World War: AT SEA: Black Week

The British Admiralty last week released its figures for British and Allied shipping sunk in the week ending Feb. 2: 57,623 tons. Though this was way up from the January average (34,000), it was still comfortably below the war-long average (68,000). The Admiralty remained firmly silent about the alarming successes claimed by German raiders for last week.

From a German newsman had come an “eyewitness story” which, if true, revealed one of the most devastating attacks British shipping had yet suffered. He was aboard a German surface raider (from its speed and gun-power, probably a pocket battleship), cruising the waters between Madeira and the Azores. Said he: “Tuesday we encountered an armed English merchantman. . . . This vessel was sunk by several well aimed salvos and soon only floating oranges marked the spot. . . . Soon after sunrise Wednesday, we saw three tiny shadows. Then we saw five, then six, then eight, and then more & more. We fired a first salvo of medium calibre shells. A fireball went up from a hit vessel and we immediately ceased firing. Powder clouds covered the water. One vessel turned aflame. Then the bow sank and a little later everything was covered by white foam. On the place where another vessel had just sunk only a long, smoking flame was visible.

“In the meantime we reached the end of the convoy. We turned and once more passed the convoy. The enemy ships which remained upon the water were now marked for definite destruction. So, altogether 14 vessels of 82,000 tons have been sunk. Only one ship remained. Now the commander of our ships ordered ‘cease firing.’ The last ship was permitted to participate in the rescue work and take the shipwrecked crews aboard.”

Next day more than 100 survivors of lost Allied ships landed in Madeira. Their story was not so bad for the British as the German eyewitness’, but it was bad enough. Nine ships, they said, had been sunk in half an hour. Six of the others had made Madeira; three more reached the Azores.

As the culmination of a week in which Folke-Wulf Kurier bombers reported three certain and three probable sinkings 300 miles off Portugal, the Madeira story made some of the blackest reading for the British since the counter-blockade got under way.