Tania
Long,
the daughter of an English journalist, was born in Berlin, Germany
in 1913. Tania attended German schools before studying in France
and England.
In
1936 she went to the United States and found
work as a journalist with the Newark Ledger.
Her knowledge of Europe enabled her to be recruited as a foreign correspondent
with the New
York Tribune. In 1938 she was sent to Germany
and
the following year was transferred to France.
When the German Army began its Western
Offensive Tania was moved to the London
office.
While
in England Tania
reported on the war and the Home Front and
in 1941 she won the Newspaper Women's Club award for her stories about
the sinking of the liner, City of Bernares,
that was transporting children to Canada,
about London's poor population, and the Blitz.
In 1942 Tania
began working for the New
York Times and
after reporting the V1 Flying
Bomb attacks
on London
went to France
with the Allied troops in June 1944. Like fellow women journalists
such as Iris
Carpenter,
Catherine
Coyne, and Ann
Stringer,
she was not made to feel welcome and they were
placed under the command of the Public Relations Division and told
they could not visit the front-line. This directive was later changed
and she was allowed to travel with the troops to Germany.
After the
war Tania covered the Nuremberg
War Trials
and wrote articles on post-war Germany. This included stories on the
plight of refugees and the problems of re-educating a German population
that had experienced twelve years of Nazi
propaganda.
Tania and
her husband, Raymond Daniell continued to work for the New
York Times until
1967. They moved to Canada
where Tania
worked for the National Art Centre as public relations director until
her retirement in 1979.
(1)
Tania Long, New
York Tribune (22nd
September, 1940)
In one of the most tragic sea disasters of the war, 293 persons, including
eighty-three children evacuated from England
to escape Nazi bombs, lost their lives when a liner bound for Canada
was torpedoed by a German submarine last Tuesday night 600 miles at
sea, it was officially announced tonight. Only 113 persons out of
a total complement of 406 aboard the vessel - which sailed Friday,
the 13th - were rescued by British warships and landed last Friday
at a northern British port.
The torpedoing occurred
last Tuesday at 10 p.m. during a heavy gale which cut to a minimum
the chances of saving more than a small proportion of the ship's human
cargo. Most of the lifeboats and rafts lowered in the dark were smashed
or spilled over by the tempestuous sea. The ship sank in half an hour,
carrying down with her a number
of children trapped below or killed in the explosion.
Of the survivors, thirteen
were children, six of whom were traveling privately and not regarded
as evacuees. Only seven evacuee children were saved. The survivors
included eighteen women and eighty-two men. Among the adults were
forty-five male passengers and white members of the crew and thirty-six
Lascars (East Indians). Not a few of the adults were aliens who had
been interned in Great Britain and were being transported to Canada.
This was the first loss
of life among children evacuated to overseas homes under the British
government's scheme. Under the plan 3,000 children have been successfully
transported to safety in the dominions and the United States. During
August an evacuee vessel - rumored to have been the Volendam
- was torpedoed but did not sink and all 320 of the children on board
were brought back to England safely.
Most of the children lost
last Tuesday were from London, Middlesex and Liverpool. They were
escaping from the terrors of Nazi air raids to find safety in the
dominion across the Atlantic when a Nazi torpedo struck their vessel
and sent all but thirteen of them to death. They had said good by
to their parents the previous Wednesday.
Two of the lost children
were making their second attempt to reach Canada. They had been among
the 320 survivors of the vessel torpedoed in August.
Five of those lost were
brothers and sisters whose homes in south-west London had been bombed
the day before they left to join the liner. They had escaped the bombing
by taking refuge in the family's "Anderson shelter." Their
father, James Grimmond, said today: "This is not war; it's sheer,
cold-blooded murder. I'm going to join up again, and all I ask
for is a front-line job."
(2)
Tania Long, New
York Tribune (22nd
September, 1940)
Sinking and afire from
stem to stem but with her guns blazing to the last, the 14,164-ton
armed British merchant cruiser Jervis Bay fought a German warship
- believed to have been one of the 10,000-ton "pocket battleships,"
the Admiral Scheer or the Luetzow - at dusk last Tuesday, 1,000
miles out the Atlantic from the American coast, and enabled a convoy
of thirty-eight merchantmen, bringing vital supplies from the New
World, to scatter.
Twenty-nine of the freighters
escaped, and twenty-four of these reached a British port today. The
fate of the nine other ships in the convoy is uncertain. All may have
been sent to the bottom after the destruction of the Jervis Bay.
Among the surviving vessels were the 16,698-ton motor liner Rangitiki
and the 4,952-ton Cornish City, whose distress signals last
week were the first indications that a raider was active in the shipping
lanes of the North Atlantic.
The German high command
said the entire convoy had been destroyed, but the Jervis Bay,
fighting as gallantly as the armed merchant cruiser Rawalpindi
had done against the Deutschland (later named the Luetzow)
last winter, sacrificed herself to allow nearly three-fourths of the
vessels to escape in the gathering gloom.
Details of the action were
told by some of the men who, aboard the freighters in convoy, watched
the Jervis Bay steaming out from the line to meet the powerful
raider. In peace time the Jervis Bay was an Aberdeen and Commonwealth
liner plying between England and Australia, carrying freight and the
poorest classes of immigrants.
British and foreign vessels
in the convoy, eyewitnesses recounted, followed one another across
a calm sea. It had been a perfect day. Just as darkness was gathering
the silence was shattered by a distant explosion. Then came the scream
of a shell from below the horizon. It fell harmlessly a few yards
from the ship.
The shell was followed
by another. Soon the silhouette of a warship emerged, and the firing
grew more intense. Immediately the order to scatter was given, and,
as the ships obeyed, the raider began to concentrate on the Rangitiki,
the largest vessel in the convoy.
The raider stood off about
seven or eight miles as she poured shell after shell in the direction
of the Rangitiki. Suddenly when it seemed that the merchantman
could no longer escape the devastating fire, the Jervis Bay
steamed straight out in front of her, turned slightly and raced toward
the attacking warship.
The crew of the Jervis
Bay must have known that she stood little chance against the raider's
superior armament, but they manned their guns and blazed away furiously,
drawing the fire from the Rangitiki.
As the convoy of ships
disappeared one by one into the safety of the night, the Jervis
Bay fought grimly on. The battle did not last long. The Jervis
Bay, battered from stem to stern, began to burn. Soon she was
blazing. Still her last remaining gun could be heard barking defiantly
between the thunderous explosions of the raider's heavy guns.
Full details of what happened
then are not available. The Admiralty said that nearly two hours after
the beginning of the engagement an explosion was seen aboard the Jervis
Bay. Sixty-five survivors, the Admiralty added, were known to
have been aboard a merchant ship.
The Jervis Bay was
manned by officers and men of the Royal Navy Reserve. She was commanded
by Capt. H.S.F. Feegan.
A British captain of one
of the convoy ships, interviewed on landing today, said he thought
the raider was a pocket battleship and believed the shells were fired
from eleven-inch guns.
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