Unspeakable Horror

by Joseph B. Healy

  FACTS ABOUT SHARKS

  • There are about 150 different species.

  • The shark’s scientific name is Plagiospond, sub-order Squali.

  • Sharks are most numerous in the tropics.

  • Some live at a depth of 1,000 fathoms.

  • The sharks common on the coast of England have teeth, and the female brings forth some thirty living young at one birth.

  • The tiger shark is common to the Indian Ocean.

  • It grows from 10 to 15 feet long.

  • Nineteen species of sharks have been found in the water of Long Island.

  • Of these, only the man-eater and tiger shark could have killed men.

  • Extinct species attain a size of 90 feet.

  • The basking shark is the biggest of the present species, and reaches 20 feet in length.

  • The species never attack human beings.

  HMS VALERIAN

  Leaving Nassau in the Bahamas headed for Bermuda, HMS Valerian ran straight through the eye of a hurricane and plunged into the raging storm on Saturday, October 22, 1926. Ironically, the ship had inspected hurricane damage with the governor of the Bahamas earlier, touring outlying islands to survey the damage. Now she was in the thick of the storm, with sustained winds of ninety-five miles per hour and gusts reaching 136 miles per hour. A 1,250-ton sloop, the ship was initially used as a mine sweeper and had triple hulls at the bow to protect against potential mine discoveries of the worst kind. But it was not built, nor had the size, to withstand hurricane-force winds. The Valerian foundered and around 1 p.m. on October 22 it eventually went over in heavy seas. At that point, eighty survivors made it into rafts. According to the newspaper report below, two people were snatched off the raft by sharks. Only nineteen survivors were ultimately rescued on October 23 by the cruiser Capetown, including the commanding officer and navigating officer. There are no reports of the death toll from sharks, but surely more than two passengers were killed. Drowning victims were food for the sharks, too, of course.

  The newspaper report below from 1926 also gives some information on the sinking of the Eastway in the hurricane.

  From the Evening Journal (Wilmington, Delaware),

  Friday, October 29, 1926

  SHARKS PULLED MEN OFF RAFTS

  Surrounded Members of Crew After the Valerian Had Foundered.

  TWO SAILORS WERE DRAGGED INTO SEA

  NEW YORK, Oct. 29—Sharks surrounded the rafts from which the nineteen survivors of the British sloop of war Valerian were picked up last Saturday, according to passengers arriving from Bermuda—yesterday aboard the Fort Victoria of the Furness Bermuda Line. They brought fragmentary accounts of the foundering of the British patrol vessel with its loss of eighty-four lives, and also the story told by the twelve survivors of the British freighter Eastway, which sank in the hurricane last Friday night with the loss of the captain, two officers and twenty seamen.

  Eighty of the crew of the Valerian were aboard rafts after the vessel foundered, survivors reported. Two were seen pulled off by sharks and others dropped off in the high seas until only nineteen were found twenty-four hours later when the Capetown reached the scene, about eighteen miles southwest of Bermuda. The Capetown’s officers reported they never had seen the water so full of sharks.

  Commander Usher, Flag Lieutenant Hughes and the seventeen other survivors are under military arrest, charged with losing their ship, and will be so held until the official hearing. They rode out the first blow within sight of land when the wind reached a velocity of ninety-five miles an hour. A dead calm followed and then the second curve of the hurricane struck the sloop, a 1,250-ton vessel, amidships and she went over.

  Survivors of the Eastway said they were 150 miles northeast of Bermuda when the gale struck. Their main hatch was stove in and all but one of the lifeboats smashed.

  Captain Van Stone left the bridge about 4 o’clock and went on deck to try to cover the hatch through which the sea was pouring. A wave caught him just as he reached the deck and washed him over.

  By 6 o’clock that night the coal in the bunkers had shifted and the first S. O. S. was sent out. It was answered both by the Fort St. George and the Luciline, a British tanker, bound for New Orleans. As the tanker was about thirty miles away, the Fort St. George let her go to the rescue.

