AT SEA: Angry Athenians

John Kennedy, 21, second son of President Roosevelt's alert Ambassador Joe, was shot by his sire from London up to Glasgow last week to help interview survivors of the sunken S. S. Athenia. He was authorized to say that the U. S. steamer Orizaba was being sent over to fetch the Athenians home. The neutral yacht Stella Polaris was also being sought from Raymond-Whitcomb Travel Service (world tours).

But Franklin Roosevelt had just announced his decision not to furnish U. S. naval convoys to returning refugees (see p. 9) and John Kennedy was abruptly taken aback to find that this subject was passionately uppermost in his interviewers' minds.

"You can't trust the German Navy! You can't trust the German Government!" they shouted, about 100 strong, deployed in the stuffy Beresford Hotel lounge.

Their feelings were understandable. Fresh in their memories was the scene when the torpedo struck: oil spurting into the air from exploded tanks; the bodies of firemen hurtling through a hatch; seasick, half-naked passengers rushing for the decks; and later, when the lifeboats were launched, passengers and crew picking their way over bodies toward the rails, slipping on oil and filth. They had been ten or twelve hours in the boats, some of them foundering. They had waited anxiously for rescue. And, when rescue was at hand, they had seen one boat swamped and most of its occupants drowned before help could reach them, another one smashed to kindling by the propeller of a rescue ship. And so they were in no mood to take No from Mr. Kennedy's son John.

"A convoy is imperative!" barked grey-haired Survivor Thomas McCubbin of Montclair, N. J. "Ninety destroyers have just been commissioned ... six billion dollars of United States Navy, and they cannot do this for us!"

Son John faltered: "We are still neutral and the neutrality law still holds."

But a voice snapped: "Two years ago the whole Pacific Fleet was sent out for one woman flier [Amelia Earhart]!"*

John Kennedy sidestepped: "It is much better to be on an American boat now than on a British boat, even if it was accompanied by the whole fleet."

"I don't believe it," shouted a woman.

"That goes for us!" chorused the rest. A college girl gave young Harvardman Kennedy the ultimatum: "We definitely refuse to go without a convoy!"

Back to London went John Kennedy to tell his father.

Meantime, the duty of Sire Kennedy and of U. S. Minister John Cudahy at Dublin was to determine and report just how the Athenia was sunk. Unshakable, unanimous belief of all hands was that a torpedo struck her just abaft amidships on the port side. Then, said Mr. Cudahy, she "was struck again, wrecking the engine room, by a projectile projected through the air." Mr. Kennedy's report said: "No witness heard a shell in the air; no witness heard a shell strike the ship ... no splash of the projectile was seen." But (according to one quartermaster): "The submarine conning tower [unmarked] broke surface about 800 yards on the port quarter. ... A gun or explosive signal was fired. . . . The smoke from this discharge blew down over the Athenia and a distinct smell of cordite was recognized."