AN AMERICAN WOMAN'S STORY OF THE "ANCONA" TRAGEDY
Told by Dr. Cecile Greil, an American Physician
Dr. Cecile Greil was the only native-born American on the liner Ancona, which was shelled and sunk by an Austrian submarine. She tells this intensely graphic account of the terrible event in the New York Times. She precedes it with a description of the crowd of passengers, mostly poor Italian women and children, that had passage on the ship—the most pathetic gathering, it seemed to her as they came aboard the ship, that she had ever seen.
I—"WHEN THE TORPEDO STRUCK US"
The bell for luncheon rang at 11:30. As we sat at the table, still without the Captain, we joked and laughed together, to hide our lack of ease. We spoke of trivial things. We were through with lunch now; the others were going out; I was rising from my seat, at the same time drinking the remainder of my coffee. Then the thing came upon us that we had all, strangely enough, felt coming, in our hearts.
A terrific vibration shook the ship. I was thrown back into my seat. I knew that the ship must be stopping. I heard a running and scurrying about the deck outside. Looking out, I saw, through the dining saloon window, six or ten stewards in white whirling out of sight around an angle.
"What could be wrong, Doctor?" I asked one of the ship's doctors in French.
"Heaven only knows!" he answered, as he carefully adjusted his military cape, and hurried out. The dining saloon was emptied in an instant; everybody had bolted as if they were running to a fire.
It was evident that something had gone wrong with the ship, though, by some queer process of mind, at that moment nobody thought of a submarine. But hearing the next moment a sharp, quick crash, as of lightning that had struck home close by, at the same instant I both thought of the possibility of a submarine—and saw one!
The fog had lifted slightly. There, in full view framed in the window with a curious, picture-like effect, lay a submarine with its deck out of the water. It was long and flat, horribly longer and bigger than the mental conception I had formed of what such a thing would be like. There was a gun mounted in front, and another at back, and both had their muzzles leveled directly at the Ancona.
The submarine stood out in clear, black outline against the white background of mist. The fog seemed only to make it more distinct, as it always does with objects near by. From a staff in the back broke a red and white drapeau. Afterward I learned that this was the combination of colors that made the Austrian flag. I was ignorant of it, then, though I remembered the exact colors.
So far, I could find nothing tragic or terrible in the situation. Possibly we would be in danger of considerable exposure in open boats, before other ships, summoned by wireless, would pick us up. I did not rush out as the others had done. I stood quite still, in order to calm myself, to give myself time to think what would better be done. The Ancona had come to a stop. Of that I was certain. I also knew that the ship was doomed.
But now there came another terrible crash, and another, and another, in different parts of the ship, followed by explosions and the sound of débris falling into the water and on deck. Well, they were merely destroying the wireless. Still there was no fear of death.
But now I was aware of a terrible shrieking. Everybody was in a frightened panic.
II—"THE HORROR OF WHAT I SAW"
Well, as for myself—to get excited wouldn't help. I went to my cabin as calmly as I could, determined to save what I could of my valuables. I put them in my lifebelt. I took a receipt for 20,000 lire, which I had left with the purser. I went toward the bow of the ship. I descended the staircase to the second cabin, on the way to the purser's office. A large part of the staircase had been shot away—and the horror of what I saw at the bottom of it made me instantly forget what I was going for. There lay three or four women, four or five children, and several men. Some of them were already dead, all, at least, badly wounded. I made sure two of the children were dead. The purser sprawled limply across his desk, inert, like a sack of meal that has been flung down and stays where it lies. He had been shot in the head. The blood was running bright like red paint, freshly spilt, down his back, and his hair was matted with it.
The first series of shots had wrecked this part of the ship, breaking through and carrying away whole sections of the framework. I tried to get back up the stairs. But in the slight interval of time I had consumed, enough additional shells had been discharged to finish the wreck of the staircase.
I saw that this was not what the nations call, ironically enough, "legitimate warfare," but wholesale and indiscriminate massacre. Seeing my exit that way cut off, I started through the second cabin to go up the central stairway. The sight that I ran into there was indescribable. All the passengers from the third cabin had rushed up into the second. They had altogether lost their wits. The only thing that was left them was the animal instinct for self-preservation in its most disastrous and most idiotic form. Men, women, and children were burrowing headforemost under chairs and benches and tables. I saw one man, his face pressed close against the floor sidewise, heaving a chair up in the air with his back, in an effort to efface himself.
