OCR Text |
Show j German Submarine Attacks Passenger I Ship With Torpedoes and Shells I AMERICANS BARELY ESCAPE DEATH , FROM HIDDEN GERMAN CRAF1 , Sailing Ship With Two American Flags Painted on Side Used as Decoy to Deceive British Captain Torpedo Whirls j i Through Water and Barely Misses Great Vessel ; 'C With Two Hundred and Twenty-seven Pas- : r sengers Washington Official Circles Shocked Over the Affair. I New York, July 17. The British passenger liner Orduna, with 227 passengers pas-sengers aboard, twenty-one of whom were Americans, was attacked without warning by a German submarine at 6 o'clock in the morning of July 9. sixteen six-teen hours out of Liverpool, on her way to New York. Announcement of the attack was made by the ship's captain, cap-tain, Thomas McComb Taylor, and passengers, when the Orduna reached here today. A torpedo was fired at the steamer and missed it by ton yards. Twenty minutes later a submarine rose to the surface, possibly a different submarine sub-marine from the one that launched $. the torpedo, and for half an hour 3 thereafter pursued the steamer, firing j I shells which whistled over the decks; above the heads of pasengers stand-1 J ing there with their lifebelts on. i Ten minutes before the attack a sailing ship, with two American flags painted on her side, was seen ahead. V Captain Taylor became suspicious of this craft and began maneuvering his : ship. Then came the attack, the first "' warning of which was the streak of a torpedo which whirled through the j; water and missed the Orduna's stern ' by ten yards or thereabouts. ; Stewards ran below and aroused the I passengers. With clothes hurriedly i fastened haphazard they made for the i upper deck. There they were assembled as-sembled near the bridge. Lifebelts were adjusted and lifeboats swung out. The crew stood ready to launch cthe boats. From a submarine off the 'starboard quarter there came a shell which kicked up a miniature geyser in the Orduna's wake. The submarines subma-rines had the range, Captain Taylor turned the stern of the ship toward the assailant and ordered or-dered full speed ahead. Within from two to five minutes another shell, this time passing over the heads of the assembled passengers, was fired. As it overshot the mark, its landing place was marked by a rising column of water A third shell passed overhead and so close that it seemed to clip a lifeboat. life-boat. Captain Taylor ordered the passengers to go to a lower deck. They obeyed and the lifeboats were p adjusted lower still so that the pas-Kj: pas-Kj: sengers might step into them without j',- delay. The shelling continued, shots 5XI-! falling about the steamer at intervals ;?'' of from two to five minutes. ti ; For about half an hour the sub- . marine pursued the liner with the erj span of water between them length-J length-J f r euing each minute. Seven shots were s . fired in all. Four of them passed over ai: the decks. The other three fell' close 15 j to the ship. Theu the submarine dis- I; muceu gave up tue uiwiau. j Early Risers Witness Attack. Early risers who had left their berths to enjoy the fine morning were with the captain on the bridge when i' the attack begnn and witnessed the ;! entire episode. Among them was Ba- ron Marcus Rosenkrantz of Denmark, 8fj who married Miss Rebie Loewe of At- 1 lanta, Ga. The baroness was with him on the trip, but did not witness the $ aack. 9 "Ask the passengers what hap- tiSl pened," Captain Taylor said when the j Orduna docked here today. "1 am at- !! tached to the royal naval reserve and SJJ therefore cannot discuss the matter. Ji3 Ask Baron Rosenkrantz; he saw the $j3 whole thing" , r, , , m "But there is one question. Captain Hi Taylor, that vou can answer and you Spy alone Were you attacked without & I warning?" tel 1 Not Slightest Warning Given. :H "I tlid not have even the slightest 4$ -1 warning of the attack," he replied- fjSSl "Beyond that I will say nothing, twfi I Baron Rosenkrantz, one of a group hT with the captain on the bridge, de- fj scribed the attack in detail. M "We left Liverpool about 2:oU 1 o'clock on the afternoon of Thursday, J5 $ llle eighth," he said. "At 5:55 by my watch the first missile, a torpedo, wa3 fired. Sailing Ship for Decoy. "A few minutes before that, how-.evor, how-.evor, we saw a small sailing ship just ahead of us. She had two American Ameri-can flags painted on the side that was turned to us. She was broadside to us and seemed to be beating up the wind. We could see her over the bows. "Captain Taylor apparently became suspicious of this boat. We noticed that the course of the ship was immediately im-mediately changed so that the little vessel ahead would be a given berth. I could see that we would pass far astern of her if we kept to the new course. "Some of those aboard believed that the sailing ship was hiding a submarine behind her. Of this I can't say." Thomas Graham of Liverpool, one of the passsengers on deck at the time, interrupted Baron Rosenkrantz to express ex-press his firm conviction that such was the case. Saw Wake of Torpedo. "Wc passed the sailing ship at a considerable distance. Having done this, most of us forgot her," Baron Rosenkrantz continued. "A few minutes min-utes after we had left her behind, I looked through my glasses over the sea and saw a white streak coming toward us through j.he water. I wasn't sure at first it was a streak, such as the wake of a torpedo or the periscope of a submarine, but the question was soon settled. "It was a torpedo. We could see it coming towards us at high speed. When it appeared to be half a mile or so off. the Orduna seemed to jump ahead and a second Afterwards to swerve to one side It looked as if the torpedo would strike us aft. But it didn't It passed