Nazi Crew Beat Up Own Skipper

Camp News, Volume 1, Issue 16, 29 March 1940, Page 3

Nazi Crew Beat Up Own Skipper

The crew of a Nazi steamer, forced by starvation into a dash for home, found their captain trying to scuttle the ship when a British cruiser steamed into sight. Enraged, the German sailors beat up the captain to prevent him, and the steamer was captured. This is the sensational story behind the arrival of the German ship as a prize in a West Country port. She is believed to be the 989-ton Leander, which put into Vigo (Spain)

when the war broke out. The ship was masquerading as a Russian vessel when taken. When the British cruiser steamed within sight of her on the high seas, officers looking through their binoculars read the letters “U.S.S.R.” on her side, .and saw that she flew the Russian flag. This disguise did no deceive the cruiser.

Crew Are Happy Now. The German crew—between twenty and thirty men—are now quartered in a British temperance hotel under a police guard. And they seem happy now. For one thing, they have some square meals. It is understood that they insisted on the dash from Vigo after being unable to get food. They were reduced to extremities. They say there are now more than fifty German ships interned at Vigo. Their captain, who was a member of the Non-Intervention staff during the Spanish Civil War, is now understood to be on a British warship. The ship he tried to scuttle lies under a close British guard.