FROM THE ARCHIVES:Within hours of Britain's declaration of war on Germany on September 3rd, 1939, a German U-boat torpedoed the British liner Athenia about 250 miles off Malin Head. En route from Liverpool to Montreal, 120 of the 1,100 passengers and crew were killed. Some 430 of the survivors were brought by the Norwegian tanker Knute Nelson into Galway: this report described their arrival. –
JOE JOYCE
SHORTLY AFTER dawn white-capped nurses from the Central Hospital, Galway, and members of the Army Medical Corps, with ambulance stretchers and medical supplies and refreshments, were on duty at the dock waiting for the pilot boat to take the survivors.
It was four hours later, however, before the Knute Nelson made her appearance, and for nearly two hours after the tender had arrived the arduous task of transferring the survivors was conducted.
The transfer was accomplished in almost complete silence, broken only by the cries of children and the sobs of women among the crowded people who packed the docks, while stretcher bearers lowered 10 seriously injured people tenderly, under the supervision of three Galway doctors.
It was a motley and somewhat hysterical crowd that trooped down the gangway to the tender, says an Irish Times reporter. Men, women and children were in almost every stage of undress, having lost their clothes and all their belongings. Seven women were attired in men’s dungarees and trousers lent them by the crew of the Knute Nelson.
Many of the younger women, who succeeded in taking with them only their vanity bag and lipstick wore flimsy summer dresses, crushed and crinkled from immersion in the water, and subsequently drying on them, on the deck of the Knute Nelson, where accommodation was inadequate.
The torpedoing occurred about 7.30pm on Sunday night during the second sitting for dinner, and when most of those who were not in the diningroom were lying down in their staterooms and cabins. Consequently, the majority of them were without footwear, and had, with remarkable skill, adapted pieces of old sacking to the purpose of shoes. They had little or no money with them when they crowded into the Galway hotels and private houses where they are temporarily quartered.
A large number of them received minor injuries, and the wounds of others necessitated heavily bandaged limbs and heads. Some of the more seriously injured women were aided by companions. The pressure of welcome failed to raise the spirits of some of the older women. One of them, seated in a hotel, said: “We thought that when we left Liverpool on Saturday night we had come away in good time, and then this happened. It was a terrible time. We were nine hours in the water before being picked up.” Their dishevelled appearance told their own tale of their suffering.
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