 Crawford secured the services of the "SS Fanny" to transport 216 tons of guns and ammunition which he had purchased from Benny Spiro, an arms dealer in Hamburg.Included in this cache was; 11,000 Mannlicher rifles brought from the Steyr works in Austria; 9,000 Gewehr 1888s; 4,600 Italian Vetterli-Vitali rifles; and 5 million rounds of ammunition in clips of five — much of which was transported from Hamburg via the Kiel Canal.On 30 March 1914, these weapons were being loaded onto the "SS Fanny" on the Baltic island of Langeland when Danish customs officials seized the papers of the ship.