I scanned again the blueprints of the two tiny tugs that now were mine, then the map. Thirteen thousand miles by sea from Port Arthur, Texas, around the Cape of Good Hope to Massawa! Heaven help us all!
CHAPTER
5
MY FEVERISH SEARCH FOR MEN, FOR materials, for ships, had taken some weeks. But by the end of January, I had at least the rudiments of what was wanted for salvage and the machinery on order for the rebirth of the naval base.
I was then ordered by the Army to depart by air for Massawa via Egypt, to get acquainted with the situation on the ground. Meanwhile, Mr. Flanagan, my energetic assistant, would hire what additional men he could for me and attend to the forwarding of my ships and my materials.
Transportation by air in those early dismal days of the war turned out to be not so certain. I was given a high enough priority for an assured seat in a military plane (there were no others) going east for the Atlantic hop, via Brazil to Africa. But day after day in early February went by with no notice to report for departure.
Unofficially I soon learned the reason. So desperate was the Army need for fighter pilots in the far Pacific that every Army pilot of any flying experience at all was being gathered for combat there in a last-ditch attempt to stem the Japanese torrent flooding the Philippines and Indonesia, and threatening to engulf Australia. The result was that the new four-engined Fortresses, the only planes capable of carrying passengers, being ferried east to India and Australia over the south Atlantic, were of necessity going out with immature Army pilots who had barely completed their training courses.
Under these conditions, the number of Fortresses that crashed en route was startling (or perhaps it wasn’t). However, since several Government missions flying as passengers in these planes had been lost with them, a secret order had gone out excluding further passengers till something could be done to reduce the crash rate.
Barring a miracle, and none were being worked in favor of the unready United States in those days, my departure by air seemed uncertain and my safe arrival in Africa that way even more so. It was a considerable relief then to learn that the Army had chartered a merchant vessel and its crew to sail February 16 for West Africa, carrying personnel for its various projects in the Middle East. Since I was now with the Army, I might go on her or by air as I chose. Naturally, as a sailor I chose to go by sea.
The S.S. Pig’s Knuckle (to give the ship the nickname by which she was soon unaffectionately known by some of her passengers) was of 5600 tons gross register, small as passenger liners go, built sixteen years before for the coastal run between Florida and Boston. Heavily wrapped in overcoats and burdened down with our hand baggage, we boarded her in a cold, drizzling winter rain on the scheduled sailing day, February 16, to find her a madhouse. She was still cluttered with shipyard mechanics engaged in finishing fitting her out with guns, with black-out screens, life rafts, extra lifeboat davits and extra boats for her first wartime cruise.
The start of the voyage was inauspicious. The passenger list was about 380, divided about equally between Army personnel (both officers and enlisted men) and civilians under Army contract for the Middle East projects. This was somewhat over the 300 passengers the ship was designed to accommodate, but the overcrowding was not bad. What was bad was that the ship, with all the workmen on her and with a newly shipped crew, was unready to receive any passengers.
To make that matter worse, many of the civilian passengers, under no discipline at all, either from celebrating their departure or drowning their grief over it, came aboard badly drunk. Between the drunks and the workmen banging away with hammers till midnight on the superstructure, rushing to finish their job, the situation on the ship was not such as to create a favorable first impression on those sober enough to pay some attention to the vessel and her crew.
Still less was this impression improved when the shipyard men (against the captain’s protests) cleared off in the middle of the night, leaving the boat deck a cluttered mess of partly rigged and hardly usable lifeboats, in miserable shape for lowering. This situation her surly seamen (mostly just shipped) very unwillingly and very ineffectively tackled.
