THAT DEATHTRAP FAR BENEATH HIS FEET.
For the great majority of men down there death came swiftly. Many had died outright and most of those who survived were too badly hurt to make more than a token attempt to escape the all-engulfing flood of hundreds of tons of water that rushed in through the great hole in the ship's side. At the most, Mace says, a dozen men escaped from number three hold. The situation, he goes on, was almost as dreadful on the fo'c'sle of the ship. He could clearly see it from where he stood, even though the lights had died with the blowing up of the boilers. There had, of course, been no direct damage in the fore part of the ship — only one torpedo had struck the MEKNES. But there was another and almost equally terrifying and lethal agent at work there. The stern of the MEKNES was already sinking below the surface of the sea, bringing the bows of the ship high up into the air until the forefoot was almost clear of the water. As the angle increased, heavy rafts, several of them already partially released, broke free from their remaining lashings and slid down and aft along the decks, maiming, crushing and killing against bulkheads, rails and stanchions groups of men so tightly knotted that for most of them there could be no escape.
Here the first officer of the MEKNES, now Captain Philippe Gilbert, takes up the story. The master, he says, realized at once that there was no hope of saving the MEKNES. He ordered an SOS to be sent out — on the emergency radio, as all electricity supplies had been cut off — and for the boats to be lowered at once. Such lifeboats as were still fit to be launched, Gilbert says, were in the water with quite remarkable speed. Although he himself was in direct overall charge of the lowering, he claims no credit for this. THE LOSS OF LIFE, HE IS CERTAIN, WOULD HAVE BEEN FAR GREATER HAD IT NOT BEEN FOR THE HAPPY CHANCE THAT NEARLY ALL THE REPATRIATE PASSENGERS WERE THEMSELVES SAILORS, AND MOST OF THEM EXPERIENCED SAILORS AT THAT. They did not have to be told what to do. They just did it, and at once.
Never had speed and training served men better. The MEKNES'S end was as swift as it was spectacular: she broke completely beneath the surface of the Channel in less than eight minutes from the moment of impact of the torpedo, but in that time every serviceable lifeboat — and almost every available raft — was in the water.
As an aside at this point, Captain Gilbert mentions one of the most remarkable things he has ever seen at sea. As the sinking vessel rolled over on its side, one of the men struggling nearby had an extraordinary experience — and escape. 'As one of the ship's funnels tipped over into the water,' Gilbert recalls, 'this man was sucked into it as by a huge vacuum cleaner.
Moments later a violent counter-pressure from the other end of the funnel blew him back into the sea. He was completely black from head to foot.'
The man who is now a pilot in Marseilles was one of the lucky ones. Many of those who escaped safely from the ship did so only to die during the night.
Some of the lifeboats had capsized, one or two to drift away, empty, into the darkness. Another was found to have its buoyancy tanks ripped open by machine guns and foundered soon after launching, throwing its occupants into the sea. For the majority, therefore, rafts and floating pieces of timber — of which there were providentially plenty — were the chief means and hope of salvation. In the two minutes before the foundering of the MEKNES, hundreds of men had leaped into the sea and swum towards the bobbing rafts, dragging themselves aboard as best they could. THE RAFTS, MACE SAYS, WERE SOON GROSSLY OVERLOADED. FURTHER, THE SEA WAS NOT NEARLY SO CALM AS IT HAD APPEARED FROM THE DECK OF THE MEKNES ONLY AN HOUR OR SO PREVIOUSLY; AND THE COMBINATION OF THE OVERLOADED RAFTS AND UNSETTLED SEA PROVED AN EVIL ONE.
The rafts sank under the surface of the sea, and soon most of the men found themselves chest deep in the water — and even in July the waters of the English Channel can be bitterly cold. Time and again a wave would sweep over a raft and carry a man away: the more fortunate made their way back again and scrambled aboard — if that word can be used to refer to regaining position on something two feet below the level of the sea. Again and again, Mace says, a false movement, an unconscious shifting of position and weight at the critical moment when the other side of the raft was tilting upwards under the thrust of a passing wave and the entire raft would capsize, throwing everybody into the sea. After this had happened repeatedly, only the strongest men succeeded in regaining the raft. Others sank, exhausted or choked, and were never seen again.
