THE WEEK'S EVENTS

The Sinking of the "Zamzam," by Charles J. V. Murphy and David E. Scherman

At Recife, Brazil, pictured just before boarding the ill-fated Zamzam, are David Scherman (left) and Charles J. V. Murphy, whose story of the sinking of the Zamzam is illustrated by Scherman's remarkable photographs on page 21 et seq.

TEN MINUTES AFTER SHELLING BY NAZI RAIDER, SCHERMAN IN LIFEBOAT NO. 1 TOOK THIS PICTURE OF STRICKEN "ZAMZAM" WITH ANOTHER LIFEBOAT PULLING FOR OPEN SEA

The rickety Egyptian ship Zamzam, bound from New York to Alexandria, via the Cape of Good Hope, put into Baltimore on March 23 to take on additional cargo and passengers. There Captain William Gray Smith looked down unhappily on the pier where 120 missionaries sang Lead Kindly Light, and two dozen cheerful irreverent ambulance drivers tried to drown them out with an impudent song of their own. Smith, a bouncy little Scot with a weather-reddened face, turned to his chief engineer. "Mark my words, Chief," he said grimly. "It's bad luck for a ship to have so many Bible punchers and sky pilots aboard. No good will come out of this."

Scherman and I boarded the Zamzam at Recife, having flown to Brazil to save time at sea. The Zamzam, due April 1, arrived a week late. When we hurried down to the docks to confirm the miracle of her appearance, the rails were crowded with people clamoring to be let off. Some were shouting rude jibes at the dock workers. A passenger bellowed down at us: "If you two intend to come aboard this wreck, don't ever say we didn't warn you what you're in for. The food's lousy, the crew's lousier." He pointed toward the stack, where the word MISR, from the company's name, was visible. "They even call her the Misery Ship."

The Zamzam put out for Capetown April 9, delayed for two hours by one of the table stewards, who had overslept in a brothel. Our presence raised the passenger list to 202, of whom 73 were women and 35 were children. There were 38 Americans, 26 Canadians, 25 British, five South Africans, four Belgians, one Italian, one Norwegian and two Greek nurses. The crew numbered 129---106 Egyptians, nine Sudanese, six Greeks, two Yugoslavs, two Turks, one Czech, one French and two British---the captain and the chief engineer. We headed past the breakwater shortly after 7 a. m., and from then until we were hit at dawn, eight days later, we never saw another ship.

On ships, even more than on land, people tend to band themselves into little jealous cliques. The conglomeration on the Zamzam carried this tendency to the point of grotesqueness. The ambulance drivers, mostly young men in their early 20's, made one self-sufficient group. The little bar aft became their stronghold, just as the saloon forward, where only tea or coffee and cookies were served, became the bastion of the missionaries.

Six tobacco buyers and auctioneers, all from North Carolina and en route to Africa under British contract to high-pressure the Rhodesian tobacco market, made another compact group. Then there were refugees from England, completing a roundabout flight via Canada toward a haven in South Africa. Dr. Dudley Wright, 75, bombed out of his practice in Surrey, was headed for South Africa to make a fresh start. The monocled Dr. James de Graaff Hunter, 60, retired head of the great India Survey, was on his way back to his old job, because the younger scientists were fighting.

THE GERMAN RAIDER CAUGHT IN THE ACT OF SINKING THE "ZAMZAM" The "Tamesis" closes cautiously in on Zamzam 20 minutes after shelling, her deckhouse windows reflecting South Atlantic sunrise. Passengers in bobbing lifeboats or swimming in water (far right) are wondering now if she is approaching to machine-gun boats, finish off Zamzam without trace. Lloyd's Register lists a Tamesis as a Norwegian cargo boat of 7,256 tons, built in Danzig in 1939, registered at Tønsberg. But it is possible that the Germans use the name as a blind. The name Tirana 1938 was on the ship's bell. The ship was a single-screw, elliptical-stern motorship. Faster than she looked, she could probably do 18 knots. Bewildered passengers, swarming up her side on rope ladders and herded to a midship hatch under marine guard, saw a phony canvas superstructure just abaft the deckhouse. Hand-picked crew of several hundred rugged young Nazis from 19 to 30 manned her, and her captain, a handsome giant named Rogge, had full German Navy rank. On her spotless decks were ranged rows of oil drums, and her companionways below were jammed with 75- and 155-mm. powder canisters. Her sides bore no battle-scars. Some Tamesis officers hinted she had engaged the British armed merchantmen Carnarvon Castle and Alcantara in 1940, others that she was the raider which had finished off the Norwegian whaling fleet in the Antarctic. Tamesis mounted two guns aft, one at least a 6-incher, another forward and probably torpedo tubes. For five hours during the transfer of Zamzam booty, four-man watch was kept on Tamesis bridge. From a lifeboat Photographer Scherman took this picture at great personal peril and smuggled it back to the U. S. It is the one photograph the Nazis were most anxious to suppress.

