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shyscyberchamber.com
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UNSOLVED CRIMES |
Date
Added |
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Dead Men Cannot Talk |
APR 2004 |
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The liner Georges Phillipar was on of the best
designed cruise ships afloat when she was launched by her French
builders from the slipway at St Nazaire in 1930.
It took almost two years to fit out the 17,300 tonne (17,000 ton) ship
to carry up to 1,000 passengers in sumptuous luxury in richly panelled
cabins with comfortable, efficient air-conditioning. And no
expense was spared to guarantee their safety, with an automatic
sprinkler system and the latest fire-fighting appliances.
Yet the fire which broke out on D Deck on the liner's maiden voyage, a
round trip to China, spread with devastating speed, killing 53
passengers and sending the pride of the French liner fleet to the
bottom of the Red Sea.
The commission of inquiry in Paris which later investigated the
sinking of the Georges Phillipar could find no firm evidence
that faulty electrical design had caused the blaze, or that the fire
had been accidental. They left only a tantalising, inconclusive
hint... that powerful international assassins had turned the liner
into a floating fire-bomb just to kill on VIP passenger, a crusading
French journalist.
Freelance writer Albert Londres had joined the Georges Phillipar
in April 1932 in Shanghai for the return leg of its maiden voyage.
He had spent almost a year in Indo-China on a gruelling and dangerous
assignment and his carefully guarded notebook was crammed with
information which would have caused public outrage against the
profiteering industrialists of London, Paris and Berlin.
Millions of readers throughout Europe were waiting and wondering what
scandalous subject the best-selling author would choose for his next
devastating report. In his first book, The Road to Buenos
Aires, published only three years before, he had exposed the vile
white slave trade of young women from the brothels of Marseilles and
Hamburg to South America. It earned him the undying hatred of
the French and German vice kings.
Undeterred, Londres went on to expose a similar traffic in young
European girls to the houses of pleasure in Shanghai, and followed
this up with an investigation of the terrorist group who had
assassinated the King of Yugoslavia on French soil.
Now he had completed his damning examination of the deadly arms trade
in the Far East, where the Japanese Imperial armies were gearing
themselves for an expansive war of aggression and the bandit Chinese
war lords were slaughtering their own countrymen in their bloody
battles to gain control of vast areas of China and Manchuria.
Word quickly spread among enthusiastic European publishers that Albert
Londres was on his way home with a manuscript that would light a fuse
underneath the European millionaire arms suppliers, the Merchants of
Death.
Londres was safely installed in his cabin, working on the notes for
his new book when the liner docked briefly at Saigon, the capital of
French Indo-China, and took aboard more travellers, mainly French
colonial officials and their families. With a complement of 800
passengers, the liner called at Singapore, Penang and Ceylon, en route
for the Red Sea, the Suez Canal and the French Mediterranean port of
Marseilles.
On the night of 15th May as Londres worked alone in his cabin, the
other passengers gathered on deck for a dinner dance in the sultry
evening air, admiring the twinkling lights of the Arabian coast and
waving to the crew of the Russian tanker Sovietskya Neft which
passed less than a mile astern.
Around midnight the mast of the Georges Phillipar, Captain
Anton Vicq, retired to his cabin, bidding goodnight to the last of the
dinner-dance revellers who stayed on the starlit deck, sipping chilled
champagne.
Two hours later he was roused by the officer of the watch who warned
him that a passenger cabin on D Deck was ablaze. When he made an
examination in portside Number 5 cabin, Captain Vicq noted that 'It
was not a local accident, but a fire appearing to become general and
widespread.'
As he retreated along the deck corridor to the sound of the alarm,
Captain Vicq was confronted by Nurse Yvonne Valentin who screamed that
her cabin, Number 7, was also engulfed in flames. Between the
two, in cabin Number 6 on D Deck, writer Albert Londres was unaware of
the drama.
Trying to vainly contain the blaze, Captain Vicq ordered all portholes
to be closed and stopped the liner's engines. Within minutes the
flames had spread to the bridge and the captain gave the order to
abandon ship.
As the lifeboats were lowered the radio operator broadcast a frantic
series of SOS messages. But his transmission was cut suddenly
short when his radio failed and power from the generator ceased.
Following his well rehearsed emergency procedure, the radio operator
reached for the sealed locker which held an ample supply of spare
batteries - the batteries were missing.
As passengers wrapped wet towels around their faces to fight their way
through the blinding acrid smoke, Captain Vicq and his crew calmly
organised the evacuation of the ship. All floating furniture
which could be used as life-rafts was heaved overboard and terrified
passengers were helped over the stern of the liner into the warm still
waters of the sea.
The brief burst of pleasing on the ship's radio had been enough to
summon a rescue flotilla to its aid, including the Soviet tanker, two
British steamers, a Japanese cargo ship and two other ocean liners.
The task of saving the souls in lifeboats and clinging to the rafts
was carried out speedily and most of them were soon aboard the mercy
vessels. The stricken liner burned for three days in a column of
flame which could be seen for 60km (40 miles). When the
Georges Phillipar finally
heeled over, she sank within two minutes.
But no trace was ever found of the body of Albert Londres who had been
trapped in his cabin between the two sources of the sudden,
unexplained fire.
Survivors reported that they had last seen him crawling through his
cabin porthole, his precious manuscript held tightly under his arm.
The man who knew too much was officially logged in the disaster list
as drowned.
His notebooks and manuscripts drifted away in the ebb and flow of the
Red Sea's tides. And seven years later, the wealthy and ruthless
arms dealers, unhampered by the spotlight of Albert Londres's
unfinished investigation, saw their staggering investment in munitions
bear fruit when all of Europe was plunged into war. |
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