Down to the Sea

by Bruce Henderson

  One of the last to reach the floater net was Seaman 1st Class James P. Heater, twenty, of Auburn, Washington, who had been in the after crew compartment when the ship went over, and managed to swim “out from under the ship.” Although “pretty conscious at the time,” Heater, who was not wearing a life jacket, was having difficulty breathing due to his lungs being “full of water.” Wohlleb, one of the few men wearing a flotation device—a brown canvas life belt, inflated by “two new CO2 cartridges,” which he had kept on all morning because he had had a “funny feeling”—had Heater straddle him, then wrapped his arms around him.

  Also finding his way to the floater net was Quartermaster Edward Traceski, who when the ship went over had “climbed the wall” inside the bridge to the nearest exit and “just fell out into the drink.” With the rain stinging like needles on his face and arms, Traceski realized how foolish he was not to have been wearing his life jacket. Luckily, he was pushed by the wind and sea to the floater net, which he “just clung to.”

  Torpedoman Al Rosley, who had served aboard Spence since her commissioning, had been standing the 8:00-to-noon watch in the torpedo shack located behind the bridge and one level above the main deck. For most of the morning, as the ship “rolled over and came back,” Rosley had been hanging on, keenly aware that Spence was riding unusually high and “bobbing like a cork” in the worst sea conditions he had ever known. After the ship turned into the trough, Rosley judged it wasn’t “very long before we went over.” He pulled off the sound-powered headset he was wearing and opened the hatch above his head. Immediately, water started coming in. Fighting his way against the inflow of the sea, he barely made it out. Standing on the side of the ship, he jumped. While he was still only 10 or 15 feet away, Spence “rolled the rest of the way over.” Rosley was “blown way aft of the ship” by the wind and sea and found “the pressure so great” he had to cup his hand over his mouth and nose to breathe deeply. Unfortunately, his life jacket was still down below in his locker, but he was a strong swimmer, having grown up in western Maryland frolicking with his nine siblings in myriad lakes and rivers. He was pulled under several times but popped up still swimming. Willing himself to keep kicking and stroking, he swam his way right into the floater net, caught like a sardine—and gratefully so.

  For the rest of the afternoon, frightened men kept themselves lashed to the tarred rope and cork floaters, with legs and arms hooked inside the foot-square openings in the heavy webbing, desperately trying not to lose hold in the raging storm that churned the floater net into a “huge round mass of rope and rubber blocks.” As nightfall came, the high wind and driving rain subsided. Although the seas remained unruly, above them “the most beautiful South Pacific evening came into being.” The men were soon drifting silently under the stars.

  Wohlleb realized the man he was still holding had stopped breathing. He tried without success to find a pulse at the neck and wrist, then placed his hand over Heater’s heart, which was still.

  “Mr. Krauchunas, I don’t think he’s alive,” Wohlleb said.

  The other two officers in the group were in bad shape, which left the supply officer in charge. He had already inventoried the survival gear and supplies, finding two 5-gallon kegs of water, flares, K rations, a signal mirror, a dye marker, a hatchet, and some small bottles of medicinal whiskey.

  “You’ll have to let him go, Charlie,” Krauchunas said.

  Wohlleb did, watching his shipmate “sink slowly in the dark sea.”

  AT THE END it was the wind and not the sea that sealed Hull’s fate.

  Shortly after noontime, the ship—still being broadsided by great swells, and thereafter locked in a series of deep troughs—had rolled to “about 70 degrees” and begun to right herself when the wind “increased to an unbelievable high point,” which bridge personnel estimated at 125 miles per hour. The force of the wind “laid the ship steadily back over” to starboard and “held her down in the water” at an angle of “80 degrees or more,” allowing the seas to come flowing into her upper structures and down her stacks.

  The bridge quickly flooded, and men scrambled for the exit on the port side. When Boatswain’s Mate Ray Schultz crawled out onto the wing of the bridge, he found the skipper, who appeared “to be in shock,” already sitting there. It figured, Schultz thought, that Marks would be among the first out of a sinking ship and not the last man, as naval tradition dictated for the commanding officer.

  Not long after declining Schultz’s request to relieve Marks of his command in an effort to save the ship, executive officer Greil Gerstley was thrown headlong into a bank of equipment during a bad roll. Gerstley came up with the fingers on one hand “broken and bent back.” “Would you see if you could get me something,” he calmly asked Schultz, who had been trying to reach the first aid kit to find a splint and tape when the ship went over and “didn’t come back.”

  Gerstley now was halfway through the exit from the bridge, not asking for help but “pleading with his eyes” to several men standing nearby on the side of the ship. Two sailors reached down, gripped the executive officer under his arms, and raised him up the rest of the way.

