Exodus - Leon Uris [86]
The largest of the illegal fleet to date had been his Star of David, which carried under two thousand passengers. Other ships carried from a few hundred to a thousand. The Mossad figured that if they could run the blockade with a ship holding upwards of five thousand refugees it would be a staggering blow for the British.
Bill was commissioned to find a ship that could do the job, outfit it, and take five thousand refugees from the big center at La Ciotat in southern France. It was felt that the ship should be purchased in the United States or South America where the British would not be suspicious. British CID simply had the European ports too well covered. Mossad agents covered South America while Bill himself searched the Gulf ports and the east coast. It became obvious that they weren’t going to get much of a ship for the money they had to spend. So Bill had taken a gamble and now he was worried. He had purchased an overaged, obsolete steamship which had seen service only on the Chesapeake Bay in an overnight run between Baltimore and Norfolk. The ship, the General Stonewall Jackson, an oversized pleasure cruiser, had never sailed the ocean. The only thing Bill could think of that was decent about the ship was that it had been bought cheap.
The white-coated waiter hovered over Bill’s table. “Is something wrong with the chowder, sir?”
“Huh? Oh, hell no ... it’s fine,” he mumbled, and shoved a spoonful into his mouth.
Had the purchase of the obsolete bay liner been a mistake? At this moment it was being fitted in Newport News, Virginia, to hold 6850 refugees.
Bill sighed. There was the other side of the picture. Suppose he could get seven thousand refugees out of Europe at one crack! It would just about explode the British policy!
Bill shoved the bowl of chowder away and asked for the check. He picked up the dead cigar butt from the ash tray and relit it and once again read the telegram from Newport News: THE JACKSON IS READY.
At Newport News the next day Bill assembled his crew of Palestinian Palmach and Aliyah Bet, American Jews, sympathetic Spanish Loyalists, Italians, and French. He inspected the ship and ran a short shakedown cruise around the lower bay, then revved up her engines and made for the Atlantic Ocean.
Within three hours the Jackson developed engine trouble and had to return to Newport News.
During the next two weeks Bill made three more attempts. The moment the old ship got far from her natural habitat, she rebelled and had to be taken back to port.
Bill told the Aliyah Bet people he had made a mistake. The Jackson simply could not make it. They urged him to check her over in dock for another week and make one last try.
On the fifth attempt the entire crew held its collective breath as the obsolete steamer chugged past Cape Henry into deep waters of the Atlantic—and continued to chug.
Twenty-two days later the Stonewall Jackson wheezed up the Gulf of Lions to the French harbor of Toulon, which stood forty miles from Marseilles and only twenty miles from the big refugee camp of La Ciotat.
There had been a teamster strike in France, and the British CID who were watching La Ciotat relaxed for a moment, assuming that there would be no movement without trucks. Furthermore, there had been no reports of illegal ships coming from any European ports since the Gates of Zion, Dov’s ship, had landed at Port-de-Bouc several weeks earlier.
The British were caught napping.
They had no advance notice of the Jackson because she had been purchased and fitted in the United States and to date no Aliyah Bet ship had been large enough to navigate the Atlantic. When the Jackson was due to arrive at Toulon the Aliyah Bet went to the head of the French Teamsters’ Union and explained the situation. The Teamsters’ head secretly rounded up drivers and trucks and during the middle of their strike they rushed in and out of La Ciotat transporting sixty-five hundred refugees to Toulon—among them Dov Landau.
British CID discovered the secret