  The Luciline reached the positon given and cruised about all night and until 10 o’clock Saturday morning, when she saw the sail in the lifeboat of the survivors just as she was staring away. She turned back and an hour and a half later had the men aboard.

  They said the first and second officers went down on the bridge and R. James, the radio operator, in his cabin, where they heard him calling for help within five minutes of the time the Eastway turned over and sank. Just as the steamer went down, two apprentice boys jumped overboard and were not seen again. One of the Arab firemen cut the last lifeboat loose just as the steamer turned and into this the survivors climbed.

  They reported that half an hour later a large steamer passed them so close they could see her deck lights. They sent up seven flares but the steamer passed on. Captain Thompson of the Luciline told them he saw her later, but she refused to answer the Luciline’s calls.

  The twelve survivors of the Eastway will be brought to New York Monday on the Fort St. George. Four are English seamen and the other Arab firemen.

  During the hurricane at Bermuda, the Calcutta, the flagship of the British West Indies squadron, had a close call from pounding to pieces against the dockyard jetty. She was moored with twenty-eight hawsers, had one anchor down and steam up. When the gale hit, all but one of the hawsers snapped and the ship was flung against a pierhead. Two officers leaped off the jetty and swam down the lines which were hauled aboard. After a nine-hour fight with wind and sea the vessel was saved.

  Damage at Bermuda was estimated at $500,000.

  PRINCIPESSA MAFALDA

  On October 25, 1927, the Italian transatlantic ocean-liner SS Principessa Mafalda was bound for Buenos Aires when she went down with 1,252 passengers and crew aboard. The disaster was the greatest tragedy in the history of Italian shipping, as the ship was operated by Navigazione Generale Italiana. With a final death toll of 314, this was also the worst peacetime loss of life in the Southern Hemisphere. The sinking of the Titanic in 1912 happened in the Northern Hemisphere, with more than 1,500 dead, and the fate of the Mafalda drew comparisons. Perhaps a more accurate, and understandable, comparison is the more recent sinking of the Costa Concordia off Italy’s Isola del Giglio in 2012. Both ships were luxury cruisers of their time on pleasure voyages, though the Mafalda was also transporting overseas passengers and therefore had different passenger classes booked aboard—first class to third class or steerage. The reported incompetence of the crews on both ships that went down, and the tumult that took place during and after the wrecks, also invited comparisons. The major differences in the disasters were the overall loss of life—more than 300 on the Mafalda versus thirty-three on the Costa Condordia—and, more horrific, the presence of sharks at the 1927 wreck.

  Originally, newspapers reported that 470 died out of the 968 passengers and 230 crew (an estimate of 1,198 total) on the Mafalda, after an initial overreporting of 1,600 aboard the vessel. (Extending the comparison mentioned above, the Costa Concordia had more than 4,000 people aboard in 2012, so thirty-three lost seems a surprisingly low number. Modern safeguards and rescue techniques no doubt minimized the severity of the tragedy.) A United Press report on October 26, 1927, said that 720 people were saved and brought to Rio de Janeiro. (Variance in total numbers of passengers and the resulting dead and survivors was not unusual back then, as newspapers were the main source of information and the spread of news and updates were slow and fact-checking was not always possible.) A 1927 report from United Press read: “The fact that when she sank she had reach only the vicinity of Bahia—a day’s steaming from Rio—yesterday evening was taken as certain evidence by officials that something had happened to her f
ar at sea to delay her progress.” On October 23, survivors reported that the ship had to stop repeatedly due to mechanical problems; the ship also began to list, survivors later reported. On October 25, several strong shudders were felt passing through the ship, possibly from a propeller coming loose and striking the hull.

  History shows that the Mafalda suffered a broken prop shaft, which allowed water to rush into the engine room. The water eventually flooded the boilers, and the foundering ship—the crew issued an SOS distress call at 7 p.m.—sank just after 9 p.m. on October 25. This occurred in a well-traveled shipping lane, and several vessels responded to the SOS call. Records show that a multinational brigade picked up survivors: the Dutch steamer Alhena rescued 450; the British steamer Empire Star picked up 299; the German steamer Baden brought aboard seventeen; and the Italian steamer Rosetti II rescued eleven. The other ships mentioned in the rescue were the Formosa and Mosella. All survivors were brought to Brazilian ports. Other vessels may have been diverted to the scene by “forced draft” but did not engage in rescues or did not report appreciable numbers of survivors picked up.

