HOSPITAL SHIP SUNK

Greymouth Evening Star, 19 May 1943, Page 5

HOSPITAL SHIP SUNK

TORPEDOED. BY JAPS,

299 PEOPLE MISSING

QUEENSLAND COAST ATROCITY

(N.Z.P.A. Special Australian Correspondent)

SYDNEY, May 18. The 3000-ton Australian hospital ship Centaur has been torpedoed and sunk off the Queensland coast. Of the ship’s complement and medical staff of 363 only 64 were saved. The remainder perished. The Japanese submarine. which made the attack early last Friday morning was sighted by survivors. The Centaur, which went down within three minutes of being torpedoed, was brilliantly illuminated, with red crosses showing plainly. No wounded service personnel were aboard. The sinking of the Centaur is regarded as one of the war’s most shocking crimes. Survivors are unanimous that the enemy submarine could not have failed to identify the Centaur as a hospital ship. Many of those lost were taken by sharks. The survivors were not picked up until 2.15 p.m. on Saturday. 36 hours after the ship had been torpedoed. They comprised one officer, one nursing sister, 30 -other medical personnel, and 30 seamen. The casualties include 13 medical officers, a matron, 11 nurses, and the ship’s captain. The first announcement of the sinking was made in General MacArthur’s communique to-day. Under the heading, “Australia,” the communique says: “At 4.10 a.m. on May 14 an enemy submarine torpedoed and sank without warning the Australian hospital ship Centaur 40 miles east of Brisbane, while en route from Sydney to .New Guinea. The vessel was travelling unescorted, and was fully illuminated and marked with the Red Cross, and was complying with all provisions of in(arnational law governing hospital hips in time of war. The weather was leai’ and visibility was excellent. Che vessel capsized and sank within three minutes of being hit. Of the 363 members of the crew and medical staff and nurses on board, 64 were rescued. The remainder were lost. Survivors saw the enemy submarine, which surfaced alter the attack.” Survivors clinging to wreckage and drifting in lifebuoys were located by an aeroplane, which directed a rescue vessel to the scene. Many of them were completely naked, suffering terribly from sunburn and exposure. They told pathetic stores of the ordeal through which they had passed. All the ship’s boats were smashed, either when the torpedo struck or by the sea as the ship went dowji by the head. Most of her personnel who were forward at the time ot the at-’ tack perished. ' The survivors are chiefly those who jumped overboard ait. Some were burnt as lire raged through the ship when her fuel tanks exploded. Fortunately the oil on the surface of the water did not ignite. There was a swell, but no sea. However, the waters were alive with sharks. Survivors tell how they were dragged under as the ship sank, and came to the surface to clutch such flotsam as they could find. They spent two terrible days in alternating hail and hot sunshine. All of them were bruised and battered, and many were burnt artel blinded, by floating oil. A flying-boat, five aeroplanes, and two ships i'ailecl to sight the survivors, who were finally seen by an Australian aeroplane, which radioed their location to a small Allied vessel. Most of those rescued are now in hospital undergoing treatment, for sunburn, or such injuries as crushed limbs and broken ribs, suffered when they were hit by wreckage. “MISTAKE NOT POSSIBLE.” All the survivors say there is no room for doubt that the submarine which torpedoed the Centaur deliberately selected the hospital ship as a target. “We were lit up to glory, fore and aft, and it was quite beyond the bounds of possibility that the Japanese could have made any mistake,” said Lieutenant-Colonel L. M. Outridge, the senior officer among the pitiably few survivors. He expressed regret at the loss of his medical colleagues and of Matron Jewell, of Western Australia, and 11 sisters, all of whom perished. "Their devotion to duty will not be forgotten,” he said, “nor will their murder be left unavenged.” On Fridav night the submarine, thought to be the one responsible for the attack, surfaced near some survivors on a raft to recharge its batteries during darkness. Most of those rescued were picked up from seven rafts, but the others were merely holding on to planks and spars. Four men stood on the charthouse roof for 36 hours, and another man clung all the time to some matchboard, and shepherded two friends who had been sitting in lifebuoys since the hospital ship sank. Only one raft carried any provisions.: It had 2000 milk tablets, 71b of prunes, 21b of chocolate, a tin of raisins and two gallons of water, for rationing among 31 people. There is general thankfulness that no patients were being carried aboard the ship. rEN. MACARTHUR’S COMMENT. SYDNEY, May 18. “I cannot express the revulsion I feel at this unnecessary . act of cruelty,” said General MacArthur, in a statement on the sinking of the hospital ship Centaur. “Its limitless savagerv represents the continuation of a calculated attempt to create a sense of trepidation. through the practice of horrors designed to shock normal sensibilities. The brutal excesses of the Philippines campaign, • the execution of our captured airmen, and the barbarity of Papua are all part of the pattern. The enemy does not understand —he apparently cannot understand—that our invincible strength is not so much of the body as it is of the soul, and that it rises with adversity. The Red Cross will not falter under this foul blow. Its light of mercy will but shine the brighter on our way to inevitable victory.” I

