As the Lowe drew alongside the Wilhelm Gustloff, the torpedo boat’s captain and crew could see how badly the liner was now listing to port. Hundreds were pouring up onto the top deck every minute, finding it doubly hard to walk on the increasingly tilted deck because it was already iced over. The Lowe took as many as she could, until it was standing room only and she was even more crowded than the Wilhelm Gustloff. People had to swim a short distance through the freezing water to reach the torpedo boat. Once aboard they were taken down to the engine room to warm up, stripped of their clothes and given blankets. Crewmen on the Lowe even surrendered articles of their own clothing to some of the naked, shivering survivors.
The Lowe pulled away, to the despair of those still amassing on the Wilhelm Gustloff’s top deck. They had reason to cheer, however, when another vessel came into sight. The lookouts of heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper had witnessed the torpedo attack on the Wilhelm Gustloff and her crew had picked up the Lowe’s proxy SOS. The Admiral Hipper gave the Wilhelm Gustloff’s passengers good reason to believe they were saved. Having survived nearly six years of naval warfare, she was now the largest German warship in the Baltic Sea. But she was already carrying 1,500 evacuees herself. She could reach speeds of 32 knots, more than enough to escape submarines. Fearing that stopping to help the Wilhelm Gustloff would put them in danger, the Admiral Hipper’s captain called off the approach and ordered the helmsman to continue to Kiel. On the frozen deck of the Wilhelm Gustloff, a thousand people watched the warship disappear into the night.
People found themselves stepping on the dead, unable to resist the surge forward without risking being trampled underfoot themselves.
Inside the doomed liner, the emergency lighting was beginning to fail. The crush on the stairs became lethal as thousands of people jammed the stairwells. People found themselves stepping on the dead, unable to resist the surge forward without risking being trampled underfoot themselves. Desperate people grabbed at each other, reaching for the ankles of those above them to try and pull themselves up. The sound of water below, and of drowning people trapped at the bottom of the stairwells, drove people on. Families were separated in the chaos, some never to see their relatives again. Those who fought their way out of the upward surge to go and search for their loved ones would spend the rest of their lives futilely fighting their way along dark passageways, perhaps only realising too late that they should never have left the stairs.
Meanwhile, in the salon, the majestic grand piano that had never been removed during the Wilhelm Gustloff’s years of military service slowly started to roll across the floor.
No escape
The Wilhelm Gustloff should have had 22 lifeboats, but 10 were missing. They had been removed in Gotenhafen, some being used in harbour to create a smokescreen that would conceal the mass evacuation from any British or Soviet reconnaissance planes flying over. In their place the Wilhelm Gustloff had untethered rafts, positioned on the sundeck and disused tennis courts where they would simply float up if the ship sank. At the time she was torpedoed the Wilhelm Gustloff only had enough lifesaving equipment for half of those aboard. But even if the ship had had a full complement of lifeboats, it wouldn’t have guaranteed any more would have been saved – as the Wilhelm Gustloff listed ever more to port, the lifeboats on that side of the ship became unusable anyway.
At the time she was torpedoed the Wilhelm Gustloff only had enough lifesaving equipment for half of those aboard.
In the hurry to let passengers on board and depart Gotenhafen, no boat drills had been carried out. After departure, the sheer number of people aboard made such exercises impractical. With the crewmembers trained in launching the boats trapped in the flooding bow, nobody on deck knew what they were doing. Zahn ordered his own submariners to take up the mantle, but when they struggled across the slippery deck to reach the lifeboats, they found the launching mechanisms frozen solid beneath inches of ice. The men had to hammer the lifeboats free from the davits, but behind them came the surge of panicking passengers. Armed soldiers tried to hold them back and prevent hundreds storming each lifeboat. They called for only women and children to come forward, and for the men to get out of the way. Some of the soldiers realised they would soon be counting themselves amongst the men who were left on the ship when all the lifeboats were gone. One submariner even fired a warning shot at an officer who abandoned the operation and got into a boat himself.
