Word: orazio
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...were called together and 26 out of 30 were transported to a garage, where we were locked up for the night. We were told that our wives would be waiting on the boat. At nine o'clock we were at Marseille where we boarded the boat Orazio in filthy condition. A commission of French officers, employes of the Espionage and secret police, received us. They demanded us to sign a release for the correct return of the money, baggage and documents which were deposited with the authorities upon our seizure in Marseille. Upon our claim that...
Plugging along at a good clip, with a night mistral lashing her buttocks, the Italian motor ship Orazio last week made for Barcelona. She lay 38 miles south of Toulon. Below decks slept 412 passengers -an aviator with his two small children, four nuns warm in their cotton gowns, the noble counselor of the Italian Embassy in Chile, merchants, soldiers, teachers, tourists. On the bridge the petty officers mumbled against French wind, and against the French contraband authorities who had detained the Orazio four hours to search her and take off some Germans. Captain Michele Schiano was a happy...
Following the distress signals, Italian naval planes, flying across the mistral, found the Orazio, gave her position to several nearby vessels. But it was late afternoon before the first reached her. By that time she was a furnace in the wind-passengers later swore that from the lifeboats they could see her ribs silhouetted and the sea boiling against her red-hot plates...
...Rome the Italian Line announced that all passengers had been rescued, but that unfortunately "a few"-"about five" -of the crew had been killed by the initial explosion, an unfortunate accident. But by next day the Orazio was a national tragedy, almost an international incident. Survivors' heads were counted when they reached shore. No less than 104 were missing, including the four nuns. Rescued passengers grimly described how those who had obeyed orders and gone to the saloon were trapped and burned, how a mother, clothes afire, leaped overboard, how a lifeboat was swamped by the seas. Some...
Benito Mussolini's paper, Il Popolo d'ltalia, with notable lack of logic, angrily blamed the deaths on France's contraband authorities. "Those four hours proved fatal. If the French had not stopped the Orazio, the ship could easily have reached Barcelona, even in flames, and all aboard would have been saved...