When you watch the movie "Titanic", let's not forget that more than 70 years ago, almost the same giant ship unfortunately sank at wusongkou on the Yangtze River in China, and the death toll may be higher, and the lesson is more profound.
Let's take a look at the newspapers of the time:
"Declaration" news: The giant ship sank within three minutes of this newspaper, the China Merchants Bureau Shanghai-Yong Line Liner Jiangya sailed from Shanghai at 4:00 p.m. the day before (that is, December 3, 1948), and at 7:00 p.m. it traveled to the copper sand ocean surface outside Wusongkou, and suddenly exploded and sank. Most of the 3,000 passengers on the ship were killed or injured. So far yesterday, after many parties to rescue, as of last night, about a thousand people were rescued and arrived in Shanghai, and the number of people buried at the bottom of the sea has not yet been counted. According to the total number of tickets sold by the Bureau and the possible number of "yellow fish" passengers, the number of people killed is about 2,000. As for the cause of the accident, there are many legends from all sides, and exactly how it is, is still under investigation.
At that time, an extremely strong explosion occurred near the third cabin on the right side of the ship, reaching the rear 3-story platform, and in an instant, the straight light in the ship was extinguished, the motor stopped, and the tail began to sink sharply, and it was submerged in the water within 3 minutes.
China in 1948 was on the eve of great historical changes, our army was under pressure, and the situation in Shanghai was chaotic. The High-ranking officials and dignitaries of the Kuomintang have used all kinds of connections to send the looted gold and silver jewelry, together with their eldest wives and aunts, to escape by steamship and plane, and as for the ordinary people, they are also busy selling their belongings and exchanging them for gold and silver jewelry that can preserve their value, and dragging their children and daughters back to their hometowns to escape the war.
As we all know, among the citizens of Shanghai, many of them originated in the Ningbo area, and many of them originally wanted to return to their hometowns, and it was close to the Spring Festival at this time, which made the Shanghai-Yong line passenger transport that had been overcrowded earlier appear more tense. At that time, there were only two sea ships on the Shanghai-Yongzhou Line, "Jiangya" and "Jiangjing", and of course the people had no money to take a plane, so they could only squeeze trains and take ships. Of course, this is far from meeting the needs of passengers, according to the tonnage of the ships owned by China Merchants, it is fully capable of dispatching ships and increasing the transportation capacity of the Shanghai-Yong line. However, a large number of ships of the China Merchants Bureau were requisitioned by the Kuomintang for military transport, where the needs of the people would be considered, so although the transportation of the Shanghai-Yong Line was very tight at that time, the China Merchants Bureau simply ignored it.
There are fewer boats on the Shanghai-Yong line, and the passengers are much more special, and the first difficulty encountered by people returning to their hometowns is to buy ferry tickets. Although China Merchants has set up a ticket office in The Middle Sichuan Road, in fact, only a part of all the tickets sold there, and a considerable part of the tickets have long been resold by China Merchants at high prices on the black market. In order to buy a ferry ticket, working people had to go to the ticket office all day and all night to queue up and squeeze in, so at that time, Shanghainese people called buying ferry tickets "rolling" ferry tickets. Since there are very few tickets sold publicly, and the people who buy tickets are much more special, the difficulty of "rolling" tickets is conceivable, and if you can't "roll out tickets at the ticket office, you can only buy black market tickets."
After passing the first pass, there is a second pass, which is to wait to board the ship. Passenger ships of the Shanghai-Yong Line are generally moored at Zhaosan Wharf. There is only one luxurious waiting room on the dock that can accommodate dozens of people, and this waiting room is specially set up for the family of the old Jiang. At that time, because the Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo Railway had been destroyed by the Japanese invaders during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Chiang's family members returned to their hometown every year to visit the grave by sea boat, and the China Merchants Bureau specially built such a royal waiting room. General passengers can only wait to board the boat in the open space next to the pier. In order to get on the ship earlier and find a place to stay, passengers often have to wait on the dock for hours with children and luggage. This is even more unbearable in the bitter mid-winter climate.
On December 3, 1948, the cold wind was bitter, and because it was almost the end of the year, a large number of Ningbo passengers were stranded at the Fair Road Wharf anxiously waiting for the passenger ship "Jiangya" to depart for their hometown at 4 p.m. It is impossible to prove how many people gathered at the dock that afternoon, in addition to those who had been waiting in line for days to buy tickets, there were also a large number of "yellow croakers" who were preparing to evade their tickets and board the ship.
After some desperate struggle, finally on board, whether it is the first class cabin, or the passengers sleeping in the lower class cabin in the aisle or even the toilet, at this time must have a long breath, and there may be some people who excitedly run to the deck, take off their sweat-stained cotton hats, and wave triumphantly at the crowd on the shore, they did not expect that the moment they stepped on the deck, death had revealed its hideous face.
