the boats, it was difficult to communicate the "cease fire" command.

After 75 days at sea, one boat reached the Bahamas , but only two of the original seven men aboard, and of the Anglo Saxon’s 41-man crew, had survived.

Ruckteschell had refined this method of attack, tracking his prey by day, a fast approach by night and then a sudden assault with main armament, accompanied by raking AA and machine-gun fire to prevent any resistance. This was for himself a risky tactic, but was particularly hard on those victims that were, for example, unarmed, or willing to surrender without resisting.

But, Ruckteschell was of the view that the British Admiralty's orders to ships masters could not be reconciled with International Law, and that he could never be certain what any one of them might do under pressure.

Captain S W Roskill, one of Britain’s most eminent naval historians, remarked in "The War at Sea" " … it is only fair to mention that the captains of German armed merchant raiders generally behaved with reasonable humanity towards the crews of intercepted ships, tried to avoid unnecessary loss of life and treated their prisoners tolerably"

Ruckteschell, in his view, was the "only exception", his conduct being " so far contrary to the Hague Conventions that he was brought to trial and convicted as a war criminal in 1947".

But yet the same Captain S W Roskill in "A Merchant Fleet at War", stated that "under International Law the immunity of a merchant ship from attack depended on her not "resisting’ capture"".

Trying to escape or returning fire was obvious resistance, but the Germans maintained that the use of wireless also constituted "resisting" and so justified their attacking ships that did so. It might even be argued that organising ships into escorted convoys was a form of resistance to capture.

Ruckteschell was the only one of the HK commanders to be tried for war crimes, being convicted of failing to pick up the crews of Beaulieu and Anglo Saxon, and of continuing to fire on Davisian after her Captain had signalled that she was being abandoned.

He confided in his family that the thought of being executed was not nearly as hard to bear as the thought of " … being condemned on false evidence".

As an officer he refused to ask for mercy, saying that he simply wanted justice.

He conceded that he " … may have erred, and now it is they. We both did it on orders, and in the belief that we were right, and now, we are both wrong".

He was sentenced to 10 years in Hamburg-Fuhlbuettel prison, the sentence subsequently being reduced to seven years, due to the fact that the charges concerning Beaulieu could not be upheld, and he died there on 24 June 1948 , shortly after hearing that he was to be released due to his worsening heart condition.

An officer who had spent 80 days captive in the raider Michel said, "War is a systematic way of killing one another, lawful on both sides … to us, at least Ruckteschell was a Christian and a gentleman".

While the British stoutly held to their contention that his methods were brutal, there were those on the German side who believed that the court had acted in vengeance for Ruckteschell's escape from prosecution as one of the U-Boat commanders the Allies had hoped to bring to trial for war crimes during WW1.

Ship 21 - The 7.800-ton Widder, a sister ship of the long-suffering Orion, was formerly the Hamburg-Amerika Line ship Neumark, and was a most unsuitable vessel for raider warfare, she was slow, had very unreliable engines and consumed too much fuel.