MURDER AT SEA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 March 1940, Page 5

MURDER AT SEA

U BOAT ATTACK ON BRITISH TRAWLER BURNING CRAFT SHELLED RELENTLESSLY. SURVIVORS LEFT IN LEAKING BOAT. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY. March 6. Typical of many of the attacks by German submarines on unarmed fishermen is an account given by the skipper of the shelling and sinking of (Tie British trawler Togimo and the abandoning of her crew in a. disabled boat on a bitterly cold, pitch dark night 70 miles south-west of Cape Clear. Ireland, on February .11.

All the Togimo’s deck lights were btirning and the skipper was belowtaking a sounding with an echometer when, gunfire brought him on deck. Realising that he was being attacked by U-boat, he gave orders for all lights out and full speed ahead in the hope of making an escape. Almost simultaneously he saw a flash about 500 yards away. A shell burst in the chartroom, just below the wheelhouse, setting the ship on fire, smashing windows, splintering doors and bulkheads, and filling the whoe place with fumes.

The Togimo stopped, clearly visible in the light of her own flames, while the U-boat fired shell after shell at point-blank range. The skipper gave orders for the ship to be abandoned, so a boat was lowered. The fireman had already been killed, and of the 10 others seven entered the boat, leaving the skipper, mate and a deckhand with a badly lacerated arm (which was afterward amputated) on board.

The Togimo was now blazing furiously. Circling round, the submarine continued her fire, while approaching to within 150 yards. A shell hit the trawler’s bridge and blew it to pieces. Another burst close to the stern of the boat, which was lying alongside the Togimo’s port quarter, its fragments wounding the chief engineer and eral others, and the third projectile narrowly missed the boat’s bows. The wounded man was put down into the boat, and he was followed by the mate and skipper. They cast oft and a few minutes later the Togimo sank. The U-boat afterward approached within 15 yards and then steamed off, leaving the 10 fishermen to their fate. Several of them were wounded, and their boat was hit by many splinters and was leaking badly. They had about one gallon of water and two dozen biscuits.

Throughout the -following day they rowed toward the land and lay to during a bitterly cold night when several trawlers were sighted, but flares failed to attract their attention. The badly wounded man was in agony which they could do little to alleviate. At dawn they once more started to row in the teeth of the wind and a rapidly rising sea. Bailing was continued, the water scooped up being reddened by blood from the wounded. At 8.31) a.m. a Spanish vessel was sighted and, attracted by a signal of the cook’s apron tied to a boathook, she rescued and cared for the crew till they were landed at an Irish port. NAZI LYING. The glaring inconsistencies which characterise so many of the German accounts of German actions are typified in an account of a U-boat’s experiences broadcast by an official of . the German wireless service on Tuesday. According to this account the U-boat sighted a British steamer in British territorial waters. The U-boat approached the ship, saw that she carried a gun, and therefore sank her by torpedo. The ship’s crew had entered the lifeboats before the ship was sunk. The U-boat then came to the surface and approached the boats, giving the survivors presents and instructions regarding the course to take since the distance to the shore was about 60 miles. It was explained to the survivors that the ship had been torpedoed without warning because she was armed. Naval observers in London who have seen this account ask themselves how it could be that the British ship was at one moment within territorial waters — w ithin three miles of the shore—and at the next moment was about 60 miles from the shore. They also find it hard to reconcile the fact that the ship’s crew according to the German account had already taken to the boats before the ship was sunk with the fact also slated in the German account that the commander of the U-boat had sunk the steamer without warning.