"Too Many of Us"

Short-tempered, sweating boatmen struggled to push their sampans and junks close to the fantail of the SS Kiangya, Chinese coastal steamer loading last week at Shanghai for Ningpo. From the cramped decks of the small boats on to the steamer's overhang clambered frantic, ticketless Shanghailanders trying to flee the frightened city. Others clogged the wharves, straining to catch tickets thrown them from portholes by friends already aboard.

When the 2,100-ton ship edged out into the Whangpoo River late in the afternoon, she carried 2,250 paying passengers (mostly loaded earlier at Nanking), plus about 1,200 stowaways with their belongings. The ship's official capacity was 1,186. By 6:30 p.m. her decks were jampacked with blanketed Chinese bedded down for the overnight journey.

A 15-year-old boy, returning to his native Ningpo after his Shanghai employer had fled the country, had just fallen asleep in a crowded passageway. Suddenly the deck shot from under him, hurling him against a bulkhead, and an explosion roared through the ship. His first thought was "Communists" and he hid with his blanket over his head; but almost instantly he felt water rushing in. Although his leg was broken by the explosion, he managed to fight through the blackness to reach the top deck.

Within minutes the SS Kiangya had sunk in shallow water to the riverbed. Passengers on the lower decks had little chance for escape. Some 700 who managed to reach the safety of the top deck stood in cold water waisthigh, screaming for help.* One hysterical woman threw her child overboard because her husband was lost; others were pushed off in the struggle for standing room.

The explosion had wrecked the ship's radio. It was three hours before the SS Hwafoo discovered the stricken ship, four hours before the Hwafoo's SOS brought rescue vessels. When the SS Mouli pulled alongside, a Kiangya officer quieted the clamor of the terrified survivors by warning them, "Don't shout, or they will think there are too many of us!"

Early Saturday morning Shanghai woke to the scream of ambulances carrying the injured to hospitals. Along Shanghai's waterfront, which the Kiangya had left only the afternoon before, hearses bearing bodies picked their way through a neverending stream of coolies pushing carts piled high with crates, boxes, suitcases of still more refugees frantically evacuating their belongings and fleeing the city.

Probable cause of the explosion: an old Japanese mine.

*The number drowned in the Kiangya sinking was about 2,750. Last month another (unidentified) Chinese vessel, evacuating troops from Manchuria, went down with 6,000 aboard. Among the greatest maritime disasters hitherto recorded: the Titanic (1912), which went down with 1,517; the Lusitania (1915) with 1,198; the General Slocum (1904) with 1,021.

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