The Laconia Incident

by Gene Masters

  The Laconia then lurched suddenly again to port, throwing Ralph and James off their feet, each man dropping the shell he was carrying. Tillie grimaced, Robby and the others cringed, all waiting to be blown to hell, as the shells hit the teak deck and rolled off to port. One careened off a railing column and went over the side and into the sea. The second lodged, stuck, in the scupper. Everyone let out their breath.

  Tillie looked like he was ready to chew out Ralph and James, but then apparently thought the better of it, as Ralph made his way to where the shell had lodged, picked it up, and dropped it over the side. Tillie then said, “Right. Now lads, see to yourselves.”

  All then made their way forward, to where the ship’s crew would hopefully be launching lifeboats. It was the last time that Robby would see Tillie, who set about helping the ship’s crew launch the lifeboats. Fellows, he saw, had bullied his way aboard one of the boats along with some of the ship’s passengers. Robby, along with Tinsdale and Martin, continued forward, but he and Tinsdale became separated from Martin somehow, and Robby and Ralph Tinsdale found themselves alone in the midst of a frightened and panicked crowd.

  * * * * *

  Tom Buckingham had the bridge watch, having just relieved the watch officer not twenty minutes earlier. Rudolph Sharp appeared on the bridge almost immediately after the second torpedo struck the ship and said to him, “There’s nothing left to do here, Mr. Buckingham. See to passing the word to abandon ship. Then you best you go and attend to the passengers.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Buckingham said. After passing the word to abandon ship, he left Captain Sharp behind on the bridge. He made his way as best he could, down askew ladders and a canted deck, heading to the main deck, there to see to the launching of the lifeboats.

  Buckingham saw that launching the starboard lifeboats was difficult at best, although the crew managed to launch some of the boats on that side. Those boats, overloaded with half again as many passengers as they were designed to hold, were swung out as far as possible from the ship. Still, as they were lowered, the boats hit the angled side of the ship, and, skidding down the side, spilled out most of their passengers.

  Of those who managed to remain in the boats, many were still spilled out, as the boats finally went into the swelling waters when their falls were released. On one of the starboard boats, the forward falls parted, and the boat swung away only to hang vertically, stern down, off the remaining fall. Its passengers were unceremoniously dumped onto the side of the ship, and then into the heaving water below. Most of those who eventually climbed aboard the boat were seriously hurt, and, of these, many were bleeding from cuts and open wounds.

  Then, Buckingham made his way forward to the wooden rafts mounted there. He ordered them cut loose and sent down the ship’s side and into the water. He hoped that none of them struck the people already in the water, but, to starboard, there was no way to ensure that the water below was clear before launching the rafts. So there was nothing else he could do. Buckingham hoped for the best, and then made his way to the port side.

  * * * * *

  On Laconia’s bridge, Rudolph Sharp watched in dismay as the second ship under his command fell prey to the enemy, sinking beneath his feet. He had done all he could. No doubt, his first officer, the ship’s chief engineer, was doing his best as well, striving to save the engine plant. But Sharp knew the man fought a losing fight.

  Buckingham, good lad that, he will see to the passengers—perhaps even save himself, Sharp thought, and then turned and went into his cabin, locking the door behind him.

  * * * * *

  Belowdecks, the torpedo strikes sent the Italian prisoners and their Polish guards into a panic. In number three hold, inside their cages, the Italians surged toward the padlocked gates that penned them in. The very force of the bodies against the cage doors burst them open, but those in the forefront, not initially squashed to death against the doors in the panic, were subsequently either trampled, or crushed to death, by the surge of prisoners pressing from behind.

  As the surviving Italians made their way to the passageway to the upper decks, their Polish guards—no ammunition for their rifles—fixed bayonets and held them back as best they could. The Poles were quickly reinforced by the British Army contingent, who fired on the POWs, desperately trying to hold them at bay—anything to keep the Italians away from the lifeboats until all the regular passengers were away.

  Stanislaw Kominsky was among the retreating Poles. He hung back from his fellow guards as best he could, not wanting to appear unwilling to do his duty, but also not willing to kill any Italians—if he could possibly avoid it. He worried about his friend and teacher, Marco Scarpetti, but Stanislaw did not see him, searching for him as best he could among the advancing POWs.

  * * * * *

  The POWs and their guards in number two hold, where the first torpedo struck, were even less fortunate. Of those not immediately killed by the blast, many were drowned, as the hold filled with water when the ship rocked to starboard. The caged prisoners never did manage to escape their prisons; those not drowned outright were drowned when the Laconia finally sunk.

  * * * * *

  Donald and Violet Logan were in their main deck cabin, putting Helen to bed for the night, when the first torpedo struck. The main lights in the cabin went out, but an emergency light came on, and so at least they could see.

  “Violet?” Donald said, as calmly as he could, “I think we’ve been hit. Best you put on your life jacket and then wrap up Helen as best you can. We must get to our lifeboat right away.”

  “Oh, yes,” Violet said, and quickly grabbed her life jacket, putting it on just as they had practiced at drill, while Donald did the same with his.

