Final Voyage

by Eyers, Jonathan

  Another ship that the US government should perhaps have acknowledged their forces should not have sunk was the 446ft (136m) Tsushima Maru, but being unlit and unmarked the 6,754-ton cargo ship was still a legitimate target. In August 1944 the Pacific war was about to reach the Ryukyu Islands, the most southwesterly point of Japan. The Japanese government knew that the battle for Okinawa would be as pitched as that for Iwo Jima a few months previously, but the difference was that Okinawa had a sizeable population. The Japanese government wanted to evacuate as many children to mainland Japan as possible, but the families had to volunteer to let them go. Teachers were sent to visit them in their homes to convince the parents. The children themselves were gently encouraged to use peer pressure, convincing their friends to go because they were going.

  On the morning of 21st August, 767 children were amongst the 1,661 passengers who gathered at the docks. The Tsushima Maru was too big to come right up to the dock so anchored offshore, and half a dozen small fishing boats ferried the evacuees to the ship. She seemed to tower over them like a four-storey building, but they still had to climb up rope ladders to reach the deck. The Tsushima Maru had been built in Scotland over thirty years before as a cargo ship, and not unlike the hellships, her humid cargo hold was divided into cabins and filled with shelf-like bunks. The crew didn’t fill the hold to quite the same density as they did on hellships, of course, and so many children came aboard that some had to stay up on deck. As the ship departed, the children ate the lunches they had brought with them, then took part in an emergency drill, seeing where the white liferafts were located and learning how to use their lifejackets. In the event of needing to abandon ship, they were told, boys should use the ladders to escape the hold, whilst girls should use the stairs.

  So many children came aboard that some had to stay up on deck.

  The Tsushima Maru skirted the edge of a typhoon at about 10pm on her second night at sea, but most of the children slept through it. The submarine USS Bowfin was on her sixth patrol mission since being commissioned the year before. Shortly before 10.30pm her crew spotted the Tsushima Maru. The dull thud of the Bowfin’s torpedoes hitting the ship woke most of the children, who awoke the rest as they clambered over them in a panic. The ship was on fire and the lights had gone out, and those on deck could hear the water rushing in below. As the foundering ship shuddered and groaned, the teachers who had accompanied the evacuees ordered everyone to get ready to jump over the port side. Some started leaping over the deck railing in groups before they were ordered to, but many were still on board, too terrified to jump, as the Tsushima Maru went under.

  As the children in the water quickly discovered, there was not enough room in the rafts for all of them. With the typhoon descending on their location, the strong currents carried those not on a raft away into the night. The rest had to listen to desperate cries for help coming out of the darkness. Many of them still expected rescue, and sang songs to keep their spirits up, but six days later some were still drifting. Without water, some drank their own urine. Rough seas dispersed the hundreds of survivors, and their numbers dwindled before help arrived.

  Some started leaping over the deck railing in groups before they were ordered to, but many were still on board, too terrified to jump.

  Only 59 children survived the disaster. Their families heard rumours, but the truth was officially suppressed until after the end of the war. It was decades later before the crew of the Bowfin learnt of what they had done. Despite the tragedy that befell the Tsushima Maru, those who she left behind in Okinawa didn’t fare much better. The battle for the island was just as bad as the Japanese government had feared. Up to a third of the civilian population lost their lives.

  Britain’s fatal mistakes

  The circumstances that led to so many friendly fire deaths in the Pacific were mirrored in Europe, though it was mostly British rather than American vessels that were responsible. In September 1943, Italy signed an armistice with the Allies. This had been foreseen for months, not least by the Germans, who observed the Allied invasion of Sicily in July and the Italian king’s subsequent removal from power of Benito Mussolini, and realised a disarmed Italy would be less threat to the southern flank of the Reich than an Italy that switched sides. Even before the Allies met Italian diplomats in Portugal, Germany sent several divisions across the Alps, telling the Italian government they were coming to shore up Italian defences, but in reality being the spearhead of a German invasion.

  Thousands were packed onto unsuitable, unseaworthy, unmarked ships.