Just over 3 hours later, the most tragic shipwreck in the history of Chinese shipping arrived.
Jiangya Ferry is the transformation of the "Xingya Maru" of the Japanese East Asia Shipping Co., Ltd. by China Merchants, and is the most magnificent passenger ship in the Shanghai-Yong Line liner of the Bureau. The captain is 340.4 feet, 50 feet wide, has a speed of 14 nautical miles, weighs 3730 tons, and originally could accommodate 1186 passengers, but after modification, the shipboard board showed that it could accommodate 2250 people.
According to reports, a total of 2,207 tickets were sold at that time, and in fact, nearly 3,000 people squeezed into the "death ship". Because the shipping management was extremely chaotic at that time, it was impossible to exclude a large number of individual passengers, and the investigation after the shipwreck also showed that the ship was seriously overloaded.
Jiang Yalun left the Zhaosan Pier at 4 p.m. on this day in a cacophony of noise. The ship came out of Wusongkou, and the sky gradually darkened. As the ship jolted, the noise of the ship began to calm down, and at this time, only the shouts of the hawkers accompanying the boat were heard. At 6:45, the Jiangya ferry sailed to the mouth of the Yangtze River, when the passengers were eating, suddenly, the stern of the ship made a loud noise, followed, the hull shook violently, the deck collapsed, the lights were suddenly all extinguished, and the whole ship fell into darkness. The whistle for help sounded only once, and there was no sound again.
Because the passenger ship carried a large number of passengers, it was in danger of being destroyed at any time, and when such an explosion occurred suddenly, the hull of the ship immediately tilted. For a while, the order on the ship was even more chaotic. Passengers who are closer to the top deck can escape to the deck, but passengers in the uniform cabin cannot escape because people and luggage are stuffed like canned "satin fish". After a few minutes, the stern of the ship gradually sank, and the sea immediately rushed into the cabin, and most of the passengers who could not escape were wiped out. Although the bow sank slowly, it took only more than ten minutes from the explosion to the time the sea flooded the deck. Fortunately, there is a shoal near the accident site, the ship is running aground on the beach after sinking, the top deck of the sea water is only one or two feet deep, chimneys, masts are exposed above the sea.
The twilight is thick and the waves are rolling, and some of the few passengers who have fled to the top deck are trapped in the vast and terrifying waves, and may be swallowed up by the waves at any time. People shouted for help in unison, hoping that passing ships would come to the rescue. This is the only channel to enter and exit shanghai port, and there are more ships coming and going. After a while, suddenly a flashing light appeared from the direction of Wu Song, getting closer and closer, and the person climbing on the mast shouted "Boat!" boat! This gave people a glimmer of hope, so everyone fought hard for the last momentum to cry out for help, hoping that the ship could come to the rescue. The boat got closer and closer, only to see the lights on the ship shining brightly, and there was a faint sound of music. When it was about a hundred meters away from the wreck, it suddenly emitted a strong searchlight, shining a few times on the wreck, and then it swung away again. It turned out to be a Kuomintang warship. When the people on the sunken ship saw this scene, they all hated it to the bone.
Due to the sudden explosion, the cabin quickly entered the water, the telegraph room was also damaged, unable to send a distress signal, fortunately, the crew of the passenger ship "Huafu" saw the surviving passengers on the mast with flashlights, rushed to the scene, while saving the passengers, while sending a distress signal.
At about 9 o'clock that night, the China Merchants Bureau received a telegram of distress and urgently dispatched four wheels such as "Ji'an", "Qiu Jin", "Jiang Jing" and "Haijin" to the rescue, and at the same time, the sail ships passing by such as "Jinyuanli" and "Maoli" also quickly went to the accident site to rescue the passengers who fell into the water, but the catastrophe had been cast and it was too late to save them.
The rescue came to an end quickly, as most of the passengers had already drowned, fewer than 1,000 people were rescued, some were still being rescued, and the subsequent recovery of the bodies was long and heart-wrenching.
According to the "Declaration" and "News Daily" at that time, until January 15, 1949, after the divers sent by the China Merchants Bureau came to the conclusion that "there seems to be no body in the Jiangya ship", several female corpses were still found on the nearby river surface on the 18th. After the tragedy, China Merchants dispatched a total of 95 divers, along with 106 small workers, and 8 Japanese salvage technicians, divided into 9 shifts to salvage the bodies. From February 6 to 8, a total of 1,280 bodies were recovered, including 233 children under the age of 12, which were transported back to Shanghai and placed on the side of the riverside road, claimed by their families, and cried every day, and their tragic situation was unbearable.