  Quartermaster Archie DeRyckere assisted Gerstley in reaching the highest point of the ship: a searchlight platform on the port wing of the bridge. The chief sat down next to Gerstley, who was holding his shattered hand in front of him. The officer, shouting to be heard over the bedlam in which they had landed, said he wasn’t sure he would be able to swim.

  “When we go down, will you help me?” Gerstley asked.

  “Yes, sir,” said DeRyckere, pulling tight the straps on his life jacket.

  From their perch, DeRyckere saw sailors below in the water—wearing life jackets but unable to get clear of the ship—being battered against the “guns and appendages” that “kept hitting them.” The horrific scene made him determined to stay with the ship as long as possible. That point soon arrived: Hull “just sunk underneath” them like a diving submarine. The suction pulled DeRyckere so deep he thought his eardrums would burst. As he struggled to regain the surface, he heard a boiler explode, then the howl of the wind as he broke the surface. Gerstley was nowhere to be seen; neither was Schultz, Marks, or anyone else.

  Prior to Hull going over for the last time, Radarman Michael “Frenchy” Franchak, who would also earn the nickname “Moose” because of his physical strength, had been “sweating it out” in the crew’s galley, one level below the main deck just forward of the forward stack. Off watch since 4:00 A.M., he had stayed there rather than going back aft to the berthing compartment. Shortly before noontime, Franchak decided to head to his general quarters station on the bridge to fetch his life jacket. When he reached the radar shack, he had difficulty opening the door because there were so many men crowded into the small space—none of whom had any business there except for radar operators. Wanting to be above deck but having seen numerous men already washed overboard, they had all ducked inside the radar shack for cover. Franchak went to where he had left his life jacket, and found it gone. He saw his life jacket on Storekeeper 3rd Class Arnold Niss, of Chicago. Because Niss was “one of the best sailors on board,” Franchak told him he could keep it. Franchak found himself another one, which had the name Torkildson stenciled on the back. Knowing that Yeoman 3rd Class Keith Torkildson was “one of the men who had already been washed over the side,” Franchak slipped on the life jacket. Not wanting to stay in the crowded radar shack and with the ship riding like a roller coaster, he crawled through the bridge back to the chart room. On the way he noticed the “terrific pounding” Gerstley had taken, suffering what looked to Franchak like a compound fracture of the hand and perhaps lower arm.

  The chart room was filled with frightened sailors, and Franchak sat in a corner on a bucket—one of many set out to catch the water coming in through the overhead. Franchak realized he was getting so “wet from above” that he put on a steel battle helmet for protection. He wasn’t “annoyed for long” by the “plunking of dro
ps” on the helmet because a few seconds later “the ship turned very quiet” and rolled over on her side.

  The nearest exit was quickly nearly underwater, with just a thin horizontal slit showing. “Panic ensued” as “60 or 80 men made one dash for that opening.” As those in front reached the narrow opening, the “ship descended,” pushing them in the opposite direction. It was then Franchak made his move to get out, during which he “kicked and stepped over bodies.” The ship seemed to rise on a crest, causing the water to recede slightly from the exit, leaving a larger escape hole for Franchak. With his “chin barely above water all the way,” he grabbed on to “halyards, pipe stanchions, and whatever,” using all his strength to pull himself toward the opening. He came out near the platform for the forward 20 mm guns. His first impression was that the stacks were “making an awful hissing sound,” and then he was doused with “steaming hot oil” backing up the stacks from the fire room.

  Looking down into the sea, the first person Franchak saw was the captain, “the most hated officer on board ship.” Marks had two life jackets—one he was wearing and one he was holding tightly. The sight made Franchak “angry enough to go after him,” so he jumped. Immediately pulled underwater, he became disoriented and never saw Marks again.

  Franchak surfaced to a “panic-stricken scene.” A life raft had been freed forward, and once in the water it was soon overcrowded. Just as the men “all got settled,” the sea “hammered them against” a gun mount. To Franchak, it was “like breaking wooden matches.” Long after the screams ended, the sea kept battering the broken bodies against the ship.

  Making it to another raft, Franchak got hold of the rope handle and then was hit in the back of the head by what felt like a “loose timber” but was actually a swell breaking over him. Suddenly, he and the raft filled with men were “about thirty feet underwater,” “spinning like a top in a whirl-pool.” Not until the swell completely subsided were the men and raft “shot up like they were on an elevator” to the surface. By then, though, some men had let go. The first swell, in fact, took most of the men on the raft. Franchak and the others now knew the score—“inhale as much air into your chest and cheeks” as possible before being immersed. When the next swell came it was “just as strong,” but now the men “had a little experience” and their “chances to survive were better.”