AND IF THE FIGHT FOR SHEER PHYSICAL SURVIVAL WERE NOT ENOUGH, THERE WAS A STILL FURTHER DANGER — THE ENEMY WHO HAD SO RECENTLY SUNK THEM. SURVIVORS CLAIMED THAT THEY HAD BEEN FIRED AT IN THE WATER WHEN SWIMMING TOWARDS THE RAFTS. Though this was probably true, it is unlikely that much loss of life was caused by it. A swimmer in a darkened sea makes a poor target, and it is significant that neither Mace nor Gilbert, two witnesses whose observations and accuracy of judgment were of the highest order, sought to dwell on this. It appears reasonably certain that once men had reached rafts or lifeboats, no further attacks were made on them, although one survivor, the purser of the MEKNES, claims that men on rafts WERE machine-gunned and killed. So brief and utterly confused was the entire course of events that the facts are difficult to arrive at.
All night long almost 1,000 men — and two women, officers' wives, and a five-year-old boy — waited for rescue, some in boats, but most of them just clinging to rafts and floating pieces of wood.
Soon after dawn a plane flew over the area, and within a very short time — for the coast of England was only two hours' steaming away — the Frenchmen in the water were overjoyed to see four British warships steaming down on them at high speed.
The rescue work was swift and efficient, and all the survivors — with the exception of some who were thought to have made for the French coast and another couple of lifeboats, with 100 sailors in them, that had to be searched for and located by a Blenheim bomber — were back in England in a few hours.
Newspaper reports of the time speak of the pathetic spectacle these survivors presented — most of them only in inadequate scraps of clothing, some in pyjamas, some in underclothes, and not a few with no clothes at all. They were dressed in whatever came to hand — some even in women's frocks — fed in naval barracks and sent to await the next attempt at repatriation in the chalets of a former holiday camp in the north-east. All, that is, except the 150 officers and men who had to be taken straight to hospital.
It was one of the war's major sea disasters. Almost 300 Frenchmen, none of whom was at that time a combatant, lost their lives that July night. And when it comes to the prime or first cause of the tragedy it is as difficult to discover the precise truth as it is to apportion the blame. There is no question, of course, as to the immediate cause of the sinking. The Germans made rather ridiculous attempts to lay the loss at the door of the First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr A. V. Alexander, on the fantastic ground that he had ordered the sinking of the MEKNES as a propaganda movement to stir up anti-German feeling in France. In fact the responsibility for the sinking was obvious, as the Germans issued a statement on 25 July saying that one of their torpedo boats had sunk a ship south of Portland — precisely where the MEKNES, the only ship that had been sunk for some considerable time in that area, had been that night.
THE SHIP THEY HAD SUNK, THE GERMANS CLAIMED, WAS AN 18,000-TON ARMED MERCHANT CRUISER — AN OBVIOUS FABRICATION AND ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN AWAY THEIR EMBARRASSMENT AT SINKING AN UNARMED NEUTRAL WITH ALL LIGHTS ON. Later, the Germans changed their tactics. If the MEKNES had been sunk by them, they claimed, it was still the fault of Britain. A broadcast by the official German News Agency stated that Britain had not asked for a safe conduct for this vessel, and had not advised the German authorities of the ship's departure and route.
This, as first sight, was another bare-faced fabrication. Most of the British national newspapers, reporting the disaster, had attacked the perfidy of the Germans who had sunk a ship to which they had given an unconditional guarantee of safe passage. However, on the following day, to the accompaniment of no great beating of drums, there was an official British retraction of the statement that the Germans had given a safe passage guarantee. What had actually happened, it was carefully explained, was that the Vichy Government had been informed of the British intentions and it had been their duty to pass the news to the Germans.
IT APPEARED, IN FACT, THAT NOT ONLY HAD THE GERMANS NOT GIVEN A SAFE PASSAGE GUARANTEE — IT WASN'T EVEN CERTAIN THAT THEY KNEW ANYTHING AT ALL ABOUT IT.
Here the Vichy Government stepped in. The French Admiralty stated unequivocally that the British Government had failed to inform them of the sailing of the MEKNES, its route, or even its destination. The effect of this statement in certain circles in this country can well be imagined.
Suggestions then appeared in the British Press — it is a fair indication of the extent to which wartime chauvinism (if not indeed something even more sinister) can affect the judgment of experienced journalists — that the Vichy Government had in fact received all the information, passed on to the Germans the news where a sitting,
