FRENCH SHIP SUNK

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23515, 18 December 1941, Page 5

FRENCH SHIP SUNK

ATTACK BY GERMAN SUBMARINE

BLAME PLACED ON BRITISH

(8.0. W.) RUGBY, December 16. An Admiralty communique states:— “The French Admiralty has issued a communique saying that on December 9 the steamship St. Denis, carrying foodstuffs for France and flying the French flag was torpedoed in the vicinity of the Balearic Islands. The French communique says that the submarine came to the surface, challenged the St. Denis, and asked for her papers, and then torpedoed her while she stopped and was preparing to comply with the order. “The French Admiralty finally .makes the wholly unwarranted assumption that the submarine was British, and concludes by threatening to take measures to put an end to such outrages. “The Admiralty can state as a fact that on the date mentioned no British submarine was either operating in or passing through the area reported as the scene of the incident. Moreover, some eight weeks ago German U-boats began to enter the Mediterranean, and since then our patrols have frequently sighted and attacked U-boats in the Straits of Gibraltar and the western end of the Mediterranean. The arrival of the German U-boats was followed at once by violations of Spanish territorial waters by the enemy, and heralded the end of all security for French and Spanish seamen. “It is perhaps hardly a matter for surprise that the British vessel Grelhead and the Norwegian vessel Fjord should be torpedoed without warning inside Spanish territorial waters, or that during the same period two British ships, the Sarastone and the Baron Newlands, should be attacked by a Focke-Wulfe aeroplane within territorial waters as they were leaving the Spanish port of Huelva. “But the Germans do not hesitate to attack indiscriminately all shipping in accordance with their usual practice. First, the French naval oiler Tarn was attacked by a U-boat off Algiers by night. Then the Spanish ship Castillo Oropesa was sunk off Melilla within Spanish territorial waters. Next the St. Denis has been torpedoed by a U-boat south of the Balearic Islands, and finally, only yesterday, the Spanish ship Badalonawas sunk at night by a U-boat east Of Malaga. “In none of these cases was any British submarine anywhere near the areas where the sinkings are reported to have occurred. The French Admiralty nevertheless draws the conclusion, wholly unwarranted by the facts, that It was a British submarine which torpedoed the St. Denis, although the calculated brutality with which it was carried out stamps the attack as the work of a German U-boat. There can be no doubt that the Germans are seeking deliberately to create trouble between the British and French Navies and between Britain and Spain, in order to obtain relief from the serious military situation in which they

are beginning to find themselves in Russia and Libya. “The French Admiralty is. of course, very well aware that while German warfare at sea, both in this war and in 1914. has been wholly indiscriminate, it is not the practice of the Royal Navy to sink merchant vessels without warning in areas not previously declared dangerous to shipping.”

Women Leave Darwin—Women and children have been evacuated from Darwin. Only w'omen required for essential services are allowed to stay. —Sydney, December 17,