AT SEA: Angry Athenians

John Kennedy, 21, second son of President Roosevelt’s alert Ambassador Joe, was shot by his sire from London up to Glasgow last week to help interview survivors of the sunken S. S. Athenia. He was authorized to say that the U. S. steamer Orizaba was being sent over to fetch the Athenians home. The neutral yacht Stella Polaris was also being sought from Raymond-Whitcomb Travel Service (world tours).

But Franklin Roosevelt had just announced his decision not to furnish U. S. naval convoys to returning refugees (see p. 9) and John Kennedy was abruptly taken aback to find that this subject was passionately uppermost in his interviewers’ minds.

“You can’t trust the German Navy! You can’t trust the German Government!” they shouted, about 100 strong, deployed in the stuffy Beresford Hotel lounge.

Their feelings were understandable. Fresh in their memories was the scene when the torpedo struck: oil spurting into the air from exploded tanks; the bodies of firemen hurtling through a hatch; seasick, half-naked passengers rushing for the decks; and later, when the lifeboats were launched, passengers and crew picking their way over bodies toward the rails, slipping on oil and filth. They had been ten or twelve hours in the boats, some of them foundering. They had waited anxiously for rescue. And, when rescue was at hand, they had seen one boat swamped and most of its occupants drowned before help could reach them, another one smashed to kindling by the propeller of a rescue ship. And so they were in no mood to take No from Mr. Kennedy’s son John.

“A convoy is imperative!” barked grey-haired Survivor Thomas McCubbin of Montclair, N. J. “Ninety destroyers have just been commissioned … six billion dollars of United States Navy, and they cannot do this for us!”

Son John faltered: “We are still neutral and the neutrality law still holds.”

But a voice snapped: “Two years ago the whole Pacific Fleet was sent out for one woman flier [Amelia Earhart]!”*

John Kennedy sidestepped: “It is much better to be on an American boat now than on a British boat, even if it was accompanied by the whole fleet.”

“I don’t believe it,” shouted a woman.

“That goes for us!” chorused the rest. A college girl gave young Harvardman Kennedy the ultimatum: “We definitely refuse to go without a convoy!”

Back to London went John Kennedy to tell his father.

Meantime, the duty of Sire Kennedy and of U. S. Minister John Cudahy at Dublin was to determine and report just how the Athenia was sunk. Unshakable, unanimous belief of all hands was that a torpedo struck her just abaft amidships on the port side. Then, said Mr. Cudahy, she “was struck again, wrecking the engine room, by a projectile projected through the air.” Mr. Kennedy’s report said: “No witness heard a shell in the air; no witness heard a shell strike the ship … no splash of the projectile was seen.” But (according to one quartermaster): “The submarine conning tower [unmarked] broke surface about 800 yards on the port quarter. … A gun or explosive signal was fired. . . . The smoke from this discharge blew down over the Athenia and a distinct smell of cordite was recognized.”

Mr. Kennedy revealed that many third-class tourist passengers were trapped in dining rooms, drowned below decks.

Electrolux Tycoon Axel Wenner-Gren, whose yacht Southern Cross rescued 399 Athenians (TIME, Sept. 11), added to the picture in his story for a Swedish newspaper: “The rooms, hallways and decks were crowded with hundreds of half-naked people. Many had been lying in bed, seasick . . . had to rush out on deck undressed. Many of the survivors were drenched with oil from the Athenians oil tanks which were shattered by the explosion.”

No possible cranny was left in U. S. minds for any doubt that the unarmed British liner Athenia, bearing women & children, mostly neutrals, was torpedoed cold-bloodedly, without warning, 200 miles west of the Hebrides on Sunday evening, September 3.

Only amazement was added to horror last week by the continued insistence of official Berlin that the torpedo must have been British, fired to arouse U. S. indignation. Most charitable theory entertained by neutrals about “Atrocity No. 1” of World War II was that, while Germany’s U-boats may have had orders to prey like gentlemen, the Athenia’s destroyer was a Nazi hothead who could not control his trigger finger. Suspicion that a sharp order to other U-boat captains may have been issued by Berlin was aroused by the contrasting conduct of a captain who, last week, sank the British sugar freighter Olivegrove, 200 miles southwest of Bantry, Ireland. This captain ordered the freighter to heave to (by shots over her bow), and to disembark her men in lifeboats. He then lay to, checked the castaways’ compass, offered them a tow toward the nearest land. After scuttling the lifeless Olivegrove with one well-aimed torpedo, he stood by her survivors for nine hours until help neared (U. S. liner Washington). To attract it, he put lights on the lifeboats and fired two red rockets before taking his tactful leave.

The steel sharks that sank 6,000 commercial ships in World War I were active again last week, concentrated between Ireland and Portugal, from the English Channel toward mid-Atlantic; although, Adolf Hitler had 72 submarines compared to 140 the Kaiser had when his war ended. British raiders were also in evidence, preying on German shipping. Total losses for the week: Germany, four ships, 14,764 tons; Allies, 16 ships, 89,841 tons. Mystery of the week: where was the Bremen, unreported twelve days after her dash out of New York Harbor?

*Four million dollars ($250,000 per day) was a conservative estimate of U. S. Government expense for the Earhart search (one aircraft carrier, one battleship, one mine sweeper, three destroyers, one Coast Guard cutter). But President Roosevelt explained that the money was well-spent, for experience.