“Not that the ship looked to me to be anything but seaworthy, although I’m no sailor. Much later on I learned that for the best part of five years the Gustloff had been docked at the pier in Gotenhafen, where it had been used first as a hospital ship for German soldiers wounded in Norway, and then as a floating barracks for trainees in the submarine division of the German navy. Consequently, the ship’s engines hadn’t been in operation for all that time and most of the skeleton crew wasn’t even German, but it was only supposed to be a three-day voyage, so this didn’t seem like a problem for a ship launched in nineteen thirty-seven. And certainly not as much of a problem as the sheer number of people who had boarded her. It was hard to say how many had crowded onto the ship to escape the Russians, but some estimates put it as high as twelve thousand, including a crew of one hundred and seventy-three. Back in the day it had been designed to accommodate fourteen hundred passengers and four hundred crew. So you can imagine what the scene at Gotenhafen was like. A vision of hell, perhaps. A Doré wood engraving of the Inferno. It goes almost without saying that there were not enough lifeboats, nor were there enough life vests, and in all respects, the ship was woefully ill-prepared for any kind of emergency. With so many people on board, nearly all of the exits and gangways were blocked and there was no time to practice any emergency drills. Also there were only two escort vessels to provide some sort of protection against Russian submarines. Because of the extreme cold, one of the two escort vessels—a torpedo boat—developed a crack in its hull and was forced to return to Gotenhafen. Which left just one escort vessel. The Löwe. Not only that, but a group of German minesweepers operating in the area of the Bay of Danzig was deemed to be in danger of colliding with the Gustloff, and so a decision was taken to turn on the ship’s navigation lights. Which went against all naval practice in wartime.