by Ronald Weber
The wounded were treated on the German vessel, and a small group of the survivors met with the captain. After shaking hands with them, he both apologized for the sinking and justified it on grounds the Zamzam had been running without lights, keeping radio silence, and was under the direction of the British Admiralty (a coded British radio message warning of the German ship’s presence had been found during a search of the captain’s quarters). “I am sorry this had to happen,” the captain told the group. “I can only tell you that we shall do everything in our power to put you safely ashore but you must remember that this is war and in traveling on the ocean you have assumed many risks.” The following day the Zamzam’s survivors were transferred to the Dresden, a supply ship carrying cargo to Germany and oil for the raider. The raider then vanished, and for thirty-five days the Dresden was at sea before reaching St. Jean-de-Luz in occupied France.
Here the survivors were separated. British, Canadian, Egyptian, and some other national groups, women and children included, were sent to Bordeaux for internment. Americans—including the missionaries bound for Africa, though not twenty-four adventurous ambulance drivers who had enlisted in the British-American Ambulance Corps with plans to join Free French forces in North Africa (their ambulances had been aboard the Zamzam as cargo)—went to hotels in Biarritz. With the United States still out of the war, the Americans were treated with special care. News reports said they were free to circulate where they pleased in the occupied city, and while the weather was thought too chilly for bathing, some had “attended a cocktail party or two.”
From the Spanish border the Americans made the two-day train ride to Portugal, where at a border town they found a welcoming celebration with the entire population turning out to watch the survivors eat a Red Cross meal on tables set up on the station platform. A string of press accounts about the American survivors came to a close when they reached Lisbon and were moved to Sintra to await transport out of the country. The missionaries said they still hoped to get to Africa; the ambulance drivers, after being briefly held by the Germans, trickled into Lisbon and talked of returning to America or reaching Britain. (One of the drivers, wounded in the attack on the Zamzam, had remained on the German raider after treatment. When America entered the war he was interned by the Germans and eventually released in a prisoner-of-war swap.)
Among the Zamzam’s survivors was a Life magazine photographer, David Scherman, and an editor of Fortune magazine, Charles J. V. Murphy. Both got places on a Clipper flight and, along with one of the ambulance drivers, were the first to get back to New York. Scherman had snapped photos of the sinking of the ship and of the following journey to the French port. In Biarritz, German officials allowed him to develop the pictures, then—according to reports at the time—confiscated them. But not all were lost, and on June 23, 1941, seventeen of the photos (including one of the German raider closing in on the Zamzam after the shelling) appeared in a Life exclusive together with Murphy’s dramatic account of the long ordeal.
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For most of those trying to leave or reach Lisbon, travel by air was rarely an alternative. Although there was scheduled plane service to and from the United States and Britain, and within Europe to and from Spain, Germany, and (early in the war) Italy and North Africa, tickets were expensive and hard to come by, with preference given to the citizens of countries with national airlines and, as noted above, figures with high-level connections. Those fitting neither category found themselves—as they gloomily characterized their plight among one another—members of a lost tribe of forgotten spirits who spent their days haunting the beaches, the casino, and, in dim hope of a canceled passage, the airline offices.
Seats on land-based planes flying to and from Lisbon were highly prized, but the real cachet attached to wartime air journeys belonged to Pan American’s mammoth blue-and-white Clipper flying boats winging their way between Lisbon and New York. After prolonged negotiations, Pan American in 1937 had reached a twenty-five-year agreement with Portugal for landing rights at Horta in the Azores and at Lisbon, a choice deal that excluded other carriers for a fifteen-year period unless the U.S. government nominated another airline. Late the next year Pan American took delivery of the first of what would become a fleet of twelve Boeing B-314 Clippers, four-engine whale-shaped seaplanes capable of crossing the Atlantic on two routes: a northern course via Newfoundland to Foynes in Ireland and Southampton in England; a southern course to Hamilton in Bermuda, Horta, Lisbon, and finally Marseille. When the war made the northern way too dangerous, Pan American narrowed its transatlantic flights to the southerly course, and Lisbon rather than Marseille became the terminus.
On eastbound flights, Clippers—named for the high-peaked sailing ships that had given way to steam-powered vessels—left from Port Washington on Long Island Sound (later from the La Guardia Marine Air Terminal) or from Baltimore. If all went well, the journey ended some twenty-four hours later at a seaplane docking facility constructed at Cabo Ruivo on the Tagus River, the watery landing path illuminated with flares. Westbound flights took longer due to headwinds, and far longer when weather conditions in the Azores sent them along the west coast of Africa to South America to New York. Since Clippers also carried large volumes of mail—a highly lucrative part of Pan American’s business, which only increased as ship transport dwindled—space available for passengers varied considerably. At times the volume of mail was such that no passengers were carried.