The Zamzam was traveling without lights and in radio silence. She flew no flag and there were no identifying marks on her sides. Even the customary noon positions were denied the passengers.

The first real scare came on the afternoon of April 14. At 3:25 o'clock the ship, which had been steering southeast, swung hard to the west and, at top speed, headed back in the direction of South America. Around 6 o'clock, as dusk gathered, she veered southwest, holding that course until 10 o'clock, when she turned south. It wasn't until an uneasy dawn revealed an empty sea that she finally squared away again for Capetown.

Later the Captain told me what had happened. Shortly after 3 o'clock his radiomen had picked up a conventional British warning ---QQQ meaning "suspicious ship"---from a ship that sounded hard by. A few minutes later, while the radiomen were glued to the receivers, a second signal smashed in---a series of R's, meaning Raider, followed by a strident message: "Being chased by a German raider. Course zero [due north]. Fourteen knots." She flashed her name as the Tai-Yin, of Norwegian registry, and her position as Lat. 2.1° 30' S, Long. 16° 10' W---which would put her less than 20 miles southeast of where the Zamzam turned, just below the horizon, and fleeing directly across her track. In turning at right angles, Captain Smith put his ship on a heading that would increase the distance between him and these unseen ships in the quickest possible time. But the Zamzam, wide open, could do barely 13 knots.

Surprisingly, we heard no guns. Nevertheless, all that night the Zamzam was driven as she hadn't been driven in years. New creaks and groans sounded mournfully in her straining rickety frame. Later, when Scherman and I went on the bridge, Captain Smith said: "You can't tell what the hell direction the raider may have turned. She may be headed at us in the dark . . . . Well, there's nothing more that I can do. We'll hold this course and see what happen."

"Get up! Get up! They're shelling us!"

Next day, Tuesday, swam with sunlight. Of the Tai-Yin we heard nothing more. Wednesday night, the 16th, we were five days out of Capetown. It was pitch dark when I turned in just after midnight. I fell asleep almost instantly. The next thing I knew the air was trembling with a terrible vibration, a meaningless sound welling up around me. Scherman, already on his feet, was tearing at his camera case under the bed and yelling, "Getup! Get up! They're shelling us!"

A blind animal instinct drove me out of the cabin to the deck, on the starboard side, opposite the sun, which had not yet risen. From somewhere, quite near, came several loud reports. The atmosphere tightened into a tense, spiraling scream, and even as I shriveled against the bones of my body the water directly abeam, less than 100 yards away, rose up in two crackling columns and subsided.

There was another salvo, after which the ship shook and trembled, and I heard a tearing, rending noise. In the dark--- all the lights were out---I crossed over to the port side, and the moment I stepped out on deck I saw the Ger-man raider. She was broadside on, so close I could count her bridge decks, and if ever a ship looked the role, she did---a ship of ambush, very low in the water, black against the dawn. Even as I looked several long red flashes spurted forward and abaft the funnel, and as I raced back to the cabin the passageway behind me heaved and filled with smoke. That shot, I think, hit the lounge. I heard a child cry, and a hoarse, hurt voice screaming an Arabic oath.

On the "Zamzam" at sunset day before attack missionaries gathered for vespers on sundeck, starboard side. Twenty-one missionary sects and 17 French-Canadian priests held daily religious services. Trombonist (center) is one of three aboard ship. Note blackout flap on saloon port.

Night before shelling blacked-out Zamzam steamed southeast into a waning moon. Lifeboats were swung out in readiness for trouble day after ship left Recife. At 3:30 am., a few hours after this picture was made, Zamzam was picked up by Tamesis, followed cautiously till dawn.

When shelling ceased, the noisy Zamzam engines had stopped and in the horrible stagy quiet of the early morning some passengers filed quietly to boats which were lowered to boat deck (above). Others like the man above stood for bewildered aimless seconds, later took to rope ladders down Zamzam's steep sides and dropped in boats which the Egyptian crew had failed to hold at boat deck. Farther aft missionary men and women herded their children to rail as missionary doctors and ambulance drivers administered first aid to three badly wounded shipmates.

Into a starboard lifeboat already crammed to the gunwales with 2.3 people, five more frantic passengers and crew seek admittance from ladder down Zamzam's side. Crew member standing by ladder in boat waves them back. Man at bottom of ladder is Catholic priest. One raft (top, left) was never launched, another next to it got stuck on sundeck. On port side shells destroyed Boats 4 and , splintered hulls of two others that later were swamped with all hands. The calm sea saved many lives, but heavy swell made bobbing boats hard to board, harder to hold near ship.