  Whilst Italian soldiers who had retreated to the mainland to defend against imminent Allied invasion could rely on British support and protection, those in southern France, the occupied Balkans and on Greek islands in the Aegean were quickly overwhelmed. On Rhodes there was a garrison of 40,000 Italian troops, and on Crete another 22,000. The victorious Germans gave the defeated Italians a choice: they could either continue to fight alongside the Germans, or be sent to Germany. Loyal fascists and those afraid of mistreatment chose the former. The vast majority chose the latter. But Hitler considered them traitors, not prisoners of war, and most of them were destined not for prisoner of war camps, but slave labour. Thousands were packed onto unsuitable, unseaworthy, unmarked ships for transport to mainland Greece. These ships were the Nazis’ hellships, and they became just as viable targets for unwitting British vessels as Japan’s hellships were for American submarines in the Pacific.

  The 3,428-ton merchant ship Gaetano Donizetti only had room for 700 men in her hold, but at Rhodes the Germans forced between 1,600 and 1,900 Italian sailors and airmen into the bowels of the 15-year-old ship. She set sail from Rhodes on 22nd September with over 200 crew and guards aboard, but the next day the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Eclipse spotted her. The Gaetano Donizetti had no armour to protect her from the Eclipse’s volley and capsized almost immediately, sinking within seconds. There were no survivors.

  Souda Bay in northwest Crete became the scene of several disasters. In late October the Germans forced almost 2,700 mainly Italian (though also some Greek) prisoners into the cargo hold of the confiscated French cargo ship Sinfra. The 4,470-ton vessel was attacked by American B-25s and the RAF’s Beaufighters. The distress signal she sent called for rescue boats, but ordered them to save the 200 German soldiers aboard first. Just over 560 survived, 163 of them German. In February 1944 the British submarine HMS Sportsman sighted the German merchant ship Petrella just north of Souda Bay and torpedoed her, unaware that she carried a human cargo of 3,173 Italian prisoners. The Petrella did not sink immediately, but the German guards refused to open the doors and let the Italians escape. They fired on those who tried. Only 500 of the prisoners survived.

  The Petrella did not sink immediately, but the German guards refused to open the doors and let the Italians escape.

  A British submarine may also have been responsible for the loss of the Norwegian steamer Oria. The 2,127-ton ship left Rhodes on 11th February 1944, heading for Piraeus on the Greek mainland. She was carrying 4,046 Italians, most of them soldiers, as well as over 100 German guards or crewmen. On the second night of the journey she sailed through a storm and ran aground on a reef off Cape Sounion. An uncorroborated theory suggests her crew had spotted a submarine and were trying to evade it when they hit the rocks. The Oria quickly broke up, her forepart sinking rapidly whilst her afterpart capsized. In the bad weather even those who could make it out of the ship before she went down drowned. Tugs reached the area the following morning and found only a few dozen survivors, most of them Italians. Nearly 4,100 died, making it the Mediterranean’s worst maritime disaster.

  Sinking fast, there wasn’t time to launch many lifeboats. Panic broke out as the fire spread.

  Russian prisoners also suffered as a result of British friendly fire, most notably with the sinking of the 3,828-ton Norwegian ship Rigel, which had been requisitioned by the occupying German forces in 1940 to transport prisoners of war, German deserters and Norwegian re
sistance fighters to Germany. In November 1944, the aircraft carrier HMS Implacable was involved in Operation Provident, attacking German convoys off the coast of Norway. On the 27th her crew spotted the Rigel, which they thought was a troop transport because she was being escorted by two naval vessels. Instead she carried thousands of prisoners of war (some sources claim up to 4,500), most of them Russian but also a few hundred Polish and Serbian soldiers. Fairey Barracuda bombers from the Implacable landed five direct hits against the Rigel, at least one of which hit a storage compartment holding prisoners, and the rest of which set the ship ablaze. Sinking fast, there wasn’t time to launch many lifeboats. Panic broke out as the fire spread. Before his ship lost the ability to manoeuvre, the captain grounded the Rigel on the island of Rosøya. This probably saved the lives of the nearly 300 survivors. Still convinced the ship carried only German troops, the British planes fired on the lifeboats. Norwegians later realised the true nature of the Rigel’s cargo, and launched rescue efforts, local doctors working for days to save as many of the injured as they could.