  The second torpedo hit just as Violet was wrapping the baby up in her blanket. Violet, desperately holding the baby Helen in her arms, then made for the cabin door, only after the doomed ship had once more settled out.

  “I’ll just grab some nappies,” Donald said, did so, and followed his wife and child out of the cabin. They found the passageway outside their cabin filled with other passengers in various stages of panic. The three Logans then made their precarious way as best they could to the port side lifeboat station assigned to them.

  * * * * *

  Tom Buckingham, walking downhill, and trying not to slip, went to the port side of the ship to see to the lifeboats there. Here the problem was the reverse of what he had seen on the starboard side: when the boat davits were swung out over the side of the ship, the suspended boats were several feet off the rail, and the gap between the rail and the boat became a divide difficult to cross for most of the passengers. Making matters worse, the Laconia was now dead in the water, and bobbed up and down with the motion of the surging sea below. The ship’s motion, of course, set the suspended lifeboats swinging.

  Buckingham watched as several of the passengers, attempting to leave the heaving deck and cross over the gap into the waiting lifeboat, missed their moving, swinging, target, and fell overboard instead.

  * * * * *

  At their lifeboat station, Donald Logan held onto Violet, as a chivalrous man, already in the boat, reached out and guided Violet and the baby into it. Then Donald boarded the boat, where he and Violet and the baby bunched up, making room for others. Donald guessed there were about ninety people in the boat when the crew finally began lowering it.

  Settled in the boat’s stern, and one of the first to board the boat, was James Fellows.

  The boat was several feet off the ocean surface when the falls hung up, and the boat would lower no farther. One of the crewmen on Laconia’s deck made to cut the lines with a fire axe, cutting the forward line first.

  With the forward falls severed, the lifeboat hung at a crazy angle, its stern in the water, the boat lurching with the heaving sea. Fellows and some dozen other of the passengers were then spilled from the boat, but, with Violet Logan clutching the sleeping baby to her breast, she and Donald managed to hang on. When the bow line was
also finally severed, the boat slammed onto the water’s heaving gray-blue surface, and several more passengers fell overboard. Once again, the Logans managed to hang on.

  James Fellows had struck his head on the lifeboat’s transom when he spilled from the boat, and was knocked unconscious. Kept afloat by his life jacket, he found himself well away from both the lifeboat and the Laconia when he regained consciousness.

  * * * * *

  Marco Scarpetti hung back from the surging POWs as they hurled themselves against the cage doors that secured their prison. Willing himself to remain as calm as he could, he took stock of what he knew was a desperate situation.

  Upon first arriving aboard the Laconia, Marco had surveyed his prison, and learned all he could about it. The hold, he knew, was ventilated by four large intake ducts, two on each side of the ship. These, he had determined, went straight up to the main deck. While large enough to accommodate a person, the ducts were impossible to climb when the ship was on an even keel. Marco knew as well that the air ducts were also closed off from the outside by a grating on their main deck—its purpose being to keep anyone from falling into the duct from above.

  Now Marco saw that the ventilation shaft was at a sufficient angle that a small and agile fellow such as he was could easily use it to shimmy up to the main deck—and freedom—at least freedom from the Laconia’s hold. Then, as if the madness taking place in front of him was not enough, he now heard shots being fired. Without further thought, he started up the closest air duct.

  Progress up the shaft was slow, but steady, and, as he made his way up the duct, he began to consider the grating at the upper end. I imagine it’s screwed shut, he thought, but I might be able to kick it free, if only I could turn myself about in this shaft. But he knew that such a maneuver was impossible, even for him, because the shaft was simply not wide enough. I need to get there first, he finally concluded, and worry about the grating when I get there. Perhaps it will just lift off. But this last, he feared, was just wishful thinking.

  Marco finally did arrive at the grating, and it did not “just lift off.”

  * * * * *

  Jim McLoughlin had been making his way belowdecks to meet up with the chief steward and get his “gourmet meal,” and had just reached the third deck passageway when the nearby blast knocked him off his feet and onto his belly. His fingers scrabbled, trying to grab a hold, as he slid on the steel deck of the wide passageway. He had almost crashed feet first into the port bulkhead when the ship lurched back in the other direction. Only by wrapping his arms over his head did he avoid serious injury, as he was hurtled onto the opposite bulkhead. Regaining his balance, and with his ears still ringing from the blast, Jim made his way to the stairwell he had just descended, only to find that its upper portion—the way out—was now a mass of tangled steel.

  But McLoughlin knew the ship. He had roamed every inch of it as a child. He knew the stairwell was backed by a Jacob’s ladder that led to the main deck. He was making his way toward it when the second blast occurred. The blast was farther away this time, but the ship again lurched, again to port, and he was again thrown onto the deck.

  The passageway was now filling with people, as passengers and crew made their way to the stairwell only to discover, as Jim had, that the way out was blocked.

  McLoughlin got up and made his way to the Jacob’s ladder, and started climbing, trying to shout above the panicky din in the passageway, “Follow me!” He was well on his way up to the main deck when he noted with righteous satisfaction that several people had heard him, and were climbing up behind him.

  * * * * *

  Robby Cotton and Ralph Tinsdale, now separated from their other mate, were forward on the ship’s port side.

