Thanks Cornel for that post. Everything you wrote makes good sense and jells with the facts as I know it.
The Brits, it must be said, would not have been put off with a little danger. It would have been their way of not backing down and showing the Axis who was boss. If they didn't have that kind of spirit, they would have thrown in the towel in the early years of the war when Europe was overrun by the Germans and the Pacific and SE Asia by the Japanese, and their own situation seemed hopeless. Also, as you said the passenger ships would have been used for cargo for the war effort. And for the Germans, that theater was not a great priority except perhaps for their thirst for Middle East oil which anyway would have been transported through the Arabian Sea and the Suez over which the Brits held undisputed mastery. I wonder if any book or books have been written on the Goan involvement in World World II. There was quite some involvement on the military side with a few Goans having held King's Commissions in HM's armed forces and seen action in the Singapore defeat and the Burma campaign. The Goan civilian participation in the war would have been much more extensive as numerous Goans held high administrative positions in the colonial realm that would have inevitably resulted in exposure to the actions of the War. I would so love to hear some individual narratives of those experiences. Roland. On 10/13/06, cornel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi Roland > I am not sure of the answer to your question but I think the passenger > demand for the trips 'overode' fears by the British of attacks on > passenger ships across the Indian Ocean. The Indian Ocean was never a real > theatre of war at the time and I am pretty certain that the Tilawa was the > only passenger ship sunk mid-ocean. _______________________________________________ Goanet mailing list Goanet@lists.goanet.org http://lists.goanet.org/listinfo.cgi/goanet-goanet.org