To their left, the Gannett Newspaper logo on the plane is clearly visible. "Athenia Victims Fly Home, Tell of Horror in Disaster," headlined a front-page Democrat and Chronicle story that featured a picture of the smiling Garlands at a Montreal airport. Sparing no expense, Gannett got a leg up on the competition by sending the company plane to Montreal with Garland's wife, Paula, aboard to retrieve the Rochester survivors. In Rochester, editors of the morning Democrat and Chronicle and the evening Times-Union, both owned by the Gannett company, knew Garland and Thomas were newspaper gold. "Hundreds were on the docks to meet us … all clamoring to hear our experiences." "We heard the booming of guns, and discovered it to be a 21-gun salute they were firing in our honor," Thomas wrote. And she described arriving in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, aboard the City of Flint. Thomas also wrote of a perilous night in a lifeboat before she was rescued. "Another lady told me the last she saw of her two sons they were swimming in the water." "One couple had lost both their children when a lifeboat capsized," he wrote. Taken aboard, Garland took stock of what had happened. Eventually, those in the boat were found by the Southern Cross, a ship that had answered the Athenia's distress call. He then spent a harrowing night helping to keep a leaky lifeboat from sinking. I asked God, if only for their sake, to deliver me."Īfter helping the women and children off the Athenia, Garland left the ship himself. "I thought of my wife and children in the United States and my loved ones (in Ireland) from whom I had just parted only a few days before. "Death stared me in the face," Garland later wrote. John Garland, who was returning from a visit to relatives in Ireland, and Rhoda Thomas, who was coming back from England, became the local angles here to international news, each of them with dramatic stories to tell. And, as always seems to be the case whenever a big event takes place, Rochesterians - two Rochesterians, to be precise - were on the scene. Regardless, the sinking of the passenger ship - a clear violation of the rules of war - began the Battle of the Atlantic. Trying to spin the story, the German military first denied any involvement then it accused the British. Evacuation of the ship began immediately, and the majority of those aboard survived, though 117 lives were lost.įiring upon the ship was a mistake - the Germans in the U-boat thought the Athenia was a warship. would enter the war more than two years later.)Ĭarrying 1,100 passengers and 300 crew, the ship was presumably out of danger as it sailed away from war. 3, 1939, the day that England and France declared war on Germany. The unarmed Athenia was sailing from Great Britain to Canada on Sept. Where? When? How?īut go back 75 years, check the newspapers, and there it is. Mention of the sinking of the SS Athenia can draw puzzled looks. Time passes, new wars arrive, memory fades.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |