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Show Light on Sea Talks' to Noise in Sky And 84 U-Boat Victims Are Saved i : . r I i I ' A"" ' I If 1 ( f H ' T I I f f J TJOW eighty-four men and A women, most of them clinging to life rafts after their torpedoed ship had sunk, were saved by three men who never saw them did not, in fact, know of their existence ex-istence and who have never been identified by the survivors, is one of the new stories to come from the "Battle of the Atlantic." The story is told by Arthur Strickland, crew member of the ship, and others of the crew who have arrived in this country. The stricken liner was the "Narissa," of 5,500 tons, bound for a British port. At ten-thirty at night a Nazi submarine sent three torpedoes into the steamship in quick succession, suc-cession, breaking her in two and sinking her in less than five minutes. min-utes. "She was racked so badly by the torpedoes and sank so fast that the lifeboats were almost useless," Strickland says. "Six of them were smashed or caught in the davits and one capsized. Only one was. launched successfully. "Thirty survivors were in the lifeboat that remained upright. Fifty-four people were in the water clinging to the rafts or afloat in life belts, trying to keep together. They were in a bad fix. The rough water washed over them and knocked them about continually. Even the thirty who were better off had all they could do to head the lifeboat up to the seas. "There was no sign of a ship anywhere and not likely to be. In this way things dragged on for four hours. About two-thirty in the morning we heard an airnlnnp Arthur W. Strickland signal our distress. The plane went on eastward. "After six more hoursat eight-thirty that morning a British Brit-ish destroyer came up and took us all on board. Later the commanded com-manded told us what had happened. hap-pened. The plane was an American Ameri-can bomber being 'ferried' to England. Eng-land. Its crew sent out a wireless message that they had seen s bright light, and gave its position. The destroyer picked up the message mes-sage and came around to investigate investi-gate and there we were." Strickland thinks the British Admiralty knows who the bomber's bomb-er's pilot, navigator, and wireless man were. But the Admiralty doesn't talk. "Whoever those fellows in the plane were," Strickland says, "we'd just like them to know that wc are thankful for what they did. I and eighty-three other people owe our lives to them." off to the west. It didn't sound like a British plane. It could be a German one God forbid! But after some argument we decided to chance it with a signal if it ever came near enough. "It passed somewhere above us, but we never saw it. I had a flashlight flash-light that had been loaded with fresh batteries and I pointed this up toward the sound, trying to |