All the while the detonations, like continuous thunder and lightning, increased the panic. Women were on their knees in mental agony, each supplicating the particular saint of the part of the country from which she came to save her from death. I pushed and shoved them by the shoulders. I took them by the legs and arms and clothes, and urged them, in Italian, to get up, to put on lifebelts, to get off the ship. I told them that, at least, they would find no security from shells under chairs and tables.
I found a poor old woman at the foot of the stairs, huddled in prayer. Her thin, gray hair straggled loose over her shoulder. I recognized her as a woman I had got acquainted with in my search for a fellow-citizen to join me in the first cabin. She was 65 years old, she had told me. She had seen two sons off to the war, and was now going to a third who had emigrated to America and lived in Pennsylvania. It was the first time she had ever crossed the ocean. She was sick of the thought of war. In the New World she would find peace and comfort for her old age, with her "Bambino," as she still called the grown-up man who was her son. So when I saw her lying there I was possessed of but one idea—to get her off alive. I told her to come with me, that I would protect her. She acquiesced, but her fright was so great that she hung limp as if she had no spine while I half dragged her to the first cabin deck.
A boat was being lowered. It had been swung out on the davits. It already seethed full of people. And more men and women and children were fighting, in a promiscuous, shrieking mass, to get into it as it swung out and down. The men, with their superior strength, were, of course, getting the best of the struggle. Age or sex had no weight. It was brute strength that prevailed.
At the sight before her the old woman grew frantic with unexpected strength. She suddenly jerked loose from me, and before I could prevent her, ran with all the agility of fear and jumped overboard. Others flung their bodies pell-mell on the heads of those already in it. Some, in their frenzy, missed the mark at which they aimed themselves and fell into the sea. To make the horror complete, the boat now stuck at one end, tilted downward, and spilled all its occupants into the sea, ninety or a hundred at once. They seized each other. Some swam. Others floundered and sank almost immediately, dragging each other down. Some drowned themselves even with lifebelts on, not knowing how to hold their heads out of the water.
I tried to speak with the passengers still on deck. It was useless. Everybody was talking in his own particular dialect. Then I realized the predicament I myself was in—an utter foreigner, whom they would sacrifice in an instant for one of their own nationality. Perhaps if only I had some of my jewelry I might be able to bribe my way to safety in some such crisis.
III—"THE DEAD WERE LYING ON DECK"
I made my way back to my cabin again. There were people dead and dying on the deck. I saw one man who had started to run up the gangway to the officer's deck come plunging down again. He had been struck in the back of the head. Somehow or other, I just felt that my time had not yet come. This conviction enabled me to keep my wits about me.
In my cabin I flung up the top of my steamer trunk. As I was searching for my valuables my chambermaid appeared in the doorway; half a dozen times I had met her rushing frantically and aimlessly up and down.
"Oh, madame, madame—we shall all be killed, we're all going to get killed!"
"Maria," I advised as quietly and soothingly as I could, still stooping over my trunk; "don't be so mad, get a lifebelt on, and get up out of here."
Before she could speak again she was a dead woman. A shot carried away the port-hole and sheared off the top of her head. It finished its course by exploding at the other side of the ship. If I had not been stooping over at the time I would not have lived to write this story.
I snatched up my little jewel-basket with a few favorite trinkets in it. I put on my cap and sweater. When I got up on deck I saw the submarine carefully circumnavigating its victims and deliberately shooting toward us at all angles. I ran along the deck. The sea was full of deck rails, parts of doors, and other wreckage, and dotted with human beings, some dead, others alive, and screaming for help. There was another boat in front that tilted and dumped out its frantic load into the sea. Peering over the side of the ship, I saw a boat that had already been lowered to the water's edge. In it I recognized the two ship's doctors, and two of the seamen. There was also an officer in the boat, Carlo Lamberti, the chief engineer. He sat at the helm. I called out to them to take me in.
