Word: torpedoed
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...officer, two civilian observers, 22 enlisted men were dead below. Most of the bodies were found, as expected, in the after torpedo room. One of the 26 who went down was missing, presumably washed overboard while the Squahis was being raised and towed. After inspecting the chamber, odorous with old death, Lieut.-Commander Charles B. Momsen said they must have drowned swiftly and mercifully, too quickly even to reach for the Momsen "escape lungs" which he invented. Commander Momsen also observed that the Navy could improve its arrangements for salvage after future submarine disasters...
Their feelings were understandable. Fresh in their memories was the scene when the torpedo struck: oil spurting into the air from exploded tanks; the bodies of firemen hurtling through a hatch; seasick, half-naked passengers rushing for the decks; and later, when the lifeboats were launched, passengers and crew picking their way over bodies toward the rails, slipping on oil and filth. They had been ten or twelve hours in the boats, some of them foundering. They had waited anxiously for rescue. And, when rescue was at hand, they had seen one boat swamped and most of its occupants drowned...
Meantime, the duty of Sire Kennedy and of U. S. Minister John Cudahy at Dublin was to determine and report just how the Athenia was sunk. Unshakable, unanimous belief of all hands was that a torpedo struck her just abaft amidships on the port side. Then, said Mr. Cudahy, she "was struck again, wrecking the engine room, by a projectile projected through the air." Mr. Kennedy's report said: "No witness heard a shell in the air; no witness heard a shell strike the ship ... no splash of the projectile was seen." But (according to one quartermaster): "The submarine...
Only amazement was added to horror last week by the continued insistence of official Berlin that the torpedo must have been British, fired to arouse U. S. indignation. Most charitable theory entertained by neutrals about "Atrocity No. 1" of World War II was that, while Germany's U-boats may have had orders to prey like gentlemen, the Athenia's destroyer was a Nazi hothead who could not control his trigger finger. Suspicion that a sharp order to other U-boat captains may have been issued by Berlin was aroused by the contrasting conduct of a captain...
...accordance with the rules established by international law." They suggested the Athenia might have run into a British mine. To this the British Admiralty retorted there were no British mines 200 miles west of Ireland. Retorted Berlin: "It is likely that a British submarine fired the torpedo as a propaganda measure to influence United States neutrality...