Fragments of War. Joyce Hibbert
Radio Officer. His seat would remain empty. She began eating her cold salmon....
Next day, 4 September, Mr. Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, rose in the British House of Commons to make a statement. He began:
“I regret to inform the House that a signal was received at the Admiralty about 11 p.m. last night giving the information that S.S. Athenia had been torpedoed in a position about 200 miles north-west of Ireland at 8:59 p.m”
The news of the swift and brutal attack on an unarmed passenger liner was to reverberate around the world. Three quarters of her passengers were women and children, 311 passengers were neutral Americans, and 112 lives were lost.
“I remember a tremendous shattering bang ... lights going out ... the ship lurching ... shouts ... excitement!” Barbara Bailey would relate.
It was at that precise time – the moment of explosion – that she felt her common sense and recent Civil Defence training taking over, “AVOID PANIC AT ALL COSTS”, that was rule Number One.
As diners began to rush, pushing and screaming toward the main stairs, she urged the two women nearest her at the table to keep their heads. “Let’s wait, we may be doomed but don’t let’s get crushed to death,” she begged.
Through the din they could hear the loud authoritative voice of a ship’s officer, “KEEP CALM”, he kept repeating over and over again. He peered into the dimness of the large debris-strewn dining room.
“Is anyone still in here?”. Barbara Bailey explained that they’d waited for the end of the rush.
“Leave now,” he ordered. Obediently the three women made their way up the stairs through the remains of tables, chairs, crockery and potted plants which had been swept along and upwards by the frantic passengers.
Suddenly Barbara thought that she ought to be wearing her life-preserver and coat. She turned and went back below groping about in the darkness while unsuccessfully trying to locate her own cabin. Fighting the choking fumes in the passageways and stumbling over cabin trunks, she eventually found a lifejacket and warm coat. Then as quickly as possible she went back up on deck.
“Passengers were running about, calling out names of loved ones. Some people had been blown into the sea when the torpedo hit. I looked down into the water and saw a woman’s body floating by, clothes ballooned out. My mind reluctantly registered ‘dead’.
“I noticed that many passengers had no warm clothing and started out to go below to see whether I could find some blankets but my way was firmly barred by a determined stewardess. By this time I realized that I was perfectly self-possessed and acting as though it were an everyday event for me to be shipwrecked.”
She recognized the kindly steward from the dining room. He was hunched over and shaking. Their roles reversed, she grasped his shoulders telling him to control himself and give some help where he could.
Snatches of talk reached her, “... yes, they’d been hit by a torpedo,... one man had seen a submarine’s conning tower.”
Wandering about the ship, she saw that several lifeboats on one side of the Athenia were damaged. Ship’s crew, with help from passengers, were manning stations; one lifeboat had already been successfully lowered into the water. Saying a silent prayer as she watched some passengers tipped out of another on its erratic downward journey, she could only hope that the poor devils would be picked up.
Still wandering, she began consciously searching for a less crowded lifeboat station. Up on the boat deck she was hailed by a man in charge of a station and he insisted that she get into Lifeboat 8A.
“I looked over the side of the listing Athenia and far below there was a bobbing lifeboat seemingly full of people. I decided to obey the man’s order anyway. I laid my handbag down and asked one of the men to tear my skirt so that if necessary, I could jump more easily. He ripped the skirt up one side and helped me attach my handbag to my belt. Then wishing me luck and instructing me to hang on to the steel cable leading to the lifeboat, he sent me over the side. Down and down I went, hand over hand with feet sliding on and off the cable until finally they came to rest on a ledge. Someone pulled at the hawser sharply – I felt more movement – and imagined that the lifeboat below was moving away. Was this the end for me? Should I drop into the water and take my chances? Just then a voice yelled ‘Come on, you’re doing fine.’ My ankles were gripped and I was literally thrown into the lifeboat on top of others. We pulled away immediately. We were seventy living and one dead.”
In sole charge of 8A, a navy blue-jerseyed seaman gave instructions, kept order, and worked unceasingly. Barbara Bailey was to remember him by the name Eileen embroidered on his seaman’s jersey but never learned his real name.
The passengers were packed like sardines and suffering the miseries of seasickness. They had no choice but to vomit on themselves and each other. Sea water washed around their ankles, and knees met those of the person opposite. A little girl near Barbara began to scream. Again the advice “AVOID PANIC” flashed through her mind and Barbara Bailey clapped a hand over the child’s mouth.
Seaman Eileen was careful to steer his boat away from the bright silvery path cast by the moon.
The one undamaged motorboat from the Athenia approached. A male voice announced that two more passengers needed space in the lifeboat. Eileen objected, shouting that they were overcrowded already. “They’re coming anyway” was the reply and before she had time to brace herself a man’s body landed on Barbara Bailey’s back. Then others placed their arms across her back to break the force of the second man’s arrival. The men brought news that a radio message had been received on the Athenia that rescue was on the way. One of the newcomers had a bottle of whisky. Barbara Bailey asked for a drink but the whiskey was not for sharing.
In that long uncomfortable and frightening night, Lifeboat 8A was being rowed steadily further and further away from the Athenia’s listing hulk. Help was indeed on the way; a Norwegian merchantman was steaming towards them.
“Its twinkling lights reminded me of a fairy castle. I’ll never forget the sight of the Knute Nelson as she came full speed to our rescue.”
Yet at first sighting Barbara Bailey had had misgivings about the vessel and speculated out loud that it might be the German liner Bremen. The idea alone was enough to terrify the refugees. The men downed oars and the Jewish women set up an eerie wailing. Still doubtful about the ship’s nationality she suggested to one frightened man that in order to conceal his identity, he should throw his passport overboard, which he did.
Fears were replaced by relief as the freighter’s crew quickly implemented rescue operations. Barbara Bailey watched as women and children were hoisted aloft in a bosun’s chair while men climbed up a swinging rope ladder. By the time it was her turn, a gangway had been lowered and it ended six to eight feet above her head. She stepped carefully over the body of a dead woman and was unceremoniously thrown by three men up into the arms of a huge young Norwegian sailor standing on the gangway.
Her ordeal in the lifeboat had lasted seven hours. “I had to climb over the side of the Knute Nelson where I was met by another big sailor who immediately took a knife to my lifejacket. One slash and it was off.
“In a small galley, where cockroaches abounded, I was issued a drink of gin. I took it outside and gave it to a terribly burned, half-naked man. Working below decks, he’d been badly scalded and salt water had got into the wounds. The poor man was obviously close to death.
It was late and I was exhausted. I looked for somewhere to sleep. The captain’s and officer’s quarters were packed with survivors. I saw a Polish woman toss aside the captain’s clothes and hang her husband’s long overcoat in their place. Damned cheek, I thought. About an hour after our rescue I bedded down on deck with a life-preserver as my pillow. I was hungry, cold, and tired. But oh! the joy of being alive!
“Toward dawn I heard a sailor shouting ‘Hot drink. Hot drink.” I followed him to a larger galley where he gave me a mug of something that tasted like coffee mixed with beef extract.