I have Captain Smith's formal report to his owners. In it he says that at 5:43 a. m. he was roused from sleep by the First Officer, Stanko Fiedel, to take star sights. While he was dressing, Fiedel rushed back to say that a ship was overtaking on the port quarter at high speed. Still in pajamas, Mr. Smith bounded out on the bridge. When he saw the other ship, she was about four miles off, steering the same course. He dispatched Fiedel aft to break out the nearest and biggest Egyptian flag. The other ship came on. She flew no flag, gave no signal. Having closed the range to about 3-1/2 miles, she suddenly ported to bring a full broadside to bear, and opened fire. The first salvo, according to Captain Smith, fell about 60 or 70 ft. short, on a direct line with the bridge. The second---the one I saw---went over. Then, in the German phrase, having located "the finger between," they started to hit the Zamzam. One of these shots carried away the radio antennas. In the third salvo one of the lifeboats was blown in two. The fourth punched a big hole in the engine room below the water line. After that the hits came fast, and the misses also, throwing columns of water all around.

"The thought came over me," Captain Smith told me afterward, "the bloody bastards are going to sink us without trace." On the second salvo, he said, he had jerked the engine room telegraph to stop, and ordered the ship turned broadside to the raider, to show that she was stopped. He tried to signal on the Morse blinker, but shell fragments had cut away the wire. One of the young Egyptian cadets stood by, and he sent him to find a flashlight. About that time a shell struck the Captain's bedroom fair, smashing the wall in, and sending a spray of splinters across the bridge.

Charles Murphy, later elected passengers' chairman, shouts at departing boat crew to come back, later slid down rope to boat, burning hands. Ship's nurse holds dachshund.
Wounded by shell fragments in both feet when bomb demolished her cabin, Mrs. Kathleen Levitt, British woman sailing to rejoin R. A. F. husband in Africa, sits half-fainting on deck with her children, Peter and Wendy. She was later helped down rope ladder by Tobacco-Buyer Harry Cawthorne.	Tommy Miller, another tobaccoman, carries kicking, screaming Peter into boat. Mother and children are now held by Germans.
Left aboard sinking "Zamzam" when all boats had pulled away were a dozen people, two of whom are silhouetted on high stern next to ventilator, still another by top of stern ladder. Strong currents washed rafts and boats toward the raider. From jigger flutters neutral Egyptian flag ordered broken out by Captain Smith when shelling began 20 minutes earlier	Last boat heads out into the calm, rolling South Atlantic with its Egyptian crew manning the oars. Twenty-five minutes later, as the Tamesis hove cautiously up, a voice in clear English from her bridge said, "Come alongside please." Motor sailers from the raider picked up swimmers and those left on Zamzam, and for five hours took off food, luggage and cigarets.

A terrific crash came close by, and when I went out into the passageway a third time the air was full of dust and a stink of powder. The deck was littered with debris and the overhead had buckled. Mrs. Levitt in the cabin directly across from ours was bleeding badly from both feet which had been crushed by a falling beam.

Altogether, the firing lasted about ten minutes--from 5:55 to 6:05. Our estimates as to the number of shots fired ranged from twelve to 20, but the German gunnery lieutenant on the raider later said he had fired 55. If so, it was ragged shooting, considering the close range. At least nine shots went into the Zamzam, all on the portside. One smashed in the hull, just aft of the midship side watertight door and, bursting in the passageway, wounded young Frank Vicovari, co-leader of the ambulance drivers, and Dr. Robert Starling, middle-aged British chiropractor, as they came out of their cabins. The tall funnel was struck square and a big hole torn in it. Lifeboat No. 4 was cut cleanly in half by a direct hit. It may have been a splinter from this shell that hit Uncle Ned" Laughinghouse, dean of the tobaccomen. He had a piece of steel through the forehead into the brain. Two ambulance drivers found him sprawled out on the midship hatch, bleeding terribly, but still conscious and trying to staunch the flow, which blinded him, with a handkerchief.

These were the serious casualties, but there were others. An Arab laundryman, Mahmoud el Bagouri, was nearly disemboweled. Dr. Rufail, the Egyptian ship's doctor, got a splinter in his eye and rushed about shrieking frantically for some one to take it out, so that he could help the wounded. Anwar, the senior radio operator, received a chunk of metal in the stomach.

After that brutal, wholly unnecessary shelling of an unarmed ship---a ship not only stopped but hopelessly stricken---I thought they'd slip alongside and put a torpedo into her. I pulled a pair of pants over my pajamas, put on shoes, grabbed up my topcoat, wallet and passport, and went to my lifeboat station.

Let it be said for the crew that at least they got the boats over quickly and in good order. But let it also be said that once they themselves were safely in the boats, their behavior was abominable. They screamed and bellowed at the top of their lungs, they fought to pull away when the boats were only half full, and because we couldn't understand them nor they us we had a horrible time trying to control the boats. Mrs. Starling, plump and middle-aged, raced down a ladder to hold a boat for her wounded husband, whom three men had carried to the rail. Just as she reached the bottom of the ladder the boat pulled away, and not having the strength to climb back, she let go and fell into the water. Swept astern, she was paddling weakly when an ambulance driver hauled her onto a raft.

