MEMOIR:Seventy years ago today, Britain declared war on Germany when the Nazis failed to withdraw from Poland. DENNIS KENNEDYrecalls how events unfolded for one family in Belfast
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 3rd, 1939, was a momentous day for 10, Causeway End Road. Just after 11am, the wireless broadcast the prime minister’s news that war with Germany had started.
Less than half-an-hour later, there was an almighty storm, with thunder and flashes of brilliant lightning, one of which struck a garden pole that was an aerial for the wireless. It snapped in two.
My mother, Lily, said thank goodness Winnie, an old family friend visiting us from America with her daughter, Sylvia, had got away before the war started. They would be well on their way across the Atlantic by now. It was lucky they had managed to get the berths on the Atheniaat such short notice.
On the Athenia, some 200 miles west of the Hebrides, Winnie, on her way to the third- class dining room for lunch with Sylvia, read the notices posted by Capt James Cook announcing that war had been declared between Germany and Britain.
In the dining room they were assured that this posed no threat to them; Hitler had given specific orders that his U-boats were not, under any circumstances, to attack passenger liners. Winnie was not a good sailor. She had been nine when the Titanic had gone down with a loss of 1,500 people. Almost 30 years on, Winnie still thought of the Titanic every time she boarded a ship.
There were three sittings for dinner in the third-class dining room, but Winnie was not sure she wanted to go to any of them. Sylvia was feeling seasick, so they decided they would stay in their cabin and have an early night. It was already their third night on board the Athenia. It was just after 7.30pm.
What they could not see was the periscope of U-30 through which Oberleutnant Fritz-Julien Lemp was appraising the Athenia. Oberleutnant Lemp was one of the more zealous U-boat commanders patrolling the North Atlantic off the west coast of Ireland. He had, some hours earlier, received the coded message telling him that Germany was at war with Great Britain and that attacks on enemy shipping – but not passenger liners – should begin immediately.
He had already identified the ship as British by its flag. He had noted how it had been following a zigzag course, a well-known device to avoid attack by torpedo. He had been warned that armoured cruisers could be disguised as merchantmen. If he attacked now, he could probably claim the first U-boat prize of the war.
The first torpedo hit the Atheniaamidships, crippling the engine room. The second misfired, careering off course and Lemp ordered an immediate dive to avert the possibility of being hit by his own rogue torpedo. Some 40 minutes later he resurfaced to periscope level, and to his surprise saw the target still afloat and showing no immediate signs of sinking, though lifeboats had been launched. So he fired a third torpedo.
It missed, and as he looked again at the target, and at the lifeboats pulling away from it, he realised that he had been wrong – it was not a disguised cruiser, but a liner. The U-boat's wireless operator passed on a distress call he had intercepted from the target, identifying itself as the British liner Athenia.
Oberleutnant Lemp again ordered his U-boat to dive. His dream of claiming the first U-boat kill of the war had evaporated, to be replaced by a determination to make no claim at all, to report no firing of torpedoes, to make no mention of the Athenia.
Winnie and Sylvia did not see the first two torpedoes, but they had a close-up view of the third as it passed underneath their crowded lifeboat, rocking it violently. They had been looking out of the cabin porthole when the first torpedo struck. They heard the explosion and felt the shudder going through the ship. Still in their nightdresses, they went out into the passageway to find out what had happened. The word torpedo was on everyone’s lips. Sylvia noticed everyone else was wearing a lifejacket and said they should go back and get theirs from the cabin. Winnie asked a steward if they had time to do this, and he said they had, if they were quick. He assured them there was no immediate danger.
She was even less reassured when reaching the lower level they found it deserted and awash with water. The sight of the water drove out all thoughts of getting dressed or rescuing some of their possessions, and they grabbed the lifejackets and splashed back to the stairs. At the top, the crowd was as dense as ever, but the steward was still there and he cleared a way for them to get through to the upper deck. Another crew member rushed them to a lifeboat, but it was already full, and they had to move along the deck to the next one.
They could see other lifeboats, already carrying 60 or more people, being lowered down the side of the ship. As they watched, one suddenly lurched down, throwing its occupants into the sea. But it was quickly righted and lowered, and people scrambled back on board. It was only when they were in a lifeboat and it had moved out of the shadow of the ship that Winnie realised with embarrassment that she was still in her nightdress, and that she was wet and shivering. Blankets were quickly distributed, and Winnie and Sylvia were soon warmly wrapped up.
They could now see the Athenia, and something of the damage done by the torpedo. A fire was burning amidships, though the ship was still sitting well up in the water and not listing. It was this same sight that prompted Oberleutnant Lemp to fire his third torpedo, to finish off the target. The close passage of that third torpedo, and the sudden impact of its wash on the lifeboat, reawakened feelings of terror in Winnie. God moved in mysterious ways, she knew, but did he have to allow the Athenia, of all possible marine targets, to be torpedoed on the first day of the war? They were in the lifeboat all night. To their surprise the Atheniawas still there as dawn broke after the short northern night. Rescue ships had arrived during the night, and, once or twice, searchlights from the ships had passed over their boat, but it was daylight before the Royal Navy destroyer Electra picked them up.
On board, in warm clothing and with hot food inside then, Winnie felt she could thank God without reservation. As they were being picked up they saw the last of the Athenia, as she slipped beneath the rising waves.
News of the attack on the Atheniawas broadcast on Monday morning. A statement from the British admiralty said simply that the ship had been hit and the latest information was that it was sinking rapidly. There was no news of casualties or of survivors. That evening another bulletin said survivors had been picked up and were being brought back to Galway and to Glasgow.
It was midday on Tuesday before a telegram boy knocked at the door of number 10, and Lily grasped the small yellow envelope fully expecting the worst possible news. There were only three words in the message: “Both safe – Winnie.’’
Back in Scotland Winnie and Sylvia had to wait two weeks before they could embark again on an American ship. Even then it was not plain sailing for Winnie. The US ambassador in London, Joe Kennedy, had sent his young son to Glasgow to help organise the repatriation of the American survivors.
He had, Winnie reported, allocated a place for Sylvia, who was an American citizen, on the Orizaba, due to sail in a week's time from Glasgow, but none for her, as she was not an American citizen.
This, it seems, had led to a sharp public altercation, as Winnie, surrounded by her fellow survivors, told the young John F Kennedy he had no business trying to separate a mother from her daughter, and that he had better find a place for her on the Orizaba, that it was a scandal that he could even think of sending a nine-year old American girl, who had only just survived one sinking at sea, unaccompanied on another voyage.
The intensity of the tirade, delivered in a Braid accent only slightly modified by a decade in North America, unnerved the brash young man, and Winnie's name was promptly added to the Orizabapassenger list.
Dennis Kennedy is a former Irish Timesjournalist. His autobiography, Climbing Slemish, an Ulster Memoir, was published in 2006 by Trafford Publishing. Winnie and Sylvia returned safely to their home in Poughkeepsie, New York. Winnie worked as a nurse and in later years was a successful property owner and also chairman of a car retail business she helped her sons start. She lived into her 90s. Sylvia is 79 years old and lives in South Carolina. As far as Kennedy knows, she has not set foot on a boat of any sort since 1939.