Regina Maria in Trouble

In London last week everyone was complaining "the sun has not been out since before Christmas." In Venice thermometers crawled down below freezing, stayed there for four consecutive days, while the Grand Canal froze solid. One day it cost $20,000 to clear the snow from Berlin's streets, a rare event, for special gangs of street sweepers rarely have to be employed in the German capital. But while storms and blizzards raged over all Europe last week, the greatest weather-made sensation broke on the Black Sea.

In the palace at Bucharest, King Carol of Rumania, hearing that the weather had turned foul, anxiously wirelessed Commander Gika Dimutriscu of his destroyer Regina Maria (named after his mother, Queen Marie). Aboard the Regina Maria was his son, Crown Prince Mihai, bound for Athens and the wedding of Crown Prince Paul of Greece (see p. 26), where his mother, divorced Queen Helen, was waiting for him.

Commander Dimutriscu radioed: "His Royal Highness is quite all right except that he is seasick." Soon the Commander reported that large floating blocks of ice, whipped by a howling gale, had "decommissioned the rudder."

Out at sea veiled in a heavy snowstorm and cut off by temporary failure of her radio the Regina Maria was unmercifully buffeted. Two feet of water flooded the stateroom of the Crown Prince, and the violent wind snapped off one of the destroyer's masts., For 36 hours the Regina Maria bucked and plunged, water even in her engine room, spray frozen on her. Her crew got neither food nor sleep. "Can't I do something to help?" asked the nauseated Crown Prince.

Finally rescue ships found the Regina Maria, towed her back to the great Rumanian port of Constantsa. For hours special trains had been standing with steam up at Constantsa and two Bulgarian ports at which the Crown Prince might conceivably land. As Mihai stepped ashore, deathly pale from seasickness, he ordered food, drink and warm clothing for the crew, then boarded King Carol's own special train, started out for Athens. At Bucharest he stopped to tell King Carol, "Of course I was badly scared!"

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