Word: raider
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...Merchant Marine's red ensign, but plying alone, unconvoyed, unidentified. Leander ordered her to halt. The lone ship's answer was to pull down the "red duster," hoist Italian colors, and blaze a broadside from 4.7-inch guns mounted on forecastle and poop. She was an Italian raider. Leander, with crushing superiority in speed and fire power, closed in and destroyed her "promptly." She was identified as Ramb I, 3,667-ton freighter with a cruiser stern, built in 1937 for the Italian Government's banana monopoly...
From a German newsman had come an "eyewitness story" which, if true, revealed one of the most devastating attacks British shipping had yet suffered. He was aboard a German surface raider (from its speed and gun-power, probably a pocket battleship), cruising the waters between Madeira and the Azores. Said he: "Tuesday we encountered an armed English merchantman. . . . This vessel was sunk by several well aimed salvos and soon only floating oranges marked the spot. . . . Soon after sunrise Wednesday, we saw three tiny shadows. Then we saw five, then six, then eight, and then more & more. We fired a first...
...ship convoy was strung out in line that day in November, the San Demetrio in front, slicing through a calm sea. When the German raider opened up she was directly in line of fire, was struck at once, despite the gallant efforts of the Jervis Bay to take the full blow. His ship badly smashed, the skipper ordered his crew to the boats. As they dropped astern, the San Demetrio was struck again and began to blaze. The weather began to kick up. Two of the boats disappeared. All afternoon, through the night, and most of the next...
...them were crowded into a 12-by-10-foot cubbyhole below the water line, with no water for bathing, scanty food. Once they were allowed to go on deck to see the funeral of a woman who had died of shrapnel wounds. Those lucky enough to stay on the raider itself had it easier, were allowed to play cards and listen to the radio, but their food was no better...
...raider had prepared himself well for his World War II job. In 1930 he poked about the Caribbean for two months with a crew of 46 U. S. youngsters, to teach them "a love of the sea." By 1937 he was back in his World War I hunting grounds on a two-year round-the-world junket. With his sailing yacht Seeteufel he slipped through Australian waters, taking soundings, making a picture record of his trip with the help of a Nazi Government photographer. A New Zealander who accompanied him from Auckland to Sydney discovered the Seeteufel buttressed with steel...