A flight to Lisbon to open the Tagus landing port was made by the Yankee Clipper at the end of March 1939 in twenty-four hours and thirty-nine minutes. The American minister, consul, and a gathering from Lisbon’s small American colony were on hand to greet the arrival. Speaking from Lisbon on an NBC radio hookup, the plane’s captain said he had encountered some light storms but otherwise pronounced the flight uneventful. On May 20, 1939, the twelfth anniversary of Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight to Paris, the Yankee Clipper left Port Washington for Lisbon and Marseille on the first commercial round-trip flight across the Atlantic. Before heading out over the ocean, the plane, with some eighteen hundred pounds of mail aboard and no passengers, circled the grounds of the New York World’s Fair while the captain spoke on a two-way radio phone to dignitaries on the ground, the conversation relayed to the crowd through loudspeakers hung from trees. In mid-June the Atlantic Clipper carried a delegation of newspaper and radio correspondents to Lisbon on a survey flight—the total of thirty people on board the largest number ever to cross the Atlantic in an airplane.
The first Pan American transatlantic flight with paying customers left Port Washington on June 28, 1939—a momentous occasion, declared the New York Times, marking “man’s aerial conquest of the last, and commercially most important, of the earth’s oceans. It is now possible for the traveler to circle the globe on scheduled airplanes.” Port Washington declared a partial holiday to allow residents to be on hand, and the high school band played as police escorted coaches taking passengers along the decorated main street to a long dock leading to a float where the Dixie Clipper was moored. The plane that day would carry a crew of eleven and twenty-two passengers—a mixture of corporate officials, the wife of Juan Trippe, Pan American’s president, and self-styled world travelers who for years had held standing reservations for the first transatlantic crossing by air. The announced fare was $375 one way, $675 round trip.
Passengers entered an enormous aircraft, with wings so thick that companionways allowed the engines to be serviced in flight. There were two carpeted decks, an upper solely for the crew, a lower separated into spacious passenger compartments, which included a dining room, a lounge, and a self-contained compartment in the rear variously known as a honeymoon or bridal suite. Separate dressing rooms for men and women each had a toilet and hot and cold running water.
As soon as the flying boat was airborne—in normal conditions the run across the water took about thirty seconds—a steward passed out a printed passenger list, letting everyone know who else was on t
he flight. Then a passenger produced a bottle (since no liquor was served, a safety precaution Pan American soon abandoned), and cocktails were mixed. Stewards served dinner on white-clothed tables, and afterward the captain came down and had a cigarette with the travelers. Berths were then made up into beds resembling those of Pullman railway cars.
It was morning when the plane landed at Horta, fifteen and a half hours after takeoff. While it was refueled, passengers were taken in open cars about the island, lush with flowers and dotted with white-sailed windmills. The stop took ninety minutes; seven hours later the plane landed on the river in Lisbon. After passengers went through customs they were driven to the Aviz Hotel for the night. The following morning they were off again, with breakfast aboard the plane, for Marseille, taking a roundabout course since Spain did not allow passage through its airspace. From Marseille passengers could make further connections by air or rail to Paris. The next day the Dixie Clipper, with twelve travelers now aboard, left Marseille on the return journey to Lisbon and New York.
The overriding appeal of the Clippers was plainly speed: eastbound, a day’s journey now separated America and Europe. Close behind was the moderate luxury the planes provided, with flights typically likened to being in a country club lounge or on a yachting party in the sky. The inescapable downside was foul sea and sky weather conditions. Winter in New York and Baltimore could divert takeoffs and landings south to Norfolk or Miami. Horta was especially hostage to weather since the port offered virtually no shelter; heavy seas, especially in winter, meant long layovers in the town of seven thousand while waiting for calm water, or delays at Bermuda or Lisbon while meteorologists kept abreast of Horta’s wave heights. As for air conditions, at Horta and other Pan American sites small balloons were inflated and released to gauge the ceiling during rain and fog, the findings correlated with reports from the company’s scattered radio stations.
Flights bypassing Horta because of weather meant adding some four thousand miles and five days to the journey, as the American diplomat George F. Kennan painfully learned when on government business in 1943 he made a Clipper flight from Lisbon to New York. The route took him to Portuguese Guinea in Africa, across the South Atlantic to Brazil, and north through the Caribbean to New York, with frequent refueling stops along the way. The plane’s crew changed three times. The ordeal, Kennan later wrote, left him feeling as one might after “some sort of five-day debauch: unnerved, overtired, jittery, not myself.”
The American foreign correspondent Henry J. Taylor also made the extended Clipper journey from Lisbon, though at the time he did so, immediately after Hitler declared war on the United States in December 1941, the presumed safety of the far southern route eased whatever annoyance he felt. Taylor had come from London and was staying at the Pálacio in Estoril when news came over Vichy radio that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. Immediately, high-ranking American military figures and important British civilians began arriving from London for Clipper flights to America.
On December 11 a Clipper arrived from New York, and that afternoon Taylor, settled with the American minister Bert Fish in chairs in his bedroom, listened to a radio address by Hitler in Berlin. The talk began at one o’clock Lisbon time, and Taylor and Fish waged a dollar on when the Führer would actually declare war on the United States. He did so at 2:26, with Fish the winner. Late that night Taylor went out on the Clipper’s return flight to New York. Due to the new and uncertain war situation, the plane was going the long way via Africa and South America. To reduce weight for fuel and passengers, berths were taken out, mail was left piled on the pier, and seven pounds of luggage was allotted to each passenger. Clothes and shoes above the limit were given to Portuguese dock workers.