What seemed to be the whole Nazi U-boat navy had taken advantage of the combined golden opportunities of our unreadiness for war and the chance to shift from the wintry north Atlantic, where weather and the British patrols together made submarine operations difficult, to the Gulf Stream where they were easy. U-boats by the dozen had descended a few days before on our shores. As they were sinking American ships along our unprotected southern coast in sickening numbers, the immediate usability of our lifeboats was an important factor in our lives, though from the slovenly fashion in which the merchant seaman went at readying them, one would never have guessed it. Our ship was just as likely (perhaps even more so) to be torpedoed the moment she poked her nose into the Gulf Stream south of Cape Hatteras as out in mid-ocean a week or two later.
In that shape, on the afternoon of February 17, having been hung up by fog from midnight till noon, we got under way for the lower harbor. In bitterly cold weather, we slid slowly past the Battery for our last look at Manhattan and shortly were passing St. George on Staten Island.
A lump rose in my throat. There, anchored off St. George, lay the U.S.S. Texas, just in from convoy duty in the Atlantic. Twenty-seven years before, as an ensign just out of the Naval Academy, I had joined the battleship Texas, then newly commissioned. Enviously I gazed at my old ship, grimly effective in her modernized rig for a leading part in the war, looking the very symbol of disciplined power, so different from the ill-manned tub I now knew I was aboard.
We dropped anchor ourselves in Gravesend Bay, where an ammunition barge came alongside to transfer to us the ammunition for our newly installed guns. Getting that aboard with freezing spray coming over constantly to interfere, a task for the Armed Guard seamen the Navy had put aboard for the guns’ crews, took the rest of the day.
Next morning, still in freezing weather, we swung ship around the Ambrose Channel Lightship to calibrate magnetic and radio compasses. By early afternoon we were under way at last (so we thought) for Africa, headed south, steaming by ourselves. But we were escorted at least by a Navy blimp, the K-6, which circled slowly overhead to detect any lurking U-boats. Further to bolster our confidence, Ensign McCausland of the Navy, in charge of the Armed Guard, promptly posted his men at war stations, and to be sure they were ready for action, test fired all his guns.
For a ship of our size, we were well armed. We had a 4-inch gun (evidently removed from some World War I destroyer) on our stern, a 3-inch high angle anti-aircraft gun on our forecastle, two .50-caliber anti-aircraft machine guns on the superstructure aft, and two more .30-caliber anti-aircraft machine guns on the bridge. Against a possible Nazi air raider or any U-boat trying to overhaul us from astern in a surface attack with guns, we were well protected.
But against a submerged attack with torpedoes by a U-boat (when our guns would be useless), we were as helpless as a lamb. Our slow speed (thirteen knots) would allow any U-boat which ever sighted us from ahead to get into torpedo firing position submerged and undetected. And we were of such moderate size as ships go, that one torpedo meant our doom. I began to take a deep interest in our lifeboats and their condition.
For us, our only safety lay in a strong convoy of destroyers or in our keeping far away from every area in which the U-boats were reported operating. But except for the blimp, we had no convoy. Still I found soon there was little cause for immediate concern. We weren’t really going to sea—yet.
A few hours’ run down the Jersey coast and we ducked into Delaware Bay for the night, there to anchor till daylight. Then down we went through the Delaware-Chesapeake Canal, safely landlocked from U-boats, into Chesapeake Bay. Down that we steamed, still landlocked, past Annapolis to Hampton Roads, where again we anchored to await a calibration of our newly installed degaussing system, intended to protect us against magnetic mines.
By now I was acquaint
ed to some degree with both the ship’s officers and with my shipmates for the voyage. Senior on board for the Army was Major General C. L. Scott, an ex-cavalry officer, now of the mechanized forces, going to Egypt to study British (and Nazi) tank tactics at close range.
Aside from General Scott, all the Army officers aboard were destined for General Maxwell’s Middle East Command, ranging from Colonel Earl Gruver through all ranks down to the junior second lieutenant, Jerbi, going out as dental officer for the Mission. With them came a collection of Army non-coms of all grades and a few privates, to bring the Army personnel up to about 200 all told.