The ambulance drivers behaved admirably. They rounded up the women and children and helped them into the boats; they carried and dressed the wounded---so conscientiously, in fact, that when the last boat pulled away, half a dozen of them, together with Captain Smith, Chief Engineer Burns, the First Officer and 4-year-old Elaine Morrill, daughter of a missionary, who had somehow got separated from her parents, were left on the Zamzam.

Within half an hour after the shelling all the boats were down and milling around the Zamzam. The sea, except for a prolonged, easy swell, was calm. As our boat moved away I saw, with a sick feeling in the stomach, that dead astern of the Zamzam the sea was full of bobbing heads. Two lifeboats, riddled with shell splinters, had filled almost as soon as they hit the water.

After I had entirely forgotten about the Germans and was bitterly weighing the chances of this ragged flotilla ever reaching land, the raider surged around the Zamzam's stern, moving cautiously, as if she feared a trap. Lines snaked over the side as she approached, but instead of securing them to the boat so that it could be pulled to the ladder as the Germans intended, the Egyptians tried to climb up hand over hand. The lines were torn loose and thrown forth again, with an angry command to make them fast. Again the Egyptians tried to save themselves. Afterwards, a German officer told us they were about to shoot them off the lines when two when motorboats, which had been lowered on the other side, came around the stern and picked up the people in the water.

The raider stopped just below the line of boats, which were strung out about a quarter of a mile apart, and a voice in English bellowed at us through a megaphone, "Come alongside, please. We are taking you aboard." I had a good look at her then. She was about 8,000 tons, with a raised forecastle and a well deck aft. The hull was black, the housing and trim gray. As our boat came around the stern I saw her name---Tamesis (Thames) and underneath it the port: Tønsberg. By that time only a stern gun, which we guessed to be a 6-incher, was visible. The others, during the half hour the raider lay watching us abandon ship, had been carefully concealed behind false work or lowered by hidden elevators below deck. Sailors and marines in tropical whites and armed with rifles lined the rails.

Germans at war waste no time on ceremony. As each boat pulled alongside the vertical ladder, we were ordered roughly but politely to come up and German sailors jumped down to help the women and children. Stretchers were lowered for the wounded. The small children went up in hemp baskets crying miserably.

We are taken aboard the Nazi raider

It was then hardly 7 o'clock, an hour after the shelling. As we came on the raider's deck marines directed us to a companionway leading up to the midship hatch. There other marines told us to wait. From the hatch we could see the German motorboats loaded with marines pulling over to the Zamzam. An officer went bounding up the ladder, disappeared and then we saw his white uniformed figure dashing up the bridge ladder.

Captain Smith stood waiting grimly, having just tossed his ship's papers and Admiralty code overboard. "May I look at your papers?" the officer asked politely. "Go ahead," said Smith. The German paused. "I presume you have already disposed of them?" "Yes, those that I had." The German smiled, "I expected that." Nevertheless two marines gave the chartroom and the Captain's quarters a thorough going-over and triumphantly produced a code message picked up from the Admiralty broadcast which Smith at the last instant had tried to hide under a blotter. It was on this that the Germans based their argument that the Zamzam was sailing under Admiralty orders.

Meanwhile, another group of marines had rounded up the ambulance drivers and little Elaine Morrill who had been left behind by the Zamzam's lifeboats. The men were given half an hour to pack their belongings. The German sailors made a stretcher and lowered Dr. Starling, who was gasping and weak from loss of blood. Within a few minutes all these others were brought aboard the Tamesis. Captain Smith, flanked by two German marines, went up the ladder to meet the raider captain. He was in crisp uniform whites but I noticed that the cuff of his blue-and-white pajamas showed.

I had burned my hands coming down the rope to the Zamzam lifeboat. One of the German sailors, evidently charged with helping the wounded, took me to the hospital below deck. While I was waiting, I saw the German doctor, a competent, brisk young man, Georg Reil, operate on Laughinghouse. I must say that, so far as attending the wounded was concerned, the Germans were sympathetic and efficient. Within an hour the three most seriously hurt had been operated on.

All that morning we milled around the hatch. The crew had been herded aft and we had no contact with them. The sun blazed down and hungry children whimpered until the women were offered the shelter of the lower deck. All the while, two motorboats shuttled back and forth carrying stuff to the raider from the Zamzam which was abeam, listing heavily to port and looking strangely tranquil. This was looting---extremely efficient looting. An endless chain of German sailors passed the hatch, shouldering boxes of provisions, cigarets, radios, phonographs, suitcases, even a child's tricycle. Every now and then an excited, jubilant cry would come from one of the passengers as he or she recognized a prized belonging.

Nobody told us anything. We just sat and watched---bumming cigarets from the far-sighted ones who had crammed extra packages into their pockets. That noon, volunteers brought food in metal bowls from the galley---a thick soup, together with lime juice.

On the "Dresden" 117 men lived under hatch No. 2. (below), ate rice and macaroni from porcelain bowls, drank from tin cups, slept on cotton-filled bags in area 51 ft. square. Egyptian crew in hatch No. 3 remained on starboard side of deck, passengers on port.

