A fitting tribute to the lives lost on the Arandora Star

Jul 7 2008 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

IT WAS wartime with all its deprivations, but life in the fine summer of 1940 went on for the 15-year-old girl, with a loving mother and father, who created a happy and cultured home.

But, without any warning, those brutal times suddenly blew this family apart, leaving Graziella Feraboli’s life changed forever.

“I came back from school and my father had just gone. My mother said he’d been taken away. I never saw him again,” says Graziella, from Milan, who is now in her 80s.

“That was the end for my mother and myself. We’ve lived with this silence all our lives.”

This was just one tragic story from among hundreds present at a remarkable memorial service at the Parish Church of St Nicholas, Liverpool.

Attended by the Italian Ambassador and the Archbishop of Glasgow, they unveiled a plaque commemorating the Liverpool liner Arandora Star, lost 68 years ago.

Ettore Feraboli, then 55, was a professional violinist, playing in London chamber orchestras. Born in Italy, he lived in Britain for 20 years.

When Mussolini’s Italy declared war on Britain on June 10, 1940, Italian passport holders were interned.

Taken to Liverpool, Ettore was among 1,600 who boarded the former luxury liner Arandora Star, destined for Newfoundland.

Neither ship nor 805 souls reached land, as Arandora Star was torpedoed off Ireland by U-47, on July 2, 1940.

“Weeks later, we found what happened to my father.

“We visited the War Office which had a list of survivors and detainee numbers of those lost. My father was ‘missing presumed drowned’. At 15, I couldn’t cope and I really let fly.

“This commemoration service is the first time any British authority recognised what happened.

“It is a generous and thoughtful gesture by Liverpool, this is my father’s funeral today. But those were dark days with Britain under threat of invasion and dark decisions can’t be judged by today’s standards.”

At the service were two of the three known survivors of the tragedy. Evan Morgan Jones, from Merthyr Tydfil, now 89, was a Welch Regiment soldier, aged 21, and was a guard aboard Arandora Star when the torpedo struck at 6am.

“I was on the back top deck, going down to breakfast and there was this ‘boof’ sound and the abandon ship alarm sounded.

“I told my friend Jackie Powell we’d have to jump.

“He was terrified as he couldn’t swim. I said ‘there’s plenty of water, you’ll soon learn!’

“I chucked two loose planks overboard. The ship was moving, but sliding down bow first. It was a 50ft drop, so I pushed Jackie down, then jumped myself.”

Arandora Star disappeared within 30 minutes and Evan and Jack, with an arm over each plank, paddled for their lives in the debris field.

Evan says: “I couldn’t believe it, but I saw the captain and an officer on the bridge standing to attention as the ship sank.

“It wasn’t so bad in the water as it was summer. Soon the sea filled with broken deckchairs and dead bodies.”

The pair were eight hours in the water before spotting a lifeboat, being hauled aboard and finally rescued by a Canadian destroyer.

Evan says: “It was exhausting as I had to carry Jackie’s senses and my own.

“I come from a big religious family and I felt someone was looking out for me.

“My mother used to worry about me swimming in a valley pool near our house. When I got home, I said to her, ‘Now you see what my swimming’s done!’.”

Rando Bertoia, now 88, was a terrazzo layer when he was taken, aged 20, from his family in Glasgow, the day after Italy declared war.

His father was interned in the Isle of Man.

He says: “I was one of the lucky ones.

“We were sleeping on deck as it was so warm and I was pushed into a lifeboat. If I’d slept below decks, I wouldn’t be here.

“A week later, we were back in Liverpool and on the Dunera for Australia.

“I don’t feel bitter. I was very, very lucky.”

peter.elson@dailypost.co.uk