Germans and their Italian allies, soon after 6.00 a.m. on 2 July, 1940, on their second day out from Liverpool and some way off the west coast of Ireland, the Arandora Star slowly swam into view, and framed herself on the crossed hairs of the periscope sights of a German U-boatâs captain.
The torpedo struck the Arandora Star fair and square amidships, erupting in a roar of sound and a towering wall of white water that cascaded down on the superstructure and upper decks, blasting its way through the unarmoured shipâs side clear into the engine room. Deep inside the ship, transverse watertight bulkheads buckled and split under the impact, and the hundreds of tons of water, rushing in through the great jagged rent torn in the shipâs side, flooded fore and aft with frightening speed as if goaded by some animistic savagery and bent on engulfing and drowning trapped men before they could fight their way clear and up to freedom.
Many of the crew died in these first few moments before they had recovered from the sheerphysical shock of the explosion, their first intimation of the direction in which danger lay being a tidal wave of seething white and oil-streaked water bearing down upon them even as their numbed minds registered the certain knowledge that the one and only brief moment in which they could have rushed for safety was gone forever.
From the already flooded depths of the ship some few did manage to claw their way up iron ladders and companionways to the safety of the upper deck, to join the hundreds already there: but they had no sooner arrived than it was swiftly borne in upon them that this safety was an illusion, that their chances of being able to get clear away of the already sinking liner were indeed remote.
In the reports of the tragedy which appeared in the British press on Thursday, 4 July and Friday, 5 July, there was a remarkable degree of unanimity with regard to what constituted the reasons for the subsequent appalling loss of life. Not reasons, rather, but one single all-encompassing reason: the unbelievable cowardliness and selfishness of the Germans and the Italians who, grouping themselves on an ugly nationalistic basis, fought desperately for precedence in the boats, with the inevitable result that the speed and orderliness which the rapid loading and lowering of the lifeboats demanded were utterly impossible.
The press reports of the time leave one in no doubt as to that. âCasualties due to panicâ: âPassengers fight to reach boatsâ: âFights among aliensâ and similar uncompromising captions headlined articles which spoke freely of disgraceful panic, of the wild rushes and cowardice of the Germansââgreat hulking brutes kicking and punching every person who got in their wayââwho fought to get into the boats, of the sickening scramble of the Italians who thought of nothing but their own skins, of scores of people being forced overboard, of British soldiers and sailors losing invaluable time, and often their own lives, in separating the madly fighting, screaming aliens.
One report even had the Italians so crazy with fear that they fought not the Germans but among themselves; thirty of them, it was alleged, battling furiously for the privilege of sliding down a single rope.
In order to establish, among other things, just how widespread and uncontrollable this panic had been, survivors of the Arandora Star were recently interviewed and four of these finally selected as providing testimony as impeccable as we are ever likely to have. They were selected on the bases (a) that they represented different contingentsâcrew, guards and interneesâaboard the ship and (b) that their independently volunteered statements were mutually corroborative to a very high degreeindeed. Such insignificant discrepancies as existed were readily accounted for by the fact that they were in different parts of the ship and all left it by different means.
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