Stops in Bermuda could hold up Clippers for a reason other than weather: British censorship of American mail to and from continental Europe. In early January 1940 a spat developed when the American Clipper was delayed for a day while its mail, some three hundred sacks, was removed, opened, and read. Britain had previously censored mail for Europe carried aboard American Export Lines ships stopping at Bermuda, but this was the first time it had done so with airmail. (Sending mail by sea was a risky venture. In the first year and a half of the war seven ships carrying mail from America were sunk in the Atlantic.) The State Department protested, and there was angry talk in the Senate (the British action was “a hell of a note,” said Harry S Truman of Missouri), yet at issue was not the right of a belligerent to censor mail passing through one of its ports but the manner in which it was done. According to first reports, the Clipper’s captain refused to allow censors to enter the plane, so mail had been removed at bayonet point by British marines—a report the British ambassador to Washington labeled “complete eyewash.” Britain went on exercising censorship at Bermuda. Some six months after the purported bayonet incident a hundred people were added to the Hamilton censorship staff because, as the British explained, of an increased number of mail-laden American ships stopping in Bermuda—and Pan American partially skirted the matter by canceling some stops at Bermuda on its eastbound flights to Lisbon, weather permitting. In his 1941 National Geographic article about Lisbon, Harvey Klemmer reported that the last time he passed through Hamilton the British had nine hundred censors on duty.
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The wartime monopoly of Clipper flights carrying passengers and mail between New York and Lisbon brought Pan American record profits. At the same time the war marked the beginning of the end for commercial Clipper service everywhere in the world. After Pearl Harbor, American aircraft production went to military needs, and no new Clippers were built. The war also accelerated developments in landplane technology and the construction of ground facilities. At the war’s end the remaining Boeing Clippers—eleven of the original twelve—were unceremoniously sold and scrapped. Yet however short-lived the era of the great flying boats, while they flew their hold on the imagination was strong.
A lengthy New York Times report on the second anniversary of Clipper passenger service to Europe opened by reproducing the detailed loudspeaker announcement to passengers before boarding a flight—even that, apparently, had a certain distinction about it. The announcement began: “In a few minutes, ladies and gentlemen, you will hear a bell ring. A short interval later you will hear two bells sounding. The first will be the signal for the crew of the Yankee Clipper to board their airliner. The second will be the boarding signal for passengers.” And ended: “The Yankee Clipper is now departing for Bermuda, the Azores and Lisbon. All aboard, please.”
The Times report gave information about the plane’s food and drink, both now fashioned around wartime rationing. Westbound flights featured veal or chicken since they were easiest to buy in Lisbon, while eastbound planes from Bermuda offered lamb chops or chicken since the British colony had little beef. Between New York and Bermuda there was a wide choice of bar drinks, but between Bermuda and Lisbon—for reasons unexplained—they tapered off to Scotch whiskey and brandy. Ice cream, on the other hand, was packed in dry ice in New York and available on Clippers leaving the port for a full forty-eight hours thereafter.
The newspaper account even went into luggage matters, though there seemed minimal charm here. Fifty-five pounds was the limit—but, it was explained, that amount “translated into terms of wardrobe” allowed “five suits and accessories or four street dresses, three evening gowns and all that goes with them.” For highly important figures the luggage allotment could be expanded, at a charge. After passenger luggage was weighed it was inspected for contraband; if a camera was found it was placed in a container for the duration of a flight. Passengers were finally weighed themselves, with the number (nothing was said about a weight limit) recorded behind a counter—“a concession to sensitive women.”
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The allure of the flying boats even reached Broadway in Elmer Rice’s anti-Nazi play Flight to the West, where—as detailed staging directions noted—all action takes place on two successive days aboard a Clipper flying f
rom Lisbon to New York in July 1940. The set for the production, which opened in New York’s Guild Theatre on December 30, 1940, with Rice also the director, was a Clipper’s midsection: a smoking lounge, a compartment on either side, and parts of two other compartments at the ends. A hinged door in the center of the set opened out, when the plane was supposedly in port, to show broad pontoons that served as a gangplank. The overall design was intended to give the audience the feeling that everything of the Clipper’s interior was entirely functional yet of high quality, suggesting—said the stage directions—“the living quarters of a small, but very modern yacht, rather than the inside of an airplane.”
As the curtain rises, the Clipper is about to leave port on the Tagus. The door is open, presenting a distant view of the far outskirts of Lisbon, and two Portuguese mechanics are at work on the pontoons. Near the door one of Pan American’s flight officers barks instructions to them in Portuguese while two uniformed stewards carry luggage to the sleeping compartments. Soon the passengers file into the lounge, greeted by the junior officer; when all are aboard there is the increased sound of the engines, then a moving landscape appears through the three windows until sprayed water obscures the view. With the plane in the air, the passengers are told they can freely move about; they are to ask for anything they want—cigarettes, coffee, cocktails—and berths will be made up for naps. They will be in the Azores in late afternoon, in New York the following morning.