Fifty years ago, a converted Chesapeake steamer left the Baltimore harbor with a mysterious mix of credentials and cargo: a Honduran registry, an official destination of China, a load of canned food, medical supplies and diapers.
It was a secret voyage supported largely by local people. But it was headed for something that would change the face of the Middle East: a showdown in international waters that would help create the state of Israel and produce a best-selling novel and movie.
That maritime saga was replayed in the waters off Baltimore yesterday in a 50th anniversary re-enactment of Exodus 1947. The President Warfield, carrying 4,554 Holocaust survivors and refugees hoping to settle in British-controlled Palestine, challenged a British blockade off the coast of Egypt.
Three people were killed and 145 hurt when British warships intercepted, rammed and boarded the steamer. The refugees fought back with potatoes, cans of food and sticks. Then, in one of the great ironies of the century, the survivors of Nazi death camps were sent to detention camps in Germany, this time by their former allies, the British.
'All this agony'
"It was like someone had taken away our baby," Henry Schloss, 75, said yesterday aboard the Lady Baltimore -- which carried 450 participants in the re-enactment. His family's rope and rigging company helped stock the 1947 boat. "All this effort, all this agony, and they were going back to Germany."
The battle produced international headlines and soul-searching, leading much of the world to take seriously the idea of a Jewish state. President Warfield, renamed Exodus 1947 during the voyage, has come to be called "The ship that launched a nation."
Yesterday's event, put together by the Baltimore Zionist District, took the group from the Inner Harbor toward Fort Carroll, where the cruiser was surrounded by 10 British "warships" -- actually speedboats with British flags and crews dressed in Royal white and beige, firing warning shots.
Through their bullhorns, the dueling captains barked threats -- the British warning they would never let the Jews into Palestine, that lives could be lost; and the Warfield, in defiance, suddenly changing its name to Exodus 1947.
On board yesterday, and 50 years ago, was Malka Hershkovitz, 79, a Romanian who had spent months in Auschwitz and was five months pregnant when she took the fateful voyage.
Sons accompany her
