Fire in Wind

Down from the bald crags of France's "azure coast"--between Nice and Marseille--blows the angry mistral. It is a strong, dry wind, so bitter that it burns like cold steel.

Plugging along at a good clip, with a night mistral lashing her buttocks, the Italian motor ship Orazio last week made for Barcelona. She lay 38 miles south of Toulon. Below decks slept 412 passengers --an aviator with his two small children, four nuns warm in their cotton gowns, the noble counselor of the Italian Embassy in Chile, merchants, soldiers, teachers, tourists. On the bridge the petty officers mumbled against French wind, and against the French contraband authorities who had detained the Orazio four hours to search her and take off some Germans. Captain Michele Schiano was a happy man, for this was his last run before retirement. Below decks, oilers were puttering around the purring Diesels. It was 5 :12 a. m. All well.

Suddenly the port motor backfired. Its forward cylinders went haywire. Explosion followed explosion. A lubricating line cracked and the oil caught. Panicked oilers tried to climb above decks, but the leaping flames caught them like crickets in a grass fire. Some one notified Radio Operator Filippo Perrona. He began tapping SOS. But within four minutes fire had reached the wireless room, in the topmost superstructure.

Like a snake's tongue, the fire emerged fore and aft through hatches and ventilators. Amidships passengers milled. An officer urged them to seek shelter in the saloon. Boats were put over, women, children, the aged put into them.

Following the distress signals, Italian naval planes, flying across the mistral, found the Orazio, gave her position to several nearby vessels. But it was late afternoon before the first reached her. By that time she was a furnace in the wind--passengers later swore that from the lifeboats they could see her ribs silhouetted and the sea boiling against her red-hot plates.

In Rome the Italian Line announced that all passengers had been rescued, but that unfortunately "a few"--"about five" --of the crew had been killed by the initial explosion, an unfortunate accident. But by next day the Orazio was a national tragedy, almost an international incident. Survivors' heads were counted when they reached shore. No less than 104 were missing, including the four nuns. Rescued passengers grimly described how those who had obeyed orders and gone to the saloon were trapped and burned, how a mother, clothes afire, leaped overboard, how a lifeboat was swamped by the seas. Some in scant night clothes died of exposure to icy spray and mistral.

Benito Mussolini's paper, Il Popolo d'ltalia, with notable lack of logic, angrily blamed the deaths on France's contraband authorities. "Those four hours proved fatal. If the French had not stopped the Orazio, the ship could easily have reached Barcelona, even in flames, and all aboard would have been saved."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.