Word: rangitiki
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...ships was strung out in line on a calm sea. The sun was just setting, gloriously. The raider appeared from the north. At about eight miles' distance (14,000 yd.) it started hurling 11-inch shells, the first of which fell just short of the 16,698-ton Rangitiki, largest member of the convoy and first to signal the alarm...
Captain Olander landed his survivors at a Canadian port. Meantime, into British ports crept 24 of the original convoy of 38, including the Rangitiki and Cornish City, whose radio messages, followed by silence, had marked them as surely lost. Then eight more slowpokes showed up. At the last came the wallowing, battered tanker San Demetrio, whose crew had abandoned her once, then reboarded her, put out a blaze, brought her home. The total loss out of 38 was but four ships, of not much more than 30,000 tons...
Signed with the call letters of the 16,698-ton New Zealand freighter Rangitiki, just after noon one day last week, this ominous radio flash was followed after 99 minutes by one from the 4,952-ton British freighter Cornish City...
British hearts sank. The Rangitiki and Cornish City were members of a big convoy, perhaps 30 or 40 merchantmen, that had left Halifax a week prior, bound straight across to Great Britain. Even allowing for rough weather and zigzagging, they should have been nearly across instead of only halfway between Cape Race, N. F. and North Ireland. They were in a stretch between where their warship escorts from Canada left them and their escorts from Britain would pick them up. None of them was equipped to fight anything except submarines or armed merchantmen of their own size and speed...
...made with striking quickness, because, from the other ships sunk, not even SOS signals were caught by American radio stations." British authorities called the whole story "unlikely." They said that "a number of ships successfully eluded the raider." But day followed day with no further word from the Rangitiki, Cornish City or any other ship that had been with them...
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