Launching the boats grew increasingly difficult. One was overloaded with almost 100 people and the lines snapped, throwing everyone into the water. Another reached the water but the frozen ropes couldn’t be untied. The lifeboat was bound to the sinking ship. Luckily a 10-year-old boy on board had stolen his uncle’s knife before fleeing to Gotenhafen harbour, and the crewmen on the boat used it to cut themselves free. As the ship’s list steepened, the anti-aircraft guns installed on the deck broke loose. They crashed over the side of the ship and smashed into a lifeboat. Meanwhile one of those untethered rafts careened down the icy deck and swept a large number of people into the sea as it plummeted overboard.
The anti-aircraft guns installed on the deck broke loose. They crashed over the side of the ship and smashed into a lifeboat.
The last lifeboat was lowered just before 10pm. It carried approximately 80 women and children, but thousands more children remained on board. As the Wilhelm Gustloff’s stern rose higher and higher out of the water, people lost their footing and slid off the frozen deck and into the sea. Thinking the ship was about to go under, many started jumping overboard too. They would only have survived a few minutes flailing in the freezing water. Consequently, it is likely that over a thousand people died, floating near the ship, before she even sank.
Many of those still inside the ship seemed to have a good idea that they were not going to make it, and plenty gave up trying. Survivors later reported seeing a hysterical woman chanting to herself, whilst some of the ship’s officers enjoyed a cognac brought to them by the head steward.
The Wilhelm Gustloff’s promenade deck was enclosed behind glass. The crowds on the wrong side of the glass had to watch the lifeboats being lowered on the other side. But when all the lifeboats were gone, senior officers feared that letting thousands more up onto the upper deck would make the ship top heavy and risked causing an immediate capsize. So they ordered the exits from the promenade deck blocked. Those at the back of the crowd would never find out why they were no longer moving. Those on the starboard side of the promenade deck tried to smash the glass, but it was an inch thick and didn’t shatter. Those on the port side watched the water rise up on the other side of the glass and began to panic even more.
Petersen and Zahn stayed on the bridge of the Wilhelm Gustloff almost until the end. When it became apparent that her terminal list would soon reach the point where inertia would tip her the rest of the way, they decided to save themselves.
To the thousands still on deck, it felt like a great wave breaking over the ship. Many were swept into the sea.
Only moments before she began her death roll, power inexplicably returned to the Wilhelm Gustloff. Her lights blinked on again, and to those who had grown accustomed to the dim emergency lighting, it appeared like they shone brighter than ever before. Her fire bells also began to ring again, with what seemed like a desperate urgency.
Survivors in the lifeboats watched the magnificent cruise liner slide onto her port side, slowly, almost gracefully. To the thousands still on deck, it felt like a great wave breaking over the ship. Many were swept into the sea, but there were still people standing on the side of the ship’s funnel as she finally sank, bow first, straight down, less than an hour after she had been attacked.
The forgotten tragedy
Thousands of people struggled in the freezing water amidst a field of debris and leaked oil. Some had tried to swim away from the Wilhelm Gustloff in her last moments, aware that she would create a downdraught that could suck them under. But in every direction there were just more people, living and
dead. Many couldn’t swim – women, children and people who had spent their entire lives in rural areas, so never learnt. A couple of children grabbed onto a stranger, and rather than kick them off to save himself he swam over to a lifeboat. The occupants lifted the children inside, but there was no room for him. Some of the rafts designed to carry 60 already carried 90. They had to beat off desperate people who threatened to swamp the boats. Others resigned themselves to the fact that there wasn’t room for them in the boats, and just clung to the sides to await rescue. It was hard to row the boats through all the people in the water, especially when those people were dead children floating upside down, drowned by lifejackets that were not designed for use by someone so small.