Recreation was backgammon (below), whittling, reading, cribbage or just talking. On rope coil above is Roger Evrall, Britisher brought to Bordeaux and now in German concentration camp. Another Britisher is Dr. Leslie Newman (hand to mouth), watching.

Just before 2 o'clock the last motorboat pulled away from the Zamzam. Lieutenant Mohr, the tall, thin aide-de-camp to the raider's captain who had spent some time in the U. S. and spoke precise English, appeared and told us that the Zamzam was about to be blown up. The raider moved slightly away. Mohr invited Scherman to take photographs, even showing him the best place to stand. "Sometimes they die quite gracefully and always they are different," remarked Lieutenant Mohr.

A little after 2 o'clock, three time bombs went off in quick succession in the Zamzam's holds. She shook violently, water gushed up in fountains through her ventilators and in a few minutes her decks were awash. As she rolled over on her side, the tall stack, breaking away where the shell had hit, bobbed up for a minute. Captain Smith, watching his last command slip into the sea, turned to the Chief Engineer and said: "She took it gracefully, didn't she?" Except for a little pile of litter and debris, there was nothing to show where this 8,300-ton ship with a cargo valued at $3,000,000 had been. She was gone in ten minutes.

Soon thereafter the Tamesis was under way, gathering speed rapidly and heading south. That afternoon Lieutenant Mohr asked Captain Smith to choose three or four representative passengers whom Captain Rogge of the Tamesis could interview. I was one thus chosen. We were taken to the topside and ushered into a beautiful little room with a handsome table, upholstered settee, and hung with gay chintz curtains. Captain Rogge stood up and shook hands with us. He was a tall, strongly built, handsome man in the middle 40'S with wide-spaced eyes and beautiful manners. He was, I learned later, a full captain in the German Navy. He apologized for the sinking and then outlined the German justification---the fact that the Zamzam was running without lights, in radio silence and operating under Admiralty direction. "I am sorry this had to happen," said Captain Rogge. "I can only tell you that we shall do everything in our power to put you safely ashore but you must remember that this is war and in traveling on the ocean you have assumed many risks."

It grew bitterly cold and rough as the Dresden ran out its northing to the 43rd parallel. Above: Lutheran Missionary V. Eugene Johnson huddles his baby, David, to him for warmth on the cover of hatch while his older son Victor sits by. Inured to hardship, most of the missionaries behaved admirably during the shelling of the Zamzam, took the rigor and boredom of prison life in their stride. Men and women held separate religious services daily and joint services each Sunday. Priests held mass early each morning.

That night we were herded into the bowels of the ship three decks down, under the crew's quarters, wolfed a supper of soup, black bread and tea. I was surprised to find that there were over 200 bunks ready there for prisoners. The No Smoking warnings on the wall were in English. Women and men shared the same bathroom. Some of the women suffering from shock moaned through the night and the little children cried incessantly. Overhead we could hear the German sailors lustily singing their war songs. The raider's powerful Diesels throbbed steadily. At midnight we had a near-panic. Bells started ringing loudly. We could hear the pound of heavy boots as sailors ran to their stations. The guard slammed shut the door leading to our only escape. Frightened ones among us struggled into lifebelts. In a little while a guard who spoke English came back and said: "It is nothing. We have met the other ship and you will be transferred in the morning."

Next morning when we were allowed on deck we had our first glimpse of the vessel that was to be our prison ship. She lay astern, riding on a cable from the Tamesis. She was riding rather high in the water and I noticed that her bottom was fouled. She had a gun aft which two days after we boarded her mysteriously disappeared. They started transferring us and the baggage after lunch. We were told Vicovari, Laughinghouse and Starling were too dangerously hurt to be moved to a ship having no hospital accommodation. I went down to see them for what I thought was the last time. Vicovari and Starling, though weak and in great pain, were both conscious but Laughinghouse was delirious. He lay in the same blood-soaked dressing gown in which he had been carried aboard.

On my way to the other ship I noticed the block letters Dresden had been painted out on her bow. Captain Smith, alongside me, said he knew her. She was a North German Lloyd ship, plying the west coast trade of South America.

In time we came to know a good deal about the two ships that played such dramatic roles in our lives. The Tamesis was probably only a working name for the raider to be discarded the instant it became well known. Her bell bore the name Tirana 1938. This ship had been at sea for at least 17 months during which time she, or a raider acting in concert with her, had engaged and damaged the heavily armed British merchantmen Carnarvon Castle, the Alcantara and sunk the Voltaire. An empty wooden box in the room where we slept had "Sydney, Australia," marked on it. There were English books from the British Seafarer's Educational Library---one of them with the name of Gullpool, a ship Captain Smith knew.

She was a trim ship, beautifully kept up despite her long spell at sea. She carried a crew of several hundred picked men. Their average age was 24; many were 19 and 20. They wore old German Navy belts with Gott Mit Uns on the buckle. Captain Smith thought she had at least one gun forward, which was run up and down in an elevator, and perhaps two guns on the side hidden behind movable partitions. We noticed scores of canisters racked on both her sides, evidently for 75- and 155-mm. guns. One of the officers said she also carried torpedo tubes.

