Too Exotic?

Horror-struck amid a ghastly red-&-yellow glare, more than 200 Frenchmen stood on seven fiercely burning decks in the English Channel last week. The biggest liner ever to burn at sea, the 41,000-ton Atlantique, was belching to high heaven $18,000,000 worth of flame & smoke. Asphyxiated a few minutes after he sent her first and only S. O. S., the Atlantique's chief radio operator lay slumped against his smoldering instrument table. . . .

No passengers were aboard. When the Atlantique caught fire at 3:30 a. m. she was being taken by a skeleton crew from Bordeaux, her home port, to Le Havre for a winter overhaul. Largest, fastest, most luxurious ship on the Europe-to-South America run, the Atlantique was almost new, had made only ten Atlantic round trips. She boasted "The Only Street Afloat," a thoroughfare 450 ft. long in the ship's belly. Down this mimic Rue de la Paix wealthy Brazilians, Argentinians and Chileans have strolled to buy in smart ship shops every French luxury imaginable, including swank motor cars. Last week the fire, starting in an unoccupied first-class cabin, swept up to the radio room, roared down to destroy the Rue de la Paix with all its luxuries, spurted from portholes with such fury that it burned up the ropes of the first lifeboat lowered, dumped seven seamen into the sea.

Though only one S. 0. S. had been sent out, this was picked up in the always crowded English Channel by the German freighter Ruhr, the English steamer Ford Castle and the Dutch Achilles all of which rushed to pick up the Atlantique's survivors as they leaped from her flame-swept decks. Cremated alive below decks were five members of the crew whose panic screams were all but drowned by the blast-furnace roar of the fire. Reputedly last to leap was Captain Rene Schoofs of the Atlantique. "Thrice we thought he was dead!" cried an excited junior officer later. "Then suddenly he appeared out of the flames with burning clothes, his Annamite boy following him like a shadow with a bucket!"

Aboard the Dutch Achilles, Captain Schoofs peeled off his burnt clothes, borrowed a uniform from the Dutch captain and was carried to Cherbourg where he briskly stepped ashore. "With extraordinary rapidity," he cried, "the electric wiring propagated the blaze! Fire broke out in several widely separated parts of the ship all at once!"

"There may have been a short circuit," said one of the Atlantique's electricians, "but nothing was registered by the electric meters."

"I am unable to state the cause of the fire," said 2nd Officer Gaston. "What stupefied me was the ease with which the fire spread! Mind you, we had powerful fire fighting equipment."

By this time Paris newspapers were charging, without a scrap of evidence, that "evidently there has been sabotage by secret foreign agents." Much flustered, French Minister of Merchant Marine Leon Meyer called such an-explanation "too easy," suggested off his own bat that fires on modernistically decorated liners might be "due to the use of too exotic woods." He rushed off to Cherbourg "to institute an inquiry which I promise shall be searching and severe!"

Meantime the burning Atlantique continued to drift slowly toward England. Cameramen and naval observers who darted out in seaplanes from France and Britain reported that the hulk, though listing badly, did not seem to be sinking. Tugs of several nationalities were standing 'by. Since the hulk had been abandoned it would become, under international law, the prize of any tug or tugs able to tow it to--for example--The Netherlands. Appalled by this possibility the Atlantique's owners, La Compagnie de Navigation Sud Atlantique, resolved to put Captain Schoofs back on his still burning ship!

Sea captains try to do as they are told. Setting out from Cherbourg in a fast French tug. Captain Schoofs approached the hot and listing Atlantique as near as he dared--not quite near enough to get aboard--32 hours after the fire started. By this time the ship had drifted 60 miles, could be seen by curious English folk who gathered in hundreds on the cliffs of Portland Island. Should the Atlantique ground on English shores one-quarter of her salvage value would go to the British Crown.

To prevent this the European tugs started an amazing free-for-all fight for the Atlantique. The French tug Minotaure got a line aboard the hulk's stern just as the Dutch tug Rood Zee got one aboard the prow. Tugging in opposite directions they strained and endangered their prize until three French tugs bore down upon the Dutchman, forced him to cast off. Swearing blue blazes the Dutch skipper circled around and around the Atlantique, darting in whenever he saw a chance to cut a French tugboat's line, cut three.

Meanwhile Captain Schoofs aboard the French tug Abeille 24 was urging every Frenchman within earshot to board the Atlantique and hoist the tricolor of France. Tug Captain Prichard and Wireless Operator Herbert made the attempt, leaped from tug to hulk just as a wave smacked the Abeille 24 against the Atlantique, crushing Herbert's leg. Undaunted the two Frenchmen remained aboard the Atlantique. Captain Prichard stuck up a tricolor near the stern and shouted, "This ship is no longer an abandoned wreck but a vessel flying the French flag!"

Ten minutes later two more French officers tried to board the Atlantique. Once again the sea crushed a leg. Cried Captain Schoofs, "Courage! Vive la France!" Towed by nine tugs the Atlantique began to move toward France, weathered the choppy Channel, arrived still smoking off Cherbourg 72 hours after she began to burn.

A check-up showed only 17 missing out of the Atlantique's skeleton crew of 228. The three stewardesses who had happened to be aboard were all saved. In London, where Lloyd's and other underwriters stood to lose $6,500,000 had the Atlantique been a total loss, optimists estimated that the hull and engines will be worth more than $2,000,000.

In Paris the Cabinet of Premier Paul-Boncour faced an interpellation this week by Deputy Rene Richard who announced that he would ask, "What will be done to combat the suspicious vulnerability of French ships to destruction by fire?"

Since 1929 three other notable French ships have been damaged or destroyed by fire: the luxurious Paris, damaged while lying passengerless and crewless at her pier in Le Havre in August 1929; the ancient Asia which burned and sank while carrying Moslem pilgrims to Mecca (TIME, June 2, 1930); and the brand new Georges Philippar, burned and sunk at sea last May with a loss of 52 lives while returning from her maiden voyage to the Orient. Since French Indo-Chinese Communists had openly threatened the Georges Philippar, suspicion of incendiarism was reasonable, but the French Government, though it investigated, has kept all details a state secret.

Day after the Atlantique's hulk reached Cherbourg last week fire broke out at Le Havre aboard the 22-year-old France, recently withdrawn from trans-Atlantic service by the French Line as "too old." Le Havre firemen dashed aboard at 2:30 a. m., put out the blaze after two hours of smart work. At Saigon in French Indo-China the French liner Angkor was held up by a cracked propeller blade.

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