When Jiang Yalun sank, a passenger named Zhong Xueli, who was working at the First Red Cross Hospital at the time, escaped by chance, leaving the most detailed escape record to date, and the following is a summary of it:
"I finished dinner at about 6 o'clock that night, and I was talking and laughing with the two passengers in the same cabin with great interest, when I heard a bang, the whole ship shook, and then the lights went out suddenly, and the sound of metal cracking was mixed; the sound of debris collapsing, the cry of the lower cabin, the cries of children, and the sound of a child's cry. I knew that there was a change, and I went up to the deck with two white-clad crew members in the crowd, and suddenly I heard someone shouting: 'The steam pot has exploded, and I am calm and waiting for help', but this can only make people more flustered, the glass and wooden planks have been smashed, and some people have fallen into the water in the darkness. ”
"At that time, the third and fourth cabins were flooded, and the deck was chaotic, and for a time the people trampled on each other and snatched the lifebuoy. I was trampled to the ground, and I was lucky enough to get up and run to the side of the ship to calm my mind, when someone honked his horn to the boat for help, but occasionally two or three boats passed by, and they ignored it and flew away, and the crowd cursed incessantly. In desperation, there was a 'Jinyuanli' galleon rushing in, and everyone jumped into the river and swept away, I think the owner of this ship will send a telegram to other ships, send people to rescue, and then beat the spirit and wait for rescue. Later, when the 'Maoli Wheel' arrived, put down a few small sampans, first saved the women and children, and then saved the men, I was finally saved, and when I got to the boat, I looked back and saw that the whole ship had sunk, and only part of the mast and chimney was still floating on the surface, and I couldn't help but be horrified..."
After the shipwreck of the Jiangya ship, the Kuomintang not only did not quickly deal with the aftermath, but instead tried to block the news of the shipwreck by covering the sky with one hand. But the paper could not contain the fire, and on December 5, 1948, the news of the shipwreck of the Jiangya ship had spread everywhere in Shanghai. As a result, thousands of families of the victims and the general public have organized themselves to demand accountability, compensation for all losses, and prompt handling of the aftermath. On the one hand, they exposed the crimes of the China Merchants Bureau through public opinion; on the other hand, they organized a huge demonstration and surrounded the office building of the China Merchants Bureau, demanding that the perpetrators of the disaster be punished and avenge the dead passengers! At this time, the China Merchants Bureau closed the door tightly, and on the other hand, a large number of military police were quickly transferred to carry out bullet pressing. In the cold winter months, the reactionary military and police actually sprayed the crowd with fire-fighting faucets, and then used the "flying fortress" to storm the crowds; in addition, the families of the seventeen passengers who persisted in the struggle were taken to police cars and locked up in the Huangpu District Police Substation. When the military police were arresting people, a pregnant woman surnamed Xu resisted this illegal persecution, and was beaten by the murderous military police while pulling her hair to the police car, causing her to miscarry on the spot.
The authorities also dispatched military police to arrest a large number of widows because "they carried coffins to the door of the China Merchants Bureau and demanded compensation every day." At that time, the families of the victims did not receive any compensation, and even the demand for compensation of 125 stones of rice was not approved by the authorities, and 15 stones of rice were distributed to each household.
After the crash of the Jiangya ship, although there were "Jinyuanli" and "Maoli" and other passing ships who enthusiastically rescued hundreds of passengers in distress, and the "Jinyuanli" ship advocated Hanting (Zhejiang people) and was thus awarded the first "honorary citizen" medal in Shanghai, most of the ships either saw death and did not save, or took the opportunity to loot the property of the dead passengers, and the ugliness of human nature can be seen.
For example, the 8 crew members on the "Tuqiang" ship were expelled for stealing the relics of the victims, and Xu Xueyu, general manager of China Merchants, issued a notice on December 14 in order to cover up the truth of the incident, asking the staff not to "speak at will to the outside world, so as not to make mistakes and differences." ”
Shen Dacai, the captain of the Jiangya Ship, is also a figure worth mentioning, and this Jun did not "die in the line of duty" like the captain of the Titanic, nor did he organize the crew to rescue the passengers immediately after the explosion, but relied on his many years of sailing experience to get a lucky death, so that the families of the victims unanimously demanded to the court that he be "brought to justice".
After the sinking of the Jiangya ship, China Merchants Commission commissioned several maritime, transportation and naval experts to investigate the accident site, and sent divers to search the explosion site and its damage.
1. There is a large fissure in the posterior part of the starboard side, about 20 feet long and 8 feet high;
Second, the iron plate at the crack is turned upside down;
3. The rift annex deck and the main deck were blown up;
Fourth, there is no error in the route.