  Summoning every ounce of will at his disposal, Robby fought off the terror that gripped the people around him, the same terror that was trying to numb his brain, and forced himself to think. He figured that trying to get into a lifeboat in the midst of the panicked and frightened people fighting to board them, would be a wasted effort. And then he knew, somehow, that Ralph and his immediate survival required them to get into the water and away from the ship before it sunk. He had heard that when a ship went down, it sucked anyone floating nearby down to the bottom with it. And that, he figured, was most likely to happen if they entered the water on this, the port side. But the thought of climbing up the deck to the starboard side, and then scrambling down the side of the ship into the water, seemed like just too tedious and daunting a task. What if we take another torpedo? he thought.

  “Come on, Ralph,” Robby shouted. “Over the side!” Holding his nose with his right hand, and grasping his scrotum with his left, Robby jumped over the rail, and went into the water below, feet first.

  As he struck the water, Robby instinctively gasped for air, and, as he plunged underwater, instead of air got a mouthful of seawater, some of which he aspirated. Robby plunged down farther and farther, the straps from the life jacket gripping his crotch, until, at some depth, he leveled off and then shot upward. Or, at least, he hoped he was headed upward and to the surface—disoriented now, he was not at all that sure—and he could only hope that he would not strike the ship on the way up and kill himself that way.

  Because of the seawater he had swallowed, he needed to cough—to force the salt from his mouth and the brine from his lungs—but knew he dare not. Just when he was sure he could no longer fight off the need to clear his lungs, he was suddenly back on the surface, first shooting up well out of the water, then settling back. At least, he thought, as he spit and coughed and wheezed, I didn’t hit the ship.

  Robby looked around. The life jacket worked just fine; his head was held nicely out of the water. The Laconia, now a night-black hull looming above him, was not twenty feet away. Ralph! he thought, suddenly realizing that he had not waited to see whether Tinsdale had jumped with him. “Ralph!” he shouted, treading water, propelling himself around in a circle so he could search in all directions. But it was dark, and he saw nobody.

  Finally, despite his continued calling, Robby realized Tinsdale was nowhere to be seen or heard. Now, Robby knew, he had to think only about himself. He shed his shoes, and swam away from the ship as fast as his life jacket would allow.

  * * * * *

  Marco Scarpetti had escaped from the prison hold below, only to find himself once again confined. This time by the steel grating that blocked his access to the ship’s main deck. His chances of surviving, remaining alive, and escaping the sinking ship, now seemed slimmer than ever. “Help!” he shouted. “Can anyone help me?”

  All of the lifeboats that could be launched, had been launched on that side, and one of the crewmen was making his precarious way aft on the tilted main deck to cut the remaining wooden rafts loose, when he heard Marco’s cry for help. “Poor bugger!” he said aloud, when he saw the helpless, pleading face behind the grating of the ventilation shaft. “I’ll be back,” he said, and then went in search if something to pry the grating loose. He returned moments later with a strip of steel that had served as a section of hatch batten. A few minutes later, he had managed to pry the grating far enough off so that Marco could escape.

  “Thank you,” Marco said. “I owe you my life.”

  The crewman just smiled and said, “It’s all tickety-boo!” He then left Marco, and continued to make his way aft, his original mission to free the rafts still in mind.

  Marco would never see the man again.

  Marco then went over the nearby rail, and skidded down the barnacled and sea-grass-fouled side of the ship and into the water. Swimming away from the ship, he worried that he had been scraped by the barnacles and might be bleeding. Sharks! he thought.

  There were people in the swelling gray water all about him, some with life jackets, floating, others, like him, no life jackets, swimming.

  “Over here!” he heard someone shout out of the darkness. “We can take someone over here!” So Marco swam in that direction. Soon, arms reached out for him and
pulled him aboard one of the already overcrowded lifeboats.

  * * * * *

  Once on the main deck, Jim McLoughlin had made his way aft to the gun and his duty station. But when he finally got to the fantail, he found no one there, and saw that, in any case, the gun was inoperable. The ship was sinking, he knew, and now his duty was to save himself. He looked over the side in both directions, port and starboard. The stern was very high, with the tips of both screws well out of the heaving sea. He saw that, off the port side, the water looked very far below. No bloody way I’m going down that way, he thought, and decided instead to slide down the sloping side of the ship to starboard. He found a convenient rope that someone before him must have rigged with the same purpose in mind, and lowered himself down, over the side of the ship, and into the water. He swam quickly away from the ship.

  There were people in the water all about, desperately seeking to grab onto anyone or anything to help them stay afloat. McLoughlin had to fight off more than one set of desperate hands seeking to grab hold of him. A strong swimmer, he quickly cleared the ship. He could make out a lifeboat, framed against the now darkly pink dusky sky, and made his way to it. It was overcrowded, but he pulled himself aboard anyway, only to find that he was waist deep in water. Someone had forgotten to plug up the drain hole in the boat before it was launched, and it was flooded. No future here, Jim thought, and lowered himself back into the water. He swam away with an easy breast stroke, seeking to put more distance between himself and the dying Laconia.

  * * * * *