more than ten yards behind the rudder, churning up a white wake of foam, as it passed by.'" The passengers, including Baron Rosenkrantz. Ro-senkrantz. turned their glasses then upon the sailing ship and tried to make out her name. Mr. Graham said he thought she was "Normanie " lie could not see clearly the letters painted on her but was reasonably certain that It was the "Normanie" or a name similar to that. Maritime records contain no Normanie Nor-manie in the list of sailing vessels. A near approach to this name, however, howev-er, is that of the American bark Normandy. Nor-mandy. Story of the Normandy. In this connection it was recalled here today that the Normandy reach- . ed Liverpool on Julv 12. three days after the attack on the Orduna, at the end of a voyage from Gulfport. Miss. On her arrival at Liverpool, numbers of her crew said she was stopped bv a German submarine, sixty miles southwest of Tuscas rock, off the southeast coast of Ireland, Friday night, July 0, and was forced to act as a shield for the submarine from an approaching vessel which proved to be the Russian steamer Leo. The submarine submerged, according accord-ing to the Normandy's crew, and pro ceeded around the Normandy's bow Ten minutes later the crew of Nor-mandv Nor-mandv saw the Leo blown up. Th Normandv, her crew said, was forced to act as a shield for the submarine under threat of destruction should she refuse. , This occurred, the Normandy s crew said, on the night of July 9. The Orduna was attacked on the morning morn-ing of Julv 9 and the scene of the attack was about 20 miles distant from the spot where .the Leo was sunk Captain Denies Story. The captain of the Normandy, however how-ever specifically denied the story told bv the members of the crew. The "bark was stopped by the sub- marine, ho said, but was allowed to proceed with some of the Leo's crew. Resuming his narrative of the affair, af-fair, Baron Rosenkrantz said: "A short time after the torpedo had clipped past the Orduna's port it may have been half an hour, a submarine came into sight. We were not especially espe-cially surprised to see her but what did surprise us was her location. The tor.pedo had come at us from the port and the submarine which now loomed up was abaft our starboard quarter May Have Been Another Submarine. "This may have been accounted for by the fact that Captain Taylor had been speeding the Orduna in a zig zag course. Possibly it was another submarine. sub-marine. I don't know. "At any rate she opened fire on us immediately. She seemed to have the range, too. The first shell fell uncomfortably close and threw up a mountain of water. Captain Taylor swerved again and showed the submarine sub-marine only the liner's stern, making as small a target as possible." Passengers Are Warned. "Before the first shot was fired, however, after the torpedo missed us, stewards ran to the state rooms and told the passengers to get ready. Most of the passengers were asleep. They dressed hurriedly, some of them with the assistance of stewards and stewardesses stew-ardesses and when the first shot was fired were assembled on the upper deck, each passenger at his allotted place at the lifeboats. As a further precaution, each passenger put ou a lifebelt. Captain Calls for Aid. "The second shot passed over tho heads of these passengers. We could hear the scream of the shell. Apparently Appar-ently the submarine was aiming at the bridge and the wireless. We heard the wireless crackle and afterwards learned that the captain had sent out a wireless call for help. "Tho third shot came within a few minutes not more than five. It passed very close over the deck. In fact it seemed to graze one of the lifeboats aft. In a few seconds the officers shouted an order, not excitedly excited-ly but calmly and as if the order was just an everyday affair. There appeared ap-peared to be no excitement on the surface. All aboard, passengers, crew and officers, seemed outwardly calm Orders Quickly Obeyed. " 'All passengers to the deck below' was the order. It was obeyed quickly quick-ly and without excitement. As the passengers went down the steps, the lifeboats were lowered a few feet to the level of the deck below. The passengers assembled In their places at the lifeboats as before. "I went below with my wife, but couldn't see very well so came back upon the upper deck and looked through my glasses at the submarine. I tried especially to get some clue as to her identity but couldn't. The sun was shining and the sea was smooth, but I failed to find out anything more than the vessel, which attacked us, was a submarine. Real Chase Begins. "After the third shot, the real chase began. Through my glasses I could see the submarine coming fast with a bone in' her teeth, with the spray of the waves washing back over her bows A fourth shot whistled over our heads, "The Orduna was gaining. She ran a zizzag course, all the time showing the submarine only the stern, and outmaneuverlng her pursuer. The distance dis-tance between us grew longer, the shots became fewer and finally, after about hall an hour, the shots ceased altogether and the submarine disappeared." disap-peared." Washington Is Shocked. Washington, July 17. News of the attack on the Cunarder upsets the theory of some officials here that Germany, while not yielding in the American diplomatic demands that unarmed ships be warned of attack in accordance with international law, was in practice observing that procedure. proced-ure. The view that Germany would con duct her submarine warfare in accordance ac-cordance with the principles for which the United States contends, has been so confidently entertained in official quarters that the attack on the Orduna came as little loss than a shock. |