But in the end, an ambiguous conclusion was reached: "It was not a boiler explosion." According to the analysis of experts at that time, since the iron plate was rolled from the inside to the outside, it should be caused by a violent explosion inside, and if the possibility of boiler explosion was excluded, it should be caused by internal strong explosives or bombs.
At that time, China Merchants bureau also wanted to recover the shipwreck, and invited so-called "salvage experts" from foreign countries to conduct on-site investigation. However, foreign "salvage experts" said that the ship sank near the shoal, and due to the impact of the tide, it sank deeper and deeper, and the possibility of fishing it was extremely small. The Kuomintang and its Merchants Bureau were also afraid that the truth about the shipwreck after the salvage was revealed, which would not help them to shirk their responsibility for the wreck, so they had no intention of salvaging the wreck later.
In May 1956, in order to clear the channel and give birth to the shipwreck of the Jiangya Ship and participate in the people's shipping business, the Shanghai Municipal People's Government decided to salvage the Jiangya Ship. The Chinese salvage workers are ambitious, saying: "Foreign salvage experts assert that the Jiangya ship is a shipwreck that cannot be salvaged, and we Chinese workers must fish it up!" "The salvage workers exerted their soaring vigor, braved the attack of fierce winds and waves, ignored the extreme heat and cold, with a tenacious will to fight and a strong revolutionary spirit, insisted on hard work and skillful work, and in only one hundred and seventy-seven days, they overcame all kinds of difficulties and fished out the Jiangya ship that foreign salvage experts thought could not be salvaged. In the process of salvage, the remains and relics of the passengers who were salvaged and obtained were properly disposed of.
The Shanghai Municipal Salvage Bureau salvaged the entire ship out of the water before the truth was revealed. According to experts, the steel plate in the explosive engine room was turned from the outside to the inside, which was obviously caused by external forces, and it was inferred that it was impossible to do anything other than a torpedo.
Later, Sun Guanglao, former head of the business department of the China Merchants Bureau, deciphered the truth of Jiang Yalun's death. On the eve of liberation, his immediate boss, Hu Shiyuan, the former deputy general manager of the China Merchants Bureau, told him a "secret like a fantasy": In April 1949, Xu Xueyu, the former chairman of the China Merchants Bureau, hosted a banquet at the International Hotel for Gui Yongqing, then commander of the Kuomintang Navy, and Hu was present to accompany him. During the meal, Gui suddenly said sorry, which puzzled Hu Da. Gui explained that "Jiangya" was sunk by a "mistaken wound" of the navy. At that time, a Navy-affiliated plane carrying a powerful bomb flew from northern Jiangsu to Shanghai, and when it flew over "Jiangya", the hook accidentally fell off, and the bomb happened to fall next to the ship, causing the tragedy of the shipwreck...
There is also a period of enmity between the Kuomintang Navy and the China Merchants Bureau before liberation.
On March 19, 1947, the former China Merchants freighter "Hai min" sailed from Shanghai to Fujian, and near Wuqiu Island outside Meizhou Port, it suddenly collided violently with the Kuomintang Navy's "Fubo" warship, which caused the ship to sink rapidly, and more than 130 officials on board except one person luckily escaped from danger. All the rest were killed.
Afterwards, the China Merchants Bureau did not admit its mistake and refused to provide sympathy to the families of the officers and men who died, so it made a grudge with the Navy, which was said to have vented everywhere at that time to shell the "Haimin" to take revenge. In order to evade the attack of the warships, "Hai min" was renamed "Hai Liao" and shipping continued.
However, the revenge plan of the "National Army" was not shelved. A naval bomber flew to Lianyungang with several 500-pound bombs in preparation to bomb some of the troops that had surrendered to the People's Liberation Army, but was unsuccessful; on its way back to the Gaochangmiao base in Shanghai, it passed through the copper sand ocean at the mouth of the Yangtze River, and happened to encounter "Jiangya." A bomb "dehook off the hook" and fell into the starboard water, and was sucked into the hull of the ship at speed and exploded, causing a shocking disaster.
After that, the Navy strictly ordered the keeping of secrets, and the China Merchants Bureau became a scapegoat. In the "Historical Diary of the Republic of China", in the "Geng" article on December 2, 1948, the following record has been made: "The China Merchants Bureau 'Jiangya' ship exploded and sank in the north of Wusongkou, killing more than 3,000 passengers. "Admitted that Jiang Yalun was sunk by the bomb.
It is impossible to know whether the bomb "accidentally decoupled" was true or not, but the bomb killed more than 3,000 people.
After the Jiangya ship was floated, it was thoroughly repaired by the Jiangnan Shipyard, and under the hard work of the whole factory staff, the repair task was completed ahead of schedule, so that this Jiangya ship, which was reborn and reborn, participated in the passenger transportation of the Spring Festival in 1959.