LOSS OF TANKER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 January 1940, Page 4

LOSS OF TANKER

HOW THE AFRICA SHELL WAS SUNK INTERCEPTED BY GRAF SPEE. STORY OF THE INCIDENT. The five officers of the Africa Shell described in an interview how they were waylaid by a fast, powerful, heavily-armed warship (the Graf Spee), boarded by a crew in nondescript uniforms, were forced to take to the boats, saw their captain unexpectedly taken prisoner of war, watched their ship being blown up and finally, after privations, struggled back to civilisation.

“We were heading south down the coast to Lourenco Marques, empty, after supplying various bases with fuel, when the raider came heading in from the eastward—that is, the open sea—at about 11.45 a.m. She surprised us with her speed,” said the mate.

“When she was about three miles away she fired a warning shot. It fell in the sea 500 yards astern of us. It must have been a high-explosive shell, for it kicked up a spout of water about 150 ft high. “We stopped immediately and started to drift, for there was a strong inset current. The raider came directly for us and lowered her boat when she was about a quarter of a mile away. I cannot say whether she was flying the German flag all the time as she was bow-on to us, but when she swung broadside she was flying one. “The officer and his boarding party were all armed with pistols. They were wearing lifebelts, which we noticed were British, of the type approved by the Board of Trade, but there were no identification marks on the lifebelts.

“They were a nondescript crowd, a real pirate crew, wearing all sorts of uniforms. Some were in white and some in blue, one man in oilskins and another in a boiler suit. Some had no hats or caps on. Their caps had no name ribbons.

“They looked pinched and paler than you expect sailors to be. “The boarding officer asked for the captain, and the skipper and I palavered with him for two or three minutes on deck. The German spoke perfect English and was extremely courteous. He shook hands with the skipper and said, ‘Sorry, but it’s the fortune of war.” CHOICE OF TWO THINGS. “He asked no questions about our course or our cargo, but went on to say, ‘Well, captain, you have the choice of two things—either come aboard the man-o'-war with your crew, or take you chance about getting ashore.’ Captain Dove at once said he preferred to go ashore. The German replied, ‘All right, you have 10 minutes.’

“The captain ordered me to get the boats clear, and I was pretty busy for the next few minutes. When I was ready to lower away my boat the captain said, ‘All right, go ahead.’ That was the last I saw of him. I thought he was going to take command of the other boat with the second officer.

"We all thought he was coming with us. He had even, sent his golf clubs into, the boat, remarking with a laugh that we could have a game of golf on the beach. Some of his clothes were put in the boat, too, which was lucky for us because we had nothing and when we got ashore we wore some of his until we could buy others. "My boat pulled away, but at the last moment when the captain was about to step into Jeffcoat's boat, the German officer said. ‘Oh, no, you must come aboard our launch and come to our ship.’

“Previously the boarding party had been filling their launch, which was a big one capable of carrying four or five tons, with our stores. But we did not have a great deal in the way of stores because we are never at sea long between coast ports. "Before they boarded us we had gathered up all the ship’s papers and other documents and almost anything likely to be of use to the enemy, shoved them into bags with weights and heaved them overboard.” TIME BOMBS. The chief engineer broke in here: “When Jeffcoat’s boat was in the water the condenser circulating water , overboard was discharging into it. 1 asked permission from the German officer to turn it off. When I was below doing so, I felt a pistol forced into the small of my back and a voice demanded what I was doing. I saw then that the Germans were placing a time bomb, which was encased in a wooden box, among the machinery. It was this bomb that did the damage. Another was placed on the deck forward, but it did not seem so effective.”

Boffi our boats were in the water before the Germans left,” the mate continued. “They returned to their ship and headed off in a northerly direction. They left the Africa Shell at about 12.30 p.m.—incidentaaly they knew their job as a boarding party, being very efficient and showing signs of experience—and the first explosion took place about 10 minutes after. “We pulled as hard as we could to put distance between us and the tanker. The foredeck bomb explodedat 12.40, and the engine-room bomb at 12.55. Tire funnel went, then and a tremendous amount of debris was blown into the air. not upwards so much as outwards. We felt mad at that moment.

“We were a quarter of a mile or more away then. Jeffcoat’s boat landed at 3.10 p.m. after he had seen some natives running along the beach. My boat landed at 3.50 p.m. It was a barren stretch of sand dune coast and we did not feel too happy about going ashore there—we knew the country only from the sea. PLANE OVERHEAD. “We were just hauling the boats up the beach at 4 p.m. when the Deta mailplane passed overhead and circled. The pilot dropped a message weighted with a spanner, but it fell in the sea.

Jeffcoat and I swam out to try to recover it but without luck. The pilot dropped a second message at Zavala saying he had seen the ship and us. "We were immensely grateful to Pires Duval, the pilot, for getting assistance to us. We met him later in Inhambane and, in fact, he flew all of us, except Hetherington, who came by another plane, down to Lourenco Marques.”