As happened following the loss of the Titanic, the majority of those who died survived the sinking but then succumbed to exposure. In the freezing waters, hypothermia set in within minutes. Most were dead within 10. But the harsh winter weather didn’t just kill those in the water. With an air temperature between –17°C (5°F) and –10°C (14°F), those in the boats without adequate clothing began to succumb to exposure too. The blizzard continued, covering them with snow, and rough seas splashing water into the lifeboats meant nobody could stay dry either. When rescue ships began to arrive in the middle of the night, they found plenty of corpses in the boats as well as in the water. Most of the survivors of the Wilhelm Gustloff were young, fit sailors.
When rescue ships began to arrive in the middle of the night, they found plenty of corpses in the boats as well as in the water.
Minesweepers, torpedo boats, a freighter and other civilian craft reached the site of the sinking by dawn, but by then they were too late. The Lowe’s several hundred survivors represented almost half of everyone rescued. Seven hours after the Wilhelm Gustloff sank, a patrol boat discovered the last survivor – a one-year-old boy wrapped in a blanket on a lifeboat otherwise filled with snow-covered corpses. Orphaned by the catastrophe, he was later adopted by the sailor who found him. Of the 4,000 children estimated to have been on board the ship when she sank, only 100 survived the disaster.
The remains of the dead continued to wash up on the shores of the Swedish mainland and islands throughout the spring and summer of 1945. As with the sinkings of the Goya and the Steuben, the news was suppressed in Germany to prevent a loss of morale, and to help the Nazi propagandists promote Operation Hannibal as an unequivocal success. Soviet propaganda, meanwhile, told the Russian people that the Wilhelm Gustloff had been transporting SS personnel who worked in the concentration camps. The sinking came only days after the Red Army liberated Auschwitz, after all.
All four captains survived the disaster, but the official naval inquiry only investigated the responsibility of the sole military commander aboard – Wilhelm Zahn. The inquiry was still on-going when the war ended in May, and following the collapse of the Nazi regime, was never resolved.
The man ultimately responsible for the sinking went on to be awarded the highest honour possible – Hero of the Soviet Union. Though Alexander Marinesko had been dead almost 30 years by the time he received it. He was only 32 when he sank the Wilhelm Gustloff, a rebellious young commander with a taste for alcohol (which ultimately caused his fatal ulcer in 1963) who was almost court martialled once, and who later went on to spend years in a gulag for insubordination. His war did not end with the destruction of the Wilhelm Gustloff, however. Just over a week later the S-13 also sank the Steuben (see chapter six).
The man ultimately responsible for the sinking went on to be awarded the highest honour possible.
In 2002 the Nobel Prize-winning author Gunter Grass published Crabwalk, in which the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff is central to a plot that spans fifty years and multiple generations all affected by the disaster in different ways. Grass remains most well-known for his 1959 novel The Tin Drum, about an infantilised Germany failing to face up to its actions. He revisited the theme in Crabwalk, exploring how the modern Far Right in Germany claimed the Wilhelm Gustloff as a symbol of German suffering during the war. Indeed, an internet search about the ship will eventually lead to websites run by Far Right extremists in Germany and the United States. They argue that had Germany sunk a ship carrying over 10,000 British or American civilians then those responsible would have been prosecuted for war crimes, yet nobody was prosecuted for the bombing of Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, as if glory brought with it immunity. In Crabwalk, Grass turns the argument against the Far Right, arguing that they practice the resentment of victimhood because it absolves them of any responsibility.
The wreck of the Wilhelm Gustloff lies 144ft (44m) below the surface, designated a war grave by the Polish government and accorded the protection of a ban on divers visiting the site. Her mid-section, where she received the three fatal blows, appears crushed, but her bow and stern remain in comparatively good condition.
8 Worse than Titanic
Maritime disasters since the Second World War
The end of the Second World War didn’t bring peace to all of the Pacific. China had been embroiled in civil war for a decade before the Japanese invasion in 1937, and, despite combined efforts to drive Japan out lasting until 1945, once China was free again, the communist and nationalist forces resumed their fight for control of the country. By the end of 1948, the communist faction was closing on Shanghai, and coming nearer to securing absolute victory. People fled Shanghai in their thousands, taking steamships to the relative safety of Chekiang (now Zhejiang) Province, several hundred miles further to the south.
