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After successfully crossing the Indian Ocean,
the SS Brazil made a port of call at Cape Town, South Africa, on Sunday, 14th June
1942. There they took aboard fresh provisions and
47 more refugees bound for the States.
Port of Cape Town, South
Africa.
Loose lips – sink
ships.
Among these refugees
were a number of merchant sailors who had been torpedoed. One merchant seaman in particular had been
torpedoed on three separate occasions, while attempting to leave Cape Town.
He privately told my
dad that the riskiest part of his ordeal was not abandoning ship, but bobbing at
sea all alone in a life jacket for two or three days afterwards, while waiting
for rescue usually by a fishing boat. The nights being the very worst, for that’s
when immense, underwater creatures would periodically bump into him – tasting
him. Since he had always been coated in the sinking ship’s fuel oil, apparently
he hadn’t tasted that good.
Conversely, this
merchant sailor couldn’t wait to get aboard the SS Brazil; he had
absolutely no fear whatsoever. When Dad
queried him, regarding his lack of dread, this poor soul confided his secret: He
was indestructible due to his “talks with Jesus,” and a strange, purple light
that occasionally emanated from his body. In his mind, this was the reason for his being
the sole survivor of all three previously torpedoed merchant
ships.
Upon receiving this bit of intelligence, Pop shrugged it off, telling me
later as a teenager that: “Christ A’ Mighty, after everything this fucked-over
swabby had been through, no wonder he had a hinge loose.”
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Completing a week’s
port of call, the SS Brazil set sail from Cape Town on Sunday, 21st June 1942,
and commenced the longest leg of its journey across the Atlantic. During the long weeks that followed “Lord
Haw-Haw” – a Radio Berlin broadcaster – reported on five different occasions
that: “...the SS Brazil has been sunk, sending all those poor Chinese cadet pilots to
Davy Jones’s locker.”
Radio Berlin’s “Lord Haw-Haw.” Hanged in
1946.
Radio Berlin was
referring to a “special consignment” of 177 Chinese Army cadets and officers,
presently aboard the SS
Brazil, that were being shipped to the States
for fighter pilot training.
The
SS Brazil’s Chinese pilots being trained in Arizona by the
USAAF.
Upon completion of
their training, they’d be shipped back to China to fly with American squadrons
fighting the Japanese.
Chinese Fighter
Pilot.
Obviously German agents in Bombay had passed this
intelligence on, and evidently German subs were actively hunting the
SS Brazil.
Hence
mistakenly sinking other ships they thought were her.
Instead of one Jonah on board, dear reader, the SS Brazil
had 177.
Needless to say, on each occasion a false sinking was reported by Radio
Berlin, the tension factor among passengers and crew was ratcheted up another
notch.
And, to make a bad situation worse, an epidemic of whooping cough swept
through the ship on this leg, raising hell once again with mostly the children
and their families.
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