  They sank together

  The British were also inadvertently responsible for the worst friendly fire incident in history. By the beginning of April 1945 even Germans knew defeat was imminent. Their army was in full retreat, driven back into the fatherland by a now unstoppable Soviet military that had already retaken 1,000 miles of its own conquered territory in the last 18 months. In the remaining concentration camps on the rapidly-shrinking Reich’s eastern flank, inmates watched RAF planes fly overhead and knew rescue was getting closer. Head of the SS Heinrich Himmler, who had overseen the machinery of the Holocaust since the beginning, had other ideas. The Russians had liberated Auschwitz in January and Himmler ordered other camps liquidated, the remaining prisoners killed or marched into the heart of Germany, and any trace of what had happened at the sites removed. What remained of Goebbels’ propaganda ministry could write off one death camp as a Soviet lie. If the Allies found dozens it would look like policy.

  A small fleet of ships were ordered to assemble in the Bay of Lübeck, on the German coast of the Baltic Sea. The civilian vessels included the 2,815-ton passenger ship and freighter Thielbek, which had been damaged in an air raid but was ordered to Lübeck before repairs were completed. The 675ft (205m) ocean liner Cap Arcona was also in need of repair, her engine turbines having been worn out through constant use ferrying personnel across the Baltic in the previous few weeks. By the time she reached Lübeck the three-funnelled ship, one of the largest vessels in the German merchant navy, had lost most of its manoeuvrability. The 21,046-ton liner Deutschland, meanwhile, had begun conversion to a hospital ship, but the German military had supposedly run out of paint, so the red cross was only painted on one side of the ship.

  Their vessels were now under SS jurisdiction, and had been commandeered for a special operation: to transport over 8,000 prisoners in a single journey.

  On 17th April the captains of the Thielbek, the Cap Arcona and another, smaller ship, the Athen, were summoned to a conference with the SS. They learnt that their vessels were now under SS jurisdiction, and had been commandeered for a special operation: to transport over 8,000 prisoners between them (and the Deutschland) in a single journey. The captain of the Thielbek refused and was immediately relieved of his command. The captain of the Athen only accepted under threat of capital charges. Only the Cap Arcona’s captain accepted his orders without making a fuss. He knew the SS would proceed with the mission anyway and his being shot would make no difference to that. But before he left the meeting he categorically renounced any responsibility for his ship.

  The first prisoners reached the Bay of Lübeck on 19th April and began boarding the next day. The death marches across Poland and Germany from the outlying camps in the winter of 1945 had already claimed tens of thousands of lives. Without food and water, shoes, or adequate clothing against sub-zero temperatures, only the knowledge that the Nazis would soon be defeated gave many the determination to carry on. As they were driven into the dark, cold, wet holds of the ships, they didn’t know they would have to wait almost two weeks before the last groups of prisoners were crowded aboard and the order for departure received. Most of them were Russian and Polish, but there were prisoners from 28 different nationalities, including Americans, teenage French resistance fighters and German political prisoners. Some had survived five years in various camps, including Auschwitz, so the terrible conditions on board the Nazis’ hellships were nothing new. But whilst some prisoners on the Cap Arcona were crammed, with only room to stand, into a barely lit storeroom for the ship’s provisions, when the holds were full the SS began to fill the rest of the ship too, including the liner’s extravagant Victorian banquet hall. Prisoners boarding the ship walked down the main stairwell, which had a beautiful Persian carpet, exquisite mahogany and brass railings, and a brocade tapestry covering the walls.

  Some had survived five years in various camps, including Auschwitz, so the terrible conditions on board the Nazis’ hellships were nothing new.

  On 30th April, Hitler committed suicide. The prisoners in the Bay of Lübeck learnt of it from their guards on 2nd May following new leader Admiral Karl Doenitz’s radio address. Naturally, word spread through the ships in a matter of hours, along with (accurate) rumours that the Red Army had taken control over most of Berlin. But the war wasn’t over yet. Unrestricted warfare continued under Doenitz as he tried to engineer it so that Germany would surrender to Britain and the United States rather than the Soviet Union. At 2.30pm on 3rd May, the ships’ captains were given the order to leave on their mission. Though the prisoners on board did not know it, British military columns were now only miles from Lübeck.

