MS Schwabenland

In The Hesperus Prophecy, British intelligence informs the U.S. Army about a ship sailing from Hamburg, Germany, with an unusual amount of ice-breaking equipment and 2 Luftwaffe airplanes, Dornier Dos, strapped to the deck. Not only does The MS Schwabenland’s 1938 voyage to Antarctica set the Clypeate’s hunt for the Declan of prophecy into motion, it leads to Germany securing an ancient relic, the Axyn Kirox, necessary to build the ultimate weapon.

The MS Schwabenland was a Lufthansa-owned catapult ship used for the German government’s third Antarctic expedition. The secret mission left Hamburg on December 17, 1938, carrying 82 men and two Dornier seaplanes. The vessel was equipped with a crane for lifting aircraft, and the ship’s catapults assisted with liftoff, able to accelerate a 15-ton aircraft to 94 miles per hour.

The MS Schwabenland anchored near the edge of the icepack at 69°14′S, 4°30′W, but in The Hesperus Prophecy, the mission continued inland to retrieve the Axyn Kirox. The official reasons for the Antarctica mission were to search for whale pods and make land claims. To mark their territory, the Dornier seaplanes carried tiny metal swastikas to drop onto the icy continent. While none of these have ever been found in Antarctica, there were plenty of them found after the SS Valencia sunk, in the lifeboat with Professor Riordan.