 "Maloja"s captain suspected otherwise, but he was unable to send a boarding party due to the adverse weather conditions.As the weather cleared it became clear that the unknown vessel was the German "La Coruña" of the Hamburg-South America Line.The German crew scuttled her to evade capture, and after they had abandoned ship and been picked out of the water by the British crew, "Maloja" turned her guns on the German ship and hastened its sinking.