  The RAF was also close to achieving air supremacy over the Baltic. The British policy of attacking all ships, military or otherwise, continued based on intelligence reports that the Germans were using unmarked civilian ships to transport large numbers of troops, SS personnel and key Nazi Party figures to Norway. A surveillance plane flying over the Cap Arcona and Deutschland reported seeing only soldiers on deck, and had to evade anti-aircraft fire. The ships became a legitimate target.

  Only the Athen avoided the subsequent attack. Her captain had returned to the quayside to pick up more prisoners. When a squad of Hawker Typhoon bombers began their assault on the ships anchored out in the bay, he ran his vessel into the quay and raised a white flag. Doing so saved the lives of the 1,998 aboard.

  For some of the bomber pilots, the raid on the Bay of Lübeck seemed like their last opportunity to take revenge on Nazis whose evil crimes were only now being fully revealed, Bergen-Belsen having been liberated a fortnight before. The pilots, one of whom was Jewish, did not learn of the ships’ true cargo for almost thirty years. In an attack that lasted an hour, they scored direct hit after direct hit, over 60 rockets being fired and all of them hitting their stationary targets.

  Struck by a combination of rockets, other bombs and machine gun fire, the Thielbek, carrying almost 3,000 prisoners, caught on fire and began to list to starboard. She sank before her attackers had completed a second attack run on the Cap Arcona, but the waters in the bay were so shallow she did not disappear entirely below the surface. Only 50 survivors escaped before she went down.

  Prisoners on the Cap Arcona began to suspect the Germans were scuttling the ship, intending to slaughter them all and hide the evidence underwater.

  Prisoners on the Cap Arcona thought she had been struck by a torpedo at first, but as she was struck again and again, others began to suspect the Germans were scuttling the ship, intending to slaughter them all and hide the evidence underwater. As fire began to spread through the ship and their guards fled, prisoners stampeded through the ship’s slanting passageways, not knowing which way to go. People tried to escape up the ship’s burning stairwell, but the flames were too widespread, the smoke too thick. Water poured into the ship and the lights went out, but the sirens continued to wail in the darkness. Ropes were lowered into the la
vatory block for those trapped on the lower deck to climb up, but in the panic, desperate people pulled at each other and climbed over others, fighting to get up. Only a few were saved before fire swept in minutes later.

  As smoke and fire enveloped the top deck, those who managed to make it up there began jumping into the water. They could see the shore, barely 2 miles (3.5km) away. Many thought they could swim it. Plenty of them drowned before they reached the beach, half-starved and weakened by their captivity. For those who made it, massacre awaited. SS personnel rescued from the Cap Arcona by German trawlers summarily executed as many as they could, leaving the bodies on the sand to be discovered by the approaching British Army in the next few days.

  Those who remained on the Cap Arcona found most of the lifeboats damaged beyond use by the attack. When the RAF planes returned for their second attack run on the Cap Arcona, they also came with orders to shoot at people trying to escape. Prisoners waved their striped caps in the air and pointed to their striped clothes, but these would only become emblematic later. Despite being fired upon themselves, many cheered the RAF for bombing a German patrol boat. Survivors still waiting on deck as well as those in the water thought it had come to rescue them. Instead it seemed like the helmsman was deliberately running over people in the water to kill them with the propeller. The British pilots thought the boat was trying to rescue survivors so bombed and sank it.

  Less than 24 hours later, Germany surrendered unconditionally.

  The Cap Arcona eventually rolled onto her side and sank, though like the Thielbek part of her hull remained above the waterline. She had taken much longer to sink than the Thielbek, meaning that most of the estimated 4,500 prisoners who died would have burned to death or been asphyxiated by smoke long before they had a chance to drown. The Deutschland took even longer to sink – about four hours – so many managed to escape. A small fishing boat picked up some survivors from the water, leaving them in the shallows to swim ashore whilst returning to save more. In total only 350 prisoners from the Cap Arcona survived.