  Survivors said “huge, fierce sharks” were attacking people in the water. A survivor picked up by the ship Mosella, which brought about fifty survivors to Bahia, Brazil, said he saw the terrifying image of sharks darting in and out from the darkness into a “circle of light” where spotlights were aimed to locate survivors. He said one steward of the Mosella saved a man by shining the beam of a flashlight into the eyes of a shark about to attack the man. An Associated Press report read, “Some of [the survivors] insisted that a number of victims were devoured by sharks as they struggled in the water.”

  There was no way for officials to know how many in the water succumbed to the sharks, versus drowning or dying of exposure or exhaustion; several reports say passengers died from exposure, despite the Southern equatorial location. But eyewitness testimony included descriptions of terrifying and fatal shark attacks and “a horror-filled night” after the steamer went down. Another report after the incident read, “The rescued men appeared much shaken by the sinking of their vessel, some of them even declared that sharks devoured victims of the disaster.”

  The ship was an accident waiting to happen, it would seem. It was running off schedule throughout its voyage from Genoa, and after leaving Barcelona, Spain, the ship was clearly laboring due to mechanical problems. A report in the El Paso Herald of El Paso, Texas, quoted a first-class passenger named George Grenade who said he sent a letter to the Italian royal maritime commissioner with his testimony that, “The commander and first engineer confirmed that this was to be the Mafalda’s last South American trip. She was to be sold for Mediterranean cruises for her condition did not [sic] longer permit long voyages.” In fact, it was reported that when the ship reached Cape Verde, the captain requested by telegraph that another ship be sent to replace the Mafalda, but his request was denied or ignored.

  The Mafalda apparently did not have lifeboats ready to launch or they were improperly placed, and perhaps not enough lifeboats were available. The hour of night, and darkness, did not help matters for those spilled into the water. It was described as chaotic—understandably so—though passengers were said to be panicking and looting valuables. The ugly side of humanity flared up as tragedy became reality, and the sharks equalized the situation by eating people regardless of their comportment or violent or unruly behavior.

  News reports at the time said Captain Simon Gulî drowned and the chief engineer took his own life. Now, if you are superstitious, the name of the ship might be a harbinger that disaster was inevitable: Princess Mafalda of Savoy, the daughter of King Victor Emmanuel II, died at Buchenwald in 1944 while imprisoned there by German Nazis in World War II. After the Mafalda sunk, it was often described as “ill-fated” in news reports. It had been one of the prettiest and fastest ships in the Navigazione Generale Italiana fleet for years, and with two-story ballrooms and rooms designed in the Louis XVI style, it was a luxurious if not opulent vessel. However, by 1926, it seems her beauty had faded and her body had weakened and began failing, so much so that she was likely done in by her own propeller and faulty propeller shaft. And the sharks were waiting.

  Imagine: You are running along the ship’s upper deck, desperately searching for open space on a life boat, your mind is raging with internal argument, at the same time pleading to stay calm and imploring with your body not to panic, when a surge of malevolent, unthinking, enraged, and terrified passengers mobs you and one burly man pushes you over the railing of the listing ship. You flip in the air and your back slams onto the water, which strikes you as surprisingly warm and bath-like, and you come to the surface in a scrum of bodies, some thrashing and others hulks of wet clothes, lifeless. “Thank God I didn’t land on anyone,” you think as your head clears. A beam of light sweeps over you and you see a torso bobbing on the surface chop; the night is calm, the sky is clear, you hear screaming and splashing, and distant screams from above, people still on the ship. Something bumps your legs, and you swirl and kick, reflexively. The person in front of you suddenly surges up in the water and shrieks and screams, beating the water with his fists, and is pulled under, his head snapping back as his body jerks under the surface and is gone. An hour ago you were sipping a highball in the ballroom, watching your sister as she danced with a man she met earlier in the day on the upper deck—he was in imports, didn’t he say? Something about coffee or was it sugar cane? Or bananas? A body pops up on the surface, the same jacket as the man who just disappeared. His legs are gone, it’s only a torso bobbing in the waves. “Hey!” you yell … and then you scream and as a hot heat seizes your leg and tugs you once, then again, and you’re pulled under through the swirling bubbles and you see a flash of the sweeping beam of light, and a final thought dawns on you—“It’s the spotlight and they’re searching for survivors …”

