Dear Vivian, The German ships raced into Mormugao harbour to avoid being captured by the British naval forces, not to avoid being torpedoed by them! Far from torpedoing them, the British would gladly have used them to replace some of their own ships that were lost to the German submarines in the area. The British raid on one of the ships in the Zuari took place on March 9, 1943, and not at the beginning of the war, as Selma stated (the war began in 1939). So the masts of the sunken ships you saw in 1947 were indeed the masts of those ships. But only one, the Ehrenfels, had been attacked by the British raiders; the others were scuttled by their own crews out of fear that they too were about to be attacked. In the early 1990s I met several times with the German sailor turned watchmaker who set up shop in Panjim, and tried to persuade him to write his memoirs, but he had no interest in doing so. A pity, because he would have had much to tell! Regards, Victor
--- On Sun, 11/15/09, Carvalho <elisabeth_...@yahoo.com> wrote: From: Carvalho <elisabeth_...@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: [Goanet] World War II German presence in Goa To: "estb. 1994!Goa's premiere mailing list" <goanet@lists.goanet.org> Date: Sunday, November 15, 2009, 3:16 AM --- On Sat, 11/14/09, Vivian A. DSouza <socorro...@yahoo.com> wrote: > > As a 7 year old in 1947, our family had travelled by ship > from East Africa to Mormugoa, Goa. As the ship entered the > harbor, there were several ship masts sticking out of the > water, obviously of sunken ships. Later I was given to > understand that these were German > ships that had gathered in Mormugoa for safe harbor to > avoid being torpedoed if they ventured out to sea, and that > at the end of World War II the Germans had deliberately > scuttled their ships rather than allow them to fall into > British hands. --------------------------- Not likely Vivian, as the "Seawolves" incident took place at the beginning of the war. Could you have got the dates wrong? best, Selma
