BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC: The Young and Hopeful

There was no warning, just the explosion of the torpedo. As the sea poured in, the merchantman began to careen. Voices of people rose above the crashing of furniture, dishes and gear. The ship rolled over, spilling wreckage and humanity into the ocean.

From deck chairs and other flotsam to which they clung, 18 people collected on a life raft. Four were children: Carol and Richard Shaw, whose mother and sister were drowned and whose father had vanished, and Mary and Robert Bell, whose missionary mother was rescued with them. Also dragged out of the sea was the torpedoed merchantman’s skipper, 86-year-old Benjamin Bogdan of Brooklyn. Crowded on the raft, the 18 floated on the vast ellipse of the Caribbean. The sun beat down.

Captain Bogdan, ranting, crazed with heat, died within a few days. His body was offered to the sea. Sharks collected and began to patrol the forlorn expedition. Certain that they had no chance, men & women prayed and gave way to despair. In their naïveté, the four children sang hymns, prayed and kept up hope, until the adults caught their courage.

Another submarine attacked them. They escaped, paddled on across the blank sea. A week went by and rations dwindled. It rained and they replenished their water supply. More than two weeks passed. Then, suddenly, a patrol plane appeared in the burning blue sky, flew over them and dropped some food. They fished it out of the ocean, confident now that they would soon be rescued.

Day after endless day dawned without a sign of a vessel. The children sang. Men & women raised their croaking voices with them. Finally a destroyer appeared. It mistook the raft for a submarine and began shelling it, realized the error and picked up the half-dead voyagers.

This was the partially told story which censors released last week from Bridgetown, Barbados, B.W.I., where the exhausted survivors were recovering. There were few details given, but officials did pass the statement of one survivor, who gratefully recalled the courage of seven-year-old Carol Shaw and Brother Richard, of Mary and Robert Bell. Said he: “They kept us going.”