Felix Nikolaus Alexander Georg Graf von Luckner (9 June 1881, Dresden – 13 April 1966, Malmö), sometimes called Count Luckner in English, was a German nobleman, naval officer, author, and sailor who earned the epithet Der Seeteufel (the Sea Devil), and his crew that of Die Piraten des Kaisers (the Emperor's Pirates), for his exploits in command of the sailing commerce raider SMS Seeadler (Sea Eagle) during the First World War. After the war, Luckner became a war hero in Germany and was renowned around the world for his seamanship and chivalrous conduct during the war, which resulted in a minimal loss of life on both sides.

Luckner was born in Dresden, Germany, the great-grandson of Nicolas Luckner, Marshal of France and commander-in-chief of the French Army of the Rhine, who in the 18th century was elevated to the rank of Count (Graf) by the King of Denmark.

The young Luckner had dreams of being a sailor, but his father was determined that he should follow the family tradition and go into the cavalry. After failing his exams at various private schools, at the age of thirteen Luckner ran away to sea, with the promise in his mind that he would not return until he was wearing "the Emperor's naval uniform, and with honour". He signed up, under the assumed name of "Phylax Lüdecke", as an unpaid cabin boy on the Russian sailing ship Niobe travelling between Hamburg (Germany) and Australia. His story might have ended there, because the Russian captain, fearing that the lives of other crew members would be endangered, refused to allow a lifeboat to be launched in order to pick Luckner up when he fell overboard in the middle of the ocean. The chief mate defied the captain (who had threatened him with a harpoon), and launched a lifeboat with the help of volunteers. As a number of albatrosses circled over Luckner, one swooped down and seized his outstretched hand in its beak, but Luckner grabbed the bird in desperation. Although severely pecked, he hung on for his life. The flapping of the bird's huge wings and the circling of the other albatrosses gave the crew of the lifeboat a point to aim at in his rescue.

The description of Luckner's young life travelling the world on sailing ships is taken directly from his 1921 memoir, Seeteufel: Abenteuer aus meinem Leben, and the English language version, Count Luckner, the Sea Devil, published by the American journalist and broadcaster Lowell Thomas in 1927.

If Luckner had sailed on the Niobe at the age of thirteen, it would have been 1894 or early 1895. Until mid-1896 there was no Russian ship called Niobe. At this time Robert Steele of Greenock, Scotland, sold his ship Niobe to a Finnish company. (Finland was under Russian occupation, so the ship was considered Russian.)

The Niobe sailed from Hamburg in April 1897 bound for Australia. If Luckner sailed on this voyage, he would have been nearly sixteen years old. In Luckner's memoir, the Niobe's first port of call is Fremantle. But the Niobe did not call at Fremantle. She sailed directly to Melbourne.

The memoir continues... Arriving at Fremantle, Western Australia, Luckner jumped ship and for seven years worked in a bewildering array of occupations: he was a seller of the Salvation Army's The War Cry; an assistant lighthouse keeper at the Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse in Augusta, Western Australia, a job he abandoned when he was discovered with the lighthouse keeper's daughter by her father; a kangaroo hunter; a circus worker; a professional boxer (due to his exceptional strength); a fisherman; a seaman; a guard in the Mexican Army for President Díaz, a railway construction worker, a barman, and a tavern keeper. He was incarcerated for a short time in a Chilean prison accused of stealing pigs, he twice suffered broken legs, and he was thrown out of a hospital in Jamaica for lack of money.

A careful reading of the Lowell Thomas text shows that Luckner did not claim to be an assistant lightkeeper (an official job title) at Cape Leeuwin, but rather "an assistant to the lightkeeper".