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Sometime during the war, which the US did not enter until 1917, The SMS Cormoran, a German vessel low on coal, put in at Guam (then a neutral port) and requested to fill her bunkers. The American Governor demurred, regarding the ship apparently not as an actual enemey, but as the enemy of our friends so to speak. The ship rode at anchor for months, and what was at first an uneasy relationship developed into friendship between the Cormoran's crew and the US Naval personnel and families. There was even a marriage between the Cormoran's surgeon and an American woman on the island!

In August 1917, the discovery of the Zimmerman Note (in which Germany asked Mexico to attack the US in exchange for regaining Texas, NM, AZ and a good-sized chunk of CA) led to the US declaring war on Germany. On the day the declaration was official, the governor of Guam ordered the surrender of the Cormoran and her crew as enemy combatants. A boat carrying armed Naval personnel set out toward the Cormoran and encountered her supply boat in the harbor. The supply boat did not respond to hails and hove to only when rifle shots were fired across its bow-- the first shots fired by an American combatant against a German combatant in WWI.

The captain of the Cormoran scuttled the ship rather than surrender her; he and most of the crew survived though seven were drowned or killed by debris. One of these was never found; the other six are buried on Guam and their graves are still visited from time to time by German Naval authorities.

The ship would have been lost to history except for an event in WWII. The Japanese had invaded and occupied Guam; units on Guam and many other islands in SOPAC were resupplied by Japanese freighters converted (armed) for war use. One such freighter was sunk in Guam's harbor by a US sub (which had to wait for high tide and then fire the torps at an up angle to get them over the reef!).

A sailor assigned to Guam in the 1950's, who dived as a hobby, went to explore the Japanese wreck and found the older wreck beside it. The Japanese ship had almost landed on top of and actually collided with the Cormoran as she sank. The sailor/diver explored both ships for years, bringing up articles from them; he died in 1975 having apparently run out of air while exploring the Cormoran.