The Dresden was also a new ship, built in 1937. She lay at Santos, Brazil, until March 28 when she put to sea with a cargo of lumber, oats and cotton for Germany. It also included oil for the raider. The two German vessels met by prearrangement after the Zamzam kill.

Captain Jäger, a barrel-chested, bowlegged, powerful man in his middle 40's, was waiting for us as we came aboard the Dresden which was to be our jail for the next 33 days. The women and children were herded onto the passenger deck; the men together with the Egyptian crew were herded onto the forward well deck. An officer who spoke English told us that the passengers and the officers would from now on live in No. 2. hatch and the crew in No. 3. There was a thin wooden partition between. No preparation had been made to receive us. We were handed cotton sacks and told to fill them for mattresses with raw cotton, bales of which were on deck. In the late afternoon when we were only half way through this task a hoarse command came from the bridge. "Everyone below." Marines with potato-masher grenades stuck in their belts, side arms and bayonets, herded us below. It was terribly hot and stuffy and, huddled in that dusty hatch with only two unshaded bulbs for illumination, we realized for the first time what we were up against. The hatch covers were closed and we brooded for at least an hour. When we were again ordered on deck the Tamesis was seven or eight miles away, moving swiftly into the sunset.

Lights out in "Dresden's" hatch No. 2

A big-bellied man whom we later came to know as the purser came out with an enamel bowl, aluminum cup and a spoon for every man. We lined up for supper---a rice soup, two pieces of sour bread and tea. We had scarcely downed this when at 5:20 o'clock we were again pushed below. The hatch covers were shut and the two lights were turned out before we had even staked out places to lay our makeshift mattresses. There was only one exit---a wooden staircase---and that, with the hatch covers down, was closed off. Two big galvanized iron buckets were passed down to serve as toilets during the night and these were placed near the foot of the stairway. The deck throbbed under us---the Dresden was under way herself.

Somehow we found shallow sleep that night and next morning at 7:30 the guards lifted the hatch covers and told us to come on deck. None of us had towels or soap or clothes to change to. For breakfast we were again lined up and received our first introduction to what we thereafter knew as "billboard paste,'' a weak, tasteless, floury solution.

While I was washing my face in salt water at the stand pipe Captain Jäger bellowed from the bridge to come up. Introducing himself, he apologized---they were always doing that---for the inconvenience they had caused us. "This may be a long voyage," he said, "and you will be obliged to do a great many things for yourself. I have neither food nor quarters to support nearly 400 people including my own crew comfortably. You must expect some hardship but I promise you we will do everything we can."

In a little while he himself appeared on deck and from the hatch cover he warned us: "I will stand for no monkey tricks from behind." His crew totaled barely 60 and with nearly 230 male prisoners aboard his fear was evident that we might try to take the ship. "My orders are not to fight this ship or try to run away if an English warship should intercept us. That is for your protection. I shall let you off first in boats and when you are safely away I shall scuttle this ship. I have enough bombs already placed to sink her in two minutes. I have plenty of rifles and machine guns and grenades also. Remember that if you have any funny ideas."

Ambulance Driver Henry Emsheimer, from New York, plays chess on afterdeck with Edward Stock, Dresden carpenter from Breslau. Carpenter Stock would not tell how long it took to grow his beard for fear of giving away Dresden's total elapsed time at sea.

We needed clothing desperately and we were finally allowed---the women with children first, then the married and single women, and finally the men---into the hatch aft where the baggage had been piled. It was astonishing how much the raider crew had carted off the Zamzam. The trunks and suitcases covered the deck and it took so long for the first groups to find and sort their luggage that it was four days before the last man had a turn at his. A few people saved nearly everything. Others saved nothing but what was on their backs. The more fortunate ones shared their extra clothing with the rest. The purser and one of the marines stood by watching as we opened our bags. All liquor was confiscated---"this could make for trouble." So were all flashlights, matches, cigaret lighters"---with these it would be possible to signal a passing ship in the night."

From April 18 to 26 the Dresden simply milled around in profitless circles. The realization dawned on us that she was waiting, in attendance, on the raider. As best we could, we tried to create an existence of our own. An executive committee was set up. Captain Smith was chosen chairman ex officio but, because he was a prisoner of war, I was to act as functioning head. The great need was to provide the basic tools for cleanliness. We built a privy on the port bulkhead, a mess table, benches, shelves for below deck, an altar for the Catholic priest and finally a shower bath. The ambulance drivers took charge of all deck duty. They washed down the decks every morning, broomed them before every meal, acted as mess sergeants and in general policed our life topside. Chief Engineer Burns took charge below decks. Despite the fact that we had only one liter of fresh water per person doled out in the morning by one of the German seamen, nearly everyone managed to stay clean. One missionary built a chair out of old boxes and set up a barbershop abaft the windlasses.