Of the 180 civilian passengers carried, a few were supervisors for the contractors and the rest were mechanics and clerical personnel destined for various parts of the project, though none were my own salvage men. My personnel, particularly the mechanics, were supposed to come out with the salvage ships as their crews.
General Scott promptly got his military passengers and their routine strictly organized to lend a hand in emergency both to the Armed Guard and to the ship’s company in handling boats. But the civilian passengers, governed by the top supervisor for the contractor, were left free to rest themselves on the voyage.
In Hampton Roads, on the morning of February 20, while we were awaiting our turn on the degaussing calibration course, the first friction on the ship arose. As a vitally interested passenger who had some knowledge of the subject, I pointed out to General Scott, the senior officer aboard, the scandalous condition our lifeboats were still in, improperly stowed and questionably rigged for lowering, and with a new crew which seemed to know little about the boats and from their lack of attention to them, to care even less. I suggested a lifeboat drill, with all the boats actually swung out while we were at anchor, to test their readiness in an emergency.
This seemed reasonable enough and important to the general, who sent Colonel Earl Gruver, acting as his Chief of Staff for the voyage, to the skipper with a request for a full dress lifeboat test.
Colonel Gruver, a quiet, very self-possessed, dark-complexioned officer, set off on his mission to the bridge in his usual imperturbable manner, while General Scott and I discussed the pros and cons of degaussing belts as protection against the new magnetic mines the Nazis would sooner or later (later, we hoped) lay off all our harbors. This was an intricate subject so that we hardly noticed how long Gruver had been gone when he suddenly entered the general’s cabin, very red in the face, in spite of his dark complexion.
“That skipper of ours is certainly a belligerent boy, General,” reported the colonel. “I had hardly presented your compliments to him and made your request, when the captain practically exploded in my face to tell me the lifeboats were none of the general’s business, nor of any other passenger’s, either!” Gruver looked significantly at me. “But I stayed with him, sir, in spite of his bullying, and there’ll be a lifeboat drill at 11:00 A.M.”
There was, and it turned out as I had suspected. Three of the ship’s largest lifeboats absolutely refused to lift out of their chocks and go overboard. It developed the boat falls on two of these had carelessly been rove off backwards. On the third boat, a davit was improperly assembled. It would take hours to reverse the wire boat falls on the lowering drums and to refit the davit before those three boats could be used.
The other eleven boats were, with some difficulty, broken out of their chocks and dropped flush with the rail, ready to take on passengers, in about five minutes. Not good, but not bad either, provided our ship, if torpedoed, stayed afloat and on a reasonably even keel for five long minutes, which could hardly be counted on.
After this fiasco, I had hoped nothing further would be required for the ship immediately to cure the entire boat situation, but it turned out otherwise. True, the chagrined mates turned to, to re-reeve the improperly rove off falls and to refit the davit so all the boats could be swung out, but no attention went to checking or stowing properly the oars and equipment each boat would badly need in a hurry if ever it went overboard. I was amazed that the crew was so little concerned regarding their instant effectiveness in an emergency, especially now that war and torpedoes had multiplied radically the possibility of that emergency arising.
However, when nothing was done by the crew to overhaul the boat gear, General Scott detailed a squad of soldiers, aided by a group of carpenters and riggers among the passengers, to do the job themselves. Whatever the captain thought of this concern of his passengers for their own safety, in spite of his previous outburst to Colonel Gruver over the lifeboats, he now said nothing as the passengers turned to on what was the crew’s work. At any rate, by next evening, when we had concluded all our degaussing tests and anchored just inside Cape Henry preparatory to final departure, the boats were all properly stowed at last and ready for use, so that if the worst happened, at least we would not have to swim.