  RMS NOVA SCOTIA

  In 1942, as World War II warfare raged in and around Stalingrad in Russia and attacking German soldiers were dying at a rate of 10,000 per day, the Russians continued their homeland defense through the cold and snow. It was a battle of sharks versus sharks.

  “While clouds vanished, cold prevailed in the Stalingrad area. Wind-driven snow cut down visibility on the central front. Moscow observers said the joint operations were the greatest undertaken by the Russians in their 17 months of war,” read a report by the Associated Press wire service. Stalingrad became known as the city that defeated the Third Reich, as the crushing defeat of the German forces by the Red Army in urban warfare was a pivotal loss for Germany. After six months of horrific battle and a death toll of perhaps more than a million, the city became known as “Red Verdun,” in reference to the horrible battle of World War I on the Western Front between Germany and France, which resulted in almost one million dead during the battle, and 1.2 million dead at Verdun throughout the war. The Battle of Verdun lasted for 303 days and was the longest and one of the most brutal battles in the history of the world. A Dresden newspaper called Stalingrad “the most fateful battle” of World War II. Winston Churchill wrote of Stalingrad in his history of World War II titled The Hinge of Fate: “The cold was intense: food and ammunition were scarce and an outbreak of typhus added to the miseries of the men.” The Germans and Field-Marshal Paulus and the fierce German Sixth Army surrendered the city in February 1943. Russian Premier Joseph Stalin called it “the annihilation of the encircled enemy troops near Stalingrad.”

  While that battle was raging in Europe in autumn 1942, the German navy had a well-documented conquest, off the coast of Africa. The 6,796-ton RMS Nova Scotia had been requisitioned by Britain as a troopship and in 1941 joined a convoy sailing for Sierra Leone. Now near the African continent and recently departed from South Africa, the Nova Scotia in autumn 1942 was deployed to the British Colony of Aden with 750 Italian prisoners of war aboard, bound for Durban. However, off the coast of Natal Province, South Africa, a German submarine intercepted the ship with a volley of three
torpedoes.

  The Nova Scotia went down quickly, one report said within ten minutes. Not much is known about the aftermath, except mass death occurred. Of the 750 Italian prisoners aboard, 650 were reported lost. The total death count was 858. Many drowned, relatively few were rescued—fewer than 200—and corpses were reported floating in the sea and washing ashore.

  In its time of service, the German submarine U-177 sank fourteen ships and was later sunk by US depth charges, with the loss of fifty crewmembers and fifteen survivors from that incident. A peculiar fact of the sinking of the Nova Scotia was that U-177 picked up two survivors to find out what ship they had hit. They were Italian detainees who told the Germans that most of those aboard were also internees. The Germans were under orders not to pick up enemy survivors, as that had occurred following the sinking of the RMS Laconia and US warplanes attacked the German U-boat, forcing it to crash dive, killing survivors on the submarine’s deck who weren’t strafed by the US gunfire. This brought unrestricted submarine warfare to World War II, since humanitarian acts were now against orders. The German U-177 commander Robert Gysae reportedly left the two survivors from the Nova Scotia in the water and continued on. I found no reports on their eventual welfare, but if oceanic whitetips were in the area we can surmise the outcome.

  Those in the water after the Nova Scotia went down had little chance of survival. It wasn’t long before oceanic whitetip sharks showed up on the scene, as they did at so many wartime tragedies. These were, indeed, shark-infested waters, and oceanic whitetips—which the undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau called “lord of the longhands” because of their pronounced and white-tipped and wing-like pectoral fins—came calling. Once again, as was so common on the seas in World War II, it was feeding time for the sharks.