DRAMATIC VOYAGE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23918, 20 September 1939, Page 8

DRAMATIC VOYAGE

RACE TO GERMANY EUROPA’S PERILOUS TRIP FULL SPEED IN FOG LONDON, Sept. 6. Passengers who disembarked from the 49,000-ton German liner Europa at Bremerhaven described their dramatic voyage from the United States when war appeared inevitable. Their own wishes disregarded, they became innocent participants in a mad and perilous race to prevent the great vessel’s seizure as a war prize. Mr Bentley, of Michigan, said that when they were in mid-Atlantic, a week before war broke out, en route to Southampton, the captain suddenly told them he could not call at any port in Britain. The ship then changed course to the north. All portholes were screened and even the navigation lights extinguished, and the liner raced at her full 30 knots’ into heavy fog banks. Foghorns were ordered to be kept silent and sailors painted out the ship’s name and repainted her funnels. Unknown to the passengers, the liner was then tearing along on the lonely route used by German raiders when sneaking in and out of the Atlantic during the Great War. The captain would not give any information, and they believed that war had broken out. At last the liner passed north of Scotland, and appeared off Iceland, then steamed down toward Germany. There shipping officials refused to help the 30 British passengers to reach London* but merely declared that most of the frontiers were already closed. By pooling their resources, ..he British were able to charter a special train to take them into Holland. The French got home through Belgium, and the Americans went to Norway.