Our diet: "Billboard Paste" and "Glop"

Our diet was almost entirely liquid. Breakfast was "billboard paste" and occasionally oatmeal with a slice of bread and an oily tea which had little tea in it and practically no sugar. Lunch was what Scherman derisively christened "glop" ---macaroni or rice or bean soup with a few fragments of meat, two pieces of bread and more tea. Supper was soup again, plus bread and tea. The women and children fared somewhat better since they were given jam and occasionally butter.

The first two days Captain Jäger refused any mingling between the sexes, even between husbands and wives. I persuaded him, finally, to let the married men meet their wives at least once a day and to let the single men take turns visiting the unattached women during the same period. These sad meetings used to take place regularly between 10 and 12. o'clock in the morning on the promenade deck. The deck was so crowded that privacy simply didn't exist.

Darling of passengers was Annette O'Neal, bundled against the cold by J. Paul O'Neal, young Baptist Missionary doctor from Alabama bound for Nigeria. Dr. O'Neal left wife and baby to go back and administer first aid to badly wounded on Zamzam.

The beginning of the second week Captain Jäger announced that he expected to meet the raider again in a day or two and would try to get more food, especially canned milk for the children. It was the chance we were looking for. We framed an indignant protest to be delivered to the captain of the raider demanding that we either be transferred at once to a neutral ship or else be landed at the nearest neutral port. Its gist was that he had no right to put us Americans in double jeopardy by running the British blockade to Europe.

On the morning of April 26, as Captain Jäger felt his way through a rain squall, we met the Tamesis again. Lieutenant Mohr, brisk and smiling, came aboard in the first boat. He summoned Captain Smith and me into one of the cabins and told us that they would transfer what food they could spare and that night the Dresden would be sent on. I gave him a copy of the protest and asked him to let me talk to Captain Rogge. He seemed surprised but assented. I was taken to Captain Rogge's quarters on the raider. He was courteous, even friendly. A copy of the protest was on the table before him, with notes on the margin. Through Lieutenant Mohr who acted as interpreter he said: "What you ask is difficult but I shall do what I can."

Altogether I talked to him for nearly an hour. He then asked if I would mind waiting in the officers' mess while he went over my points with his officers. When he had come to a decision, I returned to his quarters and heard him make three interrelated promises. The first was that the Dresden would sail north that night into the trade lanes, and attempt to transfer us to a neutral ship. The second was that, failing that, she would put in close to the Brazilian shore and attempt to transfer us to a Brazilian coastal steamer. The third was that if she failed in these first two, she would then land us---the phrase was theirs---in a "truly neutral port."

The "Dresden" starts north

Back on the Dresden I went directly to the women's deck. While they gathered around I told them of the new promises. I did the same for the men in No. 2. hatch. I asked Lieutenant Mohr to stand beside me to substantiate my statement.

That Saturday night the Dresden started north and after the days of circling and drifting it was good to feel the run in the ship. All of us thought that another week or ten days at the most would see us out of German hands. I shall not attempt to give a detailed report on that incredible run up the South Atlantic, across the Equator, up through the North Atlantic, west and north of the Azores, then eastward down the 43rd parallel to Cape Finisterre, Spain. You may be sure that we took a beating. Despite the promises to improve the food, we ate little better than before. The only difference was that we occasionally had scrambled eggs and salami and ham sandwiches to relieve the everlasting cycles of "billboard paste" and "glop." Inevitably we succumbed to dysentery. I doubt if more than a handful escaped and there were always ten or twelve men at a time rendered almost helpless by it. The only nostrum the ship's doctor had was animal charcoal. Within a few days he had used up his entire stock. Thereafter, when the sick came to him, he merely wrote out an order to the purser putting the man on white bread heretofore restricted to the crew and the women and children.

Rumor factory on Dresden operated on 24-hour shift. Rumors and talk were only source of hope or fear for the passengers and crew. Rumors started from the carpenter, Nazi marine guards, cooks, Dresden officers, Captain Jäger or just appeared out of thin air

At full speed the Dresden, because of a fouled bottom, couldn't do much better than 11 or 12 knots. Through the doldrums on either side of the Equator, we sweltered. The decks baked and the men without hats and shoes really suffered. One day we noticed that the Germans were making a barricade out of bales of hemp around the bridge---a good indication that they were preparing to run the British blockade. For several days more we suppressed this dreadful suspicion but finally, from the speed the ship was making, together with the fact that she held persistently to the same north-northwesterly course, the realization was driven home that Captain Jäger was making no effort to fall in with any ship in the open trade lanes, or along the Brazilian coast.

We had our own means of knowing where we were at sea. Old Dr. Hunter of the India Survey was a first-rate mathematician. He made himself a right angle out of two pieces of wood cut to scale and at noon each day, behind a screen of children where the guards wouldn't be apt to notice him, he would calculate the length of the sun's shadow. Fortunately, he had a table of tangents among his books and Captain Smith had fixed in memory a pretty good idea of the declination of the sun. In this way, within a degree or two, we kept track of our latitude each day at noon. The longitude was more doubtful but one of the ambulance drivers had kept his watch at Greenwich mean time since before the sinking of the Zamzam and, with the ship's zone time as a check, we even had a fair idea of where we were East and West.

