United States in July 1902. He found employment as a journalist—
writing and lecturing principally about African game hunting—and
became a naturalized citizen in 1913.
The outbreak of World War I revived his determination to help
bring about the defeat of England. While on a trek through Central
and South America, Duquesne applied to the German embassy in
Manáos, Brazil, to work as an agent for the imperial navy, as the in-
telligence department was seeking foreigners willing to disrupt com-
mercial traffic bound for enemy countries. Journeying along the coast
between Brazil and Nicaragua and alternately using his own name or
one of his two aliases, he was responsible for numerous explosions
on British ships. Following the sinking of the Tennyson, however,
his name became known to British intelligence, causing him to feign
his own death at the hands of Bolivian Indians. Yet 12 days after the
obituary appeared, he announced his narrow escape from the attack.
Duquesne returned to the United States in May 1916 and later
took credit for signaling the German submarine that sank the cruiser
Hampshire with Kitchener on board, although the story lacks any
credible foundation. In December 1917, a New York judge charged
him with filing two bogus insurance claims—one following the
sinking of the Tennyson, the other after an explosion in a Brooklyn
warehouse. Fearing extradition to England and probable execution,
Duquesne managed to have himself declared first insane and then
later a paraplegic. He soon escaped from the prison ward at Bellevue
Hospital and spent the next 13 years working in advertising and
publishing under a pseudonym (during his lifetime, he employed at
least 39 different names). Despite his rearrest in May 1932, a legal
technicality saved him from prosecution.
Duquesne next became engaged as the intelligence officer for
two recently merged pro-Nazi organizations—the Silver Shirts
and the Order of ’76. A more serious proposition, however, came
from Nikolaus Ritter of the Abwehr in December 1937. Aware of
Duquesne’s past services to Germany as well as his perpetual lack
of funds, he had little difficulty enlisting him as an agent during a
recruiting trip to the United States. In February 1940, while operat-
ing the bogus “Air Terminals Company,” Duquesne was contacted
by William G. Sebold, ostensibly on orders from Ritter but actu-
ally reporting directly to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).90 • DUQUESNE, FREDERIC