"Jump!" they shouted back.
I threw my basket down. I had a good twenty-foot drop. I have always been a good swimmer. Furthermore, I saw that if I jumped into the boat, crowded with people, sails, water-barrels, and pails for bailing, I might cause it to capsize. So I told them to push the boat away and then they could pick me up out of the water.
I escaped with a ducking.
An immigrant girl who followed me flung herself down wildly and broke both her legs on the side of the ship.
We were powerless to save any more. The ship might at any moment receive the final torpedo from the submarine. The sailors rowed madly to get out of danger.
Then the torpedo was discharged. It whizzed across the ship, drawing a tail behind it like a comet. It plunged beneath the Ancona as if guided by a diabolical intelligence of its own. There followed a terrific explosion. Huge jets of thick black smoke shot up, with showers of débris. Our boat rocked and swayed in the roughened water. The Ancona lurched to the left, righted herself, shivered a moment—then her bow shot high in the air like a struggling, death-stricken animal. She went under, drawing a huge, funnel-like vortex after her.
The Captain and some officers were the last to drop astern, in a small boat. Passengers were still to be seen, clinging forward, like ants on driftwood, as the ship was drawn down. There were many people wounded, so that they could not get off unaided. They were left to die.
The sea now looked absolutely empty, swept smooth. The ship had drawn everything down with it. The fog undulating upward, the submarine was seen lying in full view, as if in quiet Teutonic contemplation of what it had done. Then it moved off, and was soon merged into the waste of sea and fog. We felt a great relief when it had departed.
IV—SURVIVORS DRIFTING ON THE OCEAN
All that afternoon our six surviving boats drifted within sight of each other. When darkness fell large yellow lanterns were lit, and from time to time Bengal lights flared and fell. It looked like a regatta held on the River Styx, in Hell. The sailors had exhausted themselves rowing, so the improvised sails were set. The boat-loads of survivors had run the gamut of every emotion. They were now mere stocks of insensibility, numb, dumb, and inert.
At six in the afternoon a boat just behind us began sending us signals of distress. The men had taken off their shirts and were waving them to us on oars. Our sailors objected to turning back, saying that both boats would be sunk if we tried to relieve them. But Carlo Lamberti, the chief engineer, with a quiet look in his blue eyes, with a rather careless, engaging smile, which was habitual to him all the time, presented his revolver—and we went back to see what was wrong.
We found that the boat had been struck by a shell and was leaking badly. True enough, most of the people in it tried to make an immediate stampede into our boat. But again Lamberti presented his eloquent pistol and his quiet smile, and with order and precision we took aboard the wounded, the women, and children. Then the leaky craft was tied to our stern and the men left were easily able to keep it afloat by bailing.
"We'll save you, or go down with you!" Lamberti reassured them. This chief engineer was the only man who showed signal bravery.
One of the first of the wounded rescued from the leaky boat was my former companion, the Marquis Serra Cassano. He did not wish to join in the incipient stampede. With four toes of his foot shot away, he rose limpingly to assist the other wounded into our boat first, before he himself came in. Then with an air of pathetic aristocracy he seated himself by me, and wanted to know if any one had a cigaret to spare. We had four cigarets on the boat. The men took turns puffing them.
A frantic mother had dropped her baby in the water. I jumped out and rescued it. Later on, she got separated from it, and I had it in my charge for several days—but that is not in the present story.
We kept close watch on each other's boats till nightfall. As the other five would appear and disappear, we would be alternately cheered and frightened.
It must have been nearly midnight when one of our sailors cried out that he saw a ship's light. But for a long while nothing appeared but thin threads of light that filtered through the fog. After some discussion as to whether it might not be an enemy craft, we approached the direction of the light, till it burst on us in a powerful, searching blaze. And we discerned the other boats converging toward it, mere moving yellow splurges in the gloom.
The ship that was rescuing us was a French mine layer, the Pluton. It was hellish-looking, as it beetled over us, but none the less it looked like heaven, too!
And now our boat-loads of survivors were close together, and suddenly everybody grew voluble and chatty. We shouted across the water to each other. I even heard a voice singing. We were saved! We were saved!