Real grief in hatch No. 2 begins

After the fiction of the neutral ship died a hard death, the real grief in hatch No. 2 began. Captain Jäger sensed the change in mood on the foredeck and ceased his morning inspection. For the first time some of the men started to cave in under the strain. There were a number of near-fights. But as a group the missionaries stood up with admirable fortitude and good cheer. Maintaining a vigilant watch, running without lights and without a flag, the Dresden pressed north. Now we suffered from the cold as before we had suffered from the heat. The decks were always wet. There wasn't enough nourishment in the food to keep us warm. A flu epidemic developed.

Of the three promises only one was still possible of fulfillment---the "a truly neutral port." At the start of the voyage Captain Jäger had promised that if he failed to pick up a neutral ship within eight days he would run under lights and fly a neutral flag. His sailmaker actually concocted a Spanish flag and one day we saw them lower a brand new Norwegian flag into the stack so that the soot would give it a weathered look. But neither was ever run up nor was the ship ever unblacked.

Captain Jäger ordered boat drills. The Dresden carried only four boats plus two saved from the Zamzam. The latter, having a combined rated capacity of 89, were expected to carry 110 women and children plus eight men. The women who, after all, could count, became alarmed about the overloading and Captain Jäger finally agreed to take some of the younger children into his own boats which were well under capacity..

What we lived and prayed for was a British warship. What we feared was a British submarine. The silhouette of the Dresden was unmistakably German and a torpedo in No. 2. hatch could easily have brought a disaster. We finally persuaded Captain Jäger to give us rope and wood to make two ladders out of the hatch. We worked out our own abandon ship routine and after a few drills proved we could clear the hatch in about 65 seconds. We also induced him to leave the doors leading into the women's quarters unlocked at night.

On Monday, May 11, just before breakfast when I was drying off from my morning shower (boy, it was cold!), the Dresden swung sharply 90° East. A column of smoke grew on the northwestern horizon---the first sign of a ship we had seen since boarding the Dresden. The Dresden ran away at top speed and the smoke behind it gradually vanished astern. Confident that she had remained unseen, the Dresden presently resumed her northerly heading.

The following day at noon the Dresden really turned east and by that time we knew what was ahead of us. By our reckoning, we were 43° North and we were convinced that Captain Jäger was now headed for Cape Finisterre with the intention of making for one of the northern ports of Spain or for Occupied France. That afternoon the Dresden again wheeled in fright. For three hours, in fact, she turned and twisted, making two full circles besides running and zigzagging. Far away a smudge, scarcely distinguishable from a cloud, hung in the horizon---then vanished. The Dresden cautiously resumed its eastern course. It had scarcely steadied when again it wheeled like a frightened jack rabbit and swung north.

Our closest call with a British convoy

Later I learned that Captain Jäger had all but blundered into a British convoy, attended by at least two destroyers. He had managed to fall away before they saw him. Then, as he eased back on his course, a second group of ships "fairly burst out of the horizon." Like the Dresden, they were motorships which gave off little telltale smoke. They came in so fast that he could actually make out the topmasts and he chose the only ruse open to him. He swung around and showed a course toward England. The other ships, if they saw us, made no recognition signal and, in a few minutes, again fell below the horizon.

It was the Dresden's only close call. On May 19, shortly after sundown, we saw the flashing lights of Finisterre. All that night and the next day we ran through the territorial waters of Spain following every bight, rounding every headland. On the 20th the night watch clumped down the steps into hatch No. 2. and shouted: "We have an escort---evidently three destroyers." Dawn found us in the harbor behind the breakwater of St.-Jean-de-Luz. The Dresden had run 4,860 miles, Captain Jäger told me proudly: but with that triumph the last of the three promises---the promise to land us "in a truly neutral port"---had died. We were in Occupied France, facing an uncertain future still in German hands. The only satisfaction the day brought was to have the ship run aground and watch three highly embarrassed Nazi mine layers make a mess of trying to get it off.

That afternoon each of us in his way learned his fate. The British and all the other nationals, women and children as well, and the crew would be taken to Bordeaux for internment. I was summoned to the officers' mess where Captain Jäger sat at a table flanked by naval and army officers and what I took to be a Gestapo agent from Berlin. The Americans, I was informed, would be put ashore and taken to Biarritz where they would be held until arrangements were made for their release through Spain and Portugal---whence Scherman and I last week reached New York by Clipper.

In St.-Jean-de-Luz harbor Dresden was run aground by German Navy, infuriating Merchant Captain Jäger and delighting Zamzam-ers who stood by rail, watched futile efforts of mine layers to pull her off. Cans in foreground held washing water, a liter per man.