Scottish Mysteries. (Maille Breze)

The Maille Brézé, 1940.

On 30 April 1940 a French warship, the Maille Brézé, was anchored off Greenock. For some unknown reason, a torpedo tube on board malfunctioned, launching a torpedo on the ship’s deck. Fuel tanks were set ablaze but did not explode. The crew abandoned ship but many sailors were trapped in the mess hall. A local doctor made the tough decision to administer morphine to the trapped sailors through the ship’s portholes to make their certain deaths less painful. No one knows why the torpedo tube malfunctioned that day.