MR. CURTIN’S CONDEMNATION

CANBERRA, May 18

‘•The attack on the Centaur bore all the marks of wantoness and de-; liberation,” declared the Prime Minister (Mr. Curtin). “The deed will, shock the conscience of the whole | civilised world. It will demonstrate to all who have any lingering doubts the unscrupulous and barbarous methods bv which the Japanese conduct warfare. To the next-of-km the Government and the nation extend hearfelt sympathy, which is the deeper since these persons were engageu in non-combatant duties and | were by all the rules of warfare immune from attack.” Mr. Curtin explained that the Centaur was brilliantly illuminated in accordance with the Geneva Convention. In addition to the usual navigation lights she had illuminated red crosses on each side of the hull, | red crosses on each side of the fun- | nels, and rows of brilliant lights | along the side of the hull to illuminate the characteristic green band encircling the vessel. The use

of the Centaur as a hospital ship, together with full details, had, been announced to all the Axis nations early this year. “In all the circumstances, the Government is bound to regard the sinking as an inexcusable act in violation of the convention, to which Japan is a party, and of all the principles, of common humanity,” said Mr. Curtin. “An immediate strong protest in these terms is being addressed to the Japanese Government, and the country may feel confident that the Government will do its utmost to establish the rights of the Red Cross and to ensure that the war criminals responsible for this act arc brought to justice.”

SURVIVORS' STORIES.

. DANGER FROM SHARKS

(X.Z.I’.A. Special Australian Correspondent)

SYDNEY. May 18

The heroine of the torpedoed Centaur was a nurse, Sister Eleanor Savage, of Sydney, the sole woman survivor. After she was rescued it was discovered that she had fractured three ribs, in addition to suffering burns and bruises, but she did not utter a word of complaint to her fellow survivors on the rail, who were surprised to learn of the serious nature of her injuries. Sister Savage, a pretty brunette, was two years abroad with the A.I.F. She is a strong swimmer. She was taken on to the raft from a floating deck house, and had lost most of her clothes in the water. Others on the raft tell how she led them on her rosary beads in prayers for the deliverance of the whole company. She had earlier rescued a boy who was badly burnt One man on the raft died and was buried at sea. The senior medical officer among the survivors, Lieutenant-Colonel Outridge. gave another man on the raft a blood transfusion, and he is reported to be making satisfactory progress. “Sharks followed our , raft the whole time,” said the chief pantryman, Mr. Ronald Moate, of Victoria. “At one time there were eight big ones skimming the water around us. When the rescue vessel came American seamen on the decks shot at the sharks to keep them away in case any of our chaps fell into the sea while being taken aboard. Others dived into the water to help those who were too weak Io climb aboard unaided.”

, Mr. Moate said that he was with the captain on the boat deck when the Centaur sank. The captain went down with the ship. All hands spoke in the highest terms of the calm and courage of a Torres Strait pilot, Captain R. ,M. Salt, who was taken aboard at Sydney. In spite of bad burns and his 67 years he came stoically through the ordeal. “I have been at sea for 50 years, he said to-day in hospital, “and I will be back on my ship again.” Captain Salt was aboard a vessel sunk by Japanese shellfire at Milne Bay last year. _ Other survivors tell of the difficulty of staying awake on small rafts in shark-infested waters. One man said he fell overboard twice from sheer exhaustion, but each time was dragged back to safety. Oil. on the water did not deter the sharks, which swam right through it. Most of those rescued suffered terribly from thirst. A lone survivor on a raft told how his companion lost his reason and dived into the sea, saying that he was going to look for something to drink. The man was not seen again. On two rafts whicn contained water the survivors limited themselves to two teaspoonfuls a day. Several of the rescued seamen had been in other torpedoed ships, but all declare that not even their latest and most ghastly experience will deter them from following their calling.

SHIP AND CREW. (N.Z.r.A. Special Australian Correspondent) (Rec. 12.35 p.m.) SYDNEY. May 19. The names of the 222 missing Army and medical personnel of the torpedoed Australian hospital ship Centaur have been released by the Australian Army. The rescued medical personnel, numbering 34. are in hospital. The names of 107 members of the crew, of whom 77 are missing, have not yet been released by the Navy. The captain of the ship. Captain G A. Murray, of Perth, and the Chief Medical Officer, Dr. C. P. Manson, of Melbourne, were among those who perished. The Executive of the Australian Red Cross has decided to ask the International Red Cross Committee to make a strong protest to the Japanese Government and the Japanese Red Cross Society at this apparent deliberate breach of international laws and usages in war. The Centaur, of 3222 tons, was formerly a Blue Funnel passenger and cargo vessel, built in Britain in 1 .•).->4 for trade between Western Australia and Singapore. She was converted into a hospital ship at an Australian port and commissioned m the midd e of February. Her equipment. mcJtided an X-ray plant and the most modern surgical and medical apparatus. The vessel had completed one voyage from New Guinea to Australia with patients and was returning to New Guinea for more sick and wounded men when she was sum<. In November, 1938, the Centaur saved the Japanese whale chaser Kyo Marti, which was disabled off the west coast of Australia, towing her to port. Throughout Australia horror is being expressed at the callous an ci fiendish sinking. “We are fighting against savages, not civilised men. said Mr W. M. Hughes, “and this tragedy will have served an ebd it it makes us realise more clearly what we are facing. - ’ . Latest reports made it clear the most of those who died wont down with the Centaur on her swift plunge, being killed in the first great explosion, or trapped by lire which prevented their making a way to the decks. Others were dragged down by the suction of the sinking ship, or taken by sharks. , . The crew of the Allied rescue ship subscribed £273/12/- for distribution among 64 survivors, enabling each to receive £3/14/3.