Evening star., 1941-05-23
Americans
Said 10 Have
Been Wounded
Rofder Opened Fire
Before Removal,
Survivors Quoted
Earlier Story on Page A-3D

Carrier Story on Page A-3.)
BY the Associated Press
VICHY, Unoccupied France.
May 23.-The Nazi raider which
sank the Egyptian liner Zamzam
shelled her while her passengers
still were aboard. American sur
vivors related today, according
to reports from Bordeaux.
They said two Americans. Ned
Laughinghouse of Wilson. N. c. and
Francis j. ViCovari of New York,
were wounded and are now hos
pitaliZed in France, A third cas-
ualty was an Egyptian.
Story of Attack.
The passengers identified the
raider as the TamleSeS and told
this story of the attack:
At about am. on April II, the
raider bore down on the ZamZam
and opened fire, hitting her eight
or nine times. That was in latl-
tude q degrees Al minutes south,
Longitude 8 degrees minutes west.
After the shelling, all the pas
sengers and the crew-more than
300 in all-were taken aboard the
raider along with some of the ships
supplies.
The attackers then sent the ship
to the bottom with an explosive
charge which they placed aboard
her.
The next day the Zamzams pas
sengers and crew were transferred
to the German motorship Dresden
which then began dodging warilv
through the British blockade and
after long slow voyage landed the
survivors at st. Jean de Luz in
German occupied France, May 20.
Americans at BiarritZ.
Besides Laughinghouse and Vico-
vari. who are believed to be aboard
a hospital ship. and eight others at
Bordeaux. all the Americans now
are at Biarritz where they were re-
ported by United States Consul
Henry S. Waterman to be all right
except for two in hospital for
minor illnesses
First German reports. had been
that all those aboard were safely
removed before the ship sunk. 1t
was the first report giving the date
of the attack
Thus the ship was eight days out
of Recife. Brazil. en- route to Cape
town, Union of South Africa, when
the raider intercepted her.
The State Department informed
the British-American Ambulance
Corps headquarters in New York
today that Francis j. Vicovari. 90,
leader of the "a American volunteer
drivers taken from the freighter
Zamzam. was being held for wound
treatment aboard the German
raider which sank the Egyptian
vessel.
William V. RuXton. president of
the corps, said the department was
advised Vicovari. a New Yorker, had
been wounded during the seizure
and was being kept in the hospital
aboard the Nazi ship. Vicovari spent
two months in a German concentra-
tion camp in France last summer
after Nazis seized him outside Paris
where he was driving an ambulance.
No such ship as the Tamieses,
mentioned by Americans as the Nazi
raider which sank the Egyptian
liner zamzam, appears either in
James list of warships or Lloyd's
register of merchant ships.
The vessel. however. may have
been the 7,983-ton German motor
ship Ramses. which was reported to
have sailed March 80 from Shang-
hal under escort of two Japanese
destroyers for Kobe to load supplies
and then enter the southern Pacific
to meet Nazi raiders.
Thus she had more than two
weeks to reach the point in the
Atlantic where the Zamzam went
down. about midway on her 3,3l8-
mile voyage from Recife, Brazil, to
Capetown, South Africa.
knowledge of the recent move
ments of the 5,567-ton German pas
senger ship Dresden indicates that
she was correctly identified in the
dispatch.
The Dresden. a North German
Lloyd liner, sailed from the port of
Santos, Brazil, March %, with clear
ance papers for Vladivostok. Thus,
she might have been in that area,
especially if she were following a
course to avoid a transit of the
Panama Canal or rounding the
Cape of Good Hope.