In the blackness before dawn, the Greek ship Chimara, 1,800 tons and packed with 548 passengers, slogged through windblown seas. She was close to shore, off the eastern tip of the Attica peninsula. Her journey from Salonika to Piraeus (Athens' port) was to end in a few hours. But some of her 87 crewmen were restive. They knew the menace of floaters; some had protested against night voyages in these waters, which had been heavily sown with mines during the war.
At 3:50 a.m., it happened. The Chimara, a onetime German hospital ship, shuddered and stopped as an explosion ripped...
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