About 2,150 passengers were listed on the manifest of the 2,100-ton steamship Kiangya. People had queued for days to buy tickets on any ship leaving the Yangtze River, and desperate demand greatly exceeded limited supply. Spotting an opportunity, the Kiangya’s officers decided to ignore the vessel’s official capacity of only 1,186. But by allowing such overcrowding they lost control over the actual number who boarded. Some people on board threw their tickets to friends they spotted on the wharf, so whilst their tickets were used twice, they were only counted once. Over 1,000 people may have got on board without a ticket at all. When she finally began steaming towards the open sea on 4th December, it is possible there were between 4,000 and 5,000 people aboard.
The ship shook violently. Terrified passengers on deck saw a column of dirty water rise above the wrecked stern like a geyser.
The Kiangya reached the mouth of the river at around 6.30pm. As she moved out into the East China Sea her stern suddenly exploded with an ear-splitting crack. The ship shook violently. Terrified passengers on deck saw a column of dirty water rise above the wrecked stern like a geyser. Inside the ship, the lights went out. Panicking, screaming people pushed and shoved to get out, but the ship was too tightly packed, and began listing rapidly toward the stern. Some escaped by climbing out of cabin windows, but for most people trapped below decks, there wasn’t time to get out. Those not killed by the explosion were quickly overcome by the sudden surge of water. There wasn’t time to launch many lifeboats either, and some of those that did get away were swamped and sunk by too many people climbing in.
Only minutes after the explosion, the Kiangya sank stern-first. The river was shallow, so when the keel hit the riverbed, the Kiangya’s superstructure remained suspended above the surface. Over a thousand survivors thrashed in the freezing water, and there wasn’t enough room for all of them to climb onto the superstructure, where in places the water would only come up to their waists. The explosion had destroyed the Kiangya’s radio, so no SOS had been sent. The 700 survivors had to wait over three hours until other vessels began to arrive and took them back to shore.
Speculation as to the cause of the disaster ranged from the possibility that carrying so many people overworked the Kiangya’s boilers, to the generally accepted explanation that the steamship had hit a mine planted by the Japanese navy during the war. But many people in Shanghai, and supporters of the nationalist faction throughout China, refused to believe
either story. Instead they believed the suspicions of some members of the Kiangya’s crew, who alleged that communists had planted explosives on the ship. Eight years later this version of events still held considerable sway in China, so the now victorious communist government raised the ship. Their subsequent propaganda claimed to prove the Kiangya had hit a mine.
Eight years later this version of events still held considerable sway in China, so the now victorious communist government raised the ship.
The Western reaction to the loss of the Kiangya is quite representative of how some of the worst disasters of the post-war era have become little more than a footnote to recent maritime history. The catastrophe made few headlines. Parochial Europe and the United States were still licking their own war wounds, some of which had resulted in casualties that dwarfed those of the Kiangya. Perhaps more importantly, and more tellingly, the steamship had sunk on the other side of the world. No Europeans or Americans had been killed. It was a foreign news story. That approach continues to this day, so that even when some of the deadliest maritime disasters of all time have occurred over the past thirty years, they seemed to warrant little attention from the Western world.
Heading home for Christmas
The Himeyuri Maru was built in Hiroshima, Japan, and launched in April 1963. Just over 300ft (91.4m) long and 45ft (13.7m) across the beam, she could reach speeds of up to 18 knots. A 2,600-ton passenger ferry, she was capable of carrying about 600 people. In 1975 her owners Onomichi Zosen sold her to Sulpicio Lines in the Philippines. They renamed her the Don Sulpicio, and increased the passenger capacity to nearly 1,500. After a fire in 1981, Sulpicio Lines refitted the ship and gave her another new name: the Doña Paz. She went on to suffer the worst maritime disaster in living memory.
Final Voyage Page 14