CHAPTER
6
EARLY SUNDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 22, 1942, with every passenger wearing a life jacket (which by General Scott’s order he was to wear or keep at hand night and day the rest of the voyage), we stood out between the Chesapeake Capes, bound for Africa at last. On our itinerary as laid out on departure from New York, we had been scheduled to make a stop at Trinidad for refueling. But because of strong U-boat attacks of the last few days inside the Caribbean off Aruba and Trinidad, the routing was now changed by the naval authorities in Norfolk. The ship was directed to proceed to San Juan, Porto Rico, instead, for an intermediate refueling.
Since in addition, this change would keep us away from the dangerous Florida coast, in which area the unopposed Nazi U-boats were running wild, with another sinking reported only the night before off Jupiter Inlet, and several blazing oil tankers, set on fire by torpedoes, reported drifting northward, abandoned and helpless in the Gulf Stream in plain sight of shore, it is easily understandable with what relief this change in routing was greeted by the passengers.
We stood out in the face of a freezing wind past Cape Henry, bound southeast to clear Cape Hatteras, steaming by ourselves, unconvoyed, and with the knowledge now that we should have no convoy at any stage, for the Navy had no destroyers to spare for escorts. Our safety was to depend solely on our ability to avoid attack or on our guns and our Armed Guard crews in case we failed in avoidance. As one sailor who had considerable knowledge of submarines to another, I went to see our skipper for a discussion on how best he might minimize the danger of U-boat contacts.
I found the skipper rather difficult to talk to. He had a distrust (not uncommon among merchant officers of that day or before) of all naval officers as being not really practical seamen and perhaps with exaggerated notions also of their own importance and abilities. Furthermore, this particular skipper turned out to be an irascible individual, with whom no one, not even his own mates, could take a point of view even slightly differing from his own, without evoking instantly a most bellicose attitude which made further discussion of the subject unpleasant, if not impossible.
He was a large man physically, round-faced, red-faced, and apparently nearing sixty. But in spite of all his years, he had evidently never learned that authority comes from a quiet inner assurance of superior knowledge and capability and not from blustering.
In background, I learned that he had put in his entire life at sea in the coasting service. Never apparently (till the voyage he was now engaged on) had he been off soundings on an open ocean voyage (nor had his ship, which he had captained for the last sixteen years).
Still, as diplomatically as I knew how, seated comfortably in the captain’s cabin over the mid-morning coffee, I opened the subject of submarines and their operating limitations in attack. On this subject I certainly could claim more knowledge than the captain and could inform him how he might take advantage of those limitations in avoiding contact. In particular, I told him I was gratified by our new destination, San Juan, which would help by taking us far away, in that winter season, from the warm coastal areas and the traffic concentrations whi
ch joined to make the Florida coast most attractive just then for U-boat operations.
“Well, you’re wrong on our route, Commander,” announced the skipper. “I’m following the Florida coast down to Cuba, then along the Cuban coast to Porto Rico.”
Had the skipper heaved his cup of hot coffee into my face, I could not have been taken more aback. Incredulously I stared at him. Take a longer and very roundabout course through dangerous coastal waters to Porto Rico rather than the direct and safer route over the open sea? I could hardly believe my ears.
Then slowly the situation dawned on me. The skipper was like the old milk wagon horse, which all its life, day after day, had followed the same prosaic milk route till it was second nature. So when it was finally taken out for a Sunday joy ride hauling a buggy, it still persisted obstinately in dragging the buggy over the milk route, making every stop, ignoring the driver’s frantic tugs at the reins, trying to get it out into the country.
I saw it all. No more than with that milk wagon horse was it possible to get the skipper off the old familiar route. To the skipper, the route down the coast to Miami was also second nature—for thirty-five years, more or less, he had traveled it voyage after voyage. No war and no U-boats were going to get him and his ship off the route he knew, into strange waters.
I sank back into my chair, smothered my astonishment. I had to get the skipper to change his mind. Sure that I had correctly estimated his motives and that no harping on the U-boat dangers along his intended course would do anything but antagonize him and stiffen his ill-advised disregard of those dangers, I took another tack.
Under the Red Sea Sun Page 3