  Storekeeper Ken Drummond, who had considered the loss of Billy Bob Dean off the wing of the bridge a forerunner of things to come for Hull and her crew, had been on the port wing of the bridge when the ship went over to stay. For some time before, he had been reassuring Boatswain’s Mate 2nd Class Robert E. Parker that the ship was “not going to sink.” A former Golden Gloves boxer nicknamed “Punchy,” Parker was the “toughest guy on the ship,” but he couldn’t swim and was afraid of the water. He sat on the deck beside Drummond, holding the storekeeper’s leg like a frightened child, asking repeatedly, “What are we going to do?”

  When Hull went over, Drummond found himself standing on the side of the ship looking aft at some guys “sitting on the side,” although there was “too much spray and wind” to recognize anyone. Then a wave hit Drummond and washed him overboard. The sea was “very cold and dark,” and he “assumed” he was a “goner.” One overriding thought crossed his mind at that moment: This is really going to upset my mother.

  Lieutenant ( j.g.) Lloyd Rust, the seagoing Texas lawyer, had gone on duty at 8:00 A.M. in CIC (Combat Information Center), one level below the bridge. There were no windows in CIC—the communications and electronics hub of the ship—so Rust “couldn’t see anything.” But he was wearing a voice-powered phone headset and had been hearing reports all morning from various locations on the ship. When the “worst thing happened” and Marks “put the ship in a trough”—“the last place you want to be in a storm”—Rust heard thereafter “all kinds of conflicting orders” coming from the bridge. It was clear to him that Marks was “quite upset” and “not doing any good” with his orders, which “kept changing back and forth.” If the captain had done any one of several things and “stuck to it long enough,” Rust thought, the ship might have made it. But Marks, who had “not been good at seamanship” since the day he took command of Hull, proved to be an “incompetent ship handler” to the end.

  The phone talker on the bridge kept reporting degrees of rolls as registered on the inclinometer. Around 11:30 A.M. he exclaimed, “It hit the stop on that one!” Rust knew that meant Hull had rolled in excess of 72 degrees, which was as high as the inclinometer went before “hitting the peg”—and beyond what was considered a recoverable roll for the decade-old destroyer. The ship “came back from that one,” but not long afterward, Hull went on her side.

  Arriving early to relieve Rust in CIC was Lieutenant ( j.g.) Don Watkins, the Carnegie Institute of Technology graduate who had come aboard as a new ensign more than a year before. Admittedly “not known for being early,” Watkins had been looking for something to do other than stay in the wardroom, where furniture and other loose items were sliding from bulkhead to bulkhead. Being early that morning “probably saved” his life, as most of the off-duty officers Watkins left in the wardroom when he headed for CIC “didn’t make it” off the ship.

  There was only one exit out of CIC. When it was obvious the ship wasn’t going to recover, Rust ordered the hatch to a weather deck opened. Water “rushed in right away,” and he told all the men to get out. Two or three times the ship was lifted by a swell, which caused the water to drain out of the room. Then when the ship dropped off the crest and went the other way, CIC filled again. Each time it drained, several men went out with the flow of water. The two officers, Rust and Watkins, were the last to exit. By the time they did, CIC was again nearly filled with seawater.

  When Watkins came out, he found quite a few enlisted men standing on the side of the ship, as well as engineering officer George Sharp, the admiral’s son. When Hull went over, Sharp had been on deck heading from the bridge to the engine room, where they had been “answering bells all morning,” maintaining a speed of “17 knots up until about 11 A.M.” Sharp suspected that when the ship had “lurched to starboard at about 11:30 A.M.,” the longitudinal bulkheads between three main fuel tanks amidships were “possibly carried away.” He knew that would cause many tons of oil in those tanks to flow in the direction the ship was rolling, thereby increasing the list and making recovery from rolls more difficult. He had planned to inspect the tanks, and if they were damaged to shift the fuel elsewhere, but he and Hull had run out of time.

  To Sharp and the others on the side of the ship it was clear that Hull was going to go down soon, as the vessel was “taking on water through both stacks,” which were spewing back hot oil, creating a scenario for a cataclysmic boiler explosion at any moment. Sharp began organizing the men to tie themselves together and go into the water as a group.

  Watkins began to assist, but on the next wave he was washed off. He came up treading water next to Fireman 2nd Class Roderick Mackenzie, twenty, of Los Angeles, California. Mackenzie was clearly having a difficult time keeping himself afloat, and Watkins quickly saw why.

  “Where’s your life jacket?” asked the officer.

  “Couldn’t get it,” Mackenzie said.

  “Hang on to me.”

  The kapok life jacket wasn’t designed to support two men, and they “weren’t doing too well together.” When a raft passed nearby, Watkins suggested Mackenzie “swim over and get on it.” As the raft was already full, Watkins decided to stay on his own. Mackenzie made it to the raft and was pulled aboard. Watkins waved goodbye to the sailor.

  When Rust came out of CIC he got “hung up and cut pretty badly” on the mast and its rigging before he was able to get clear of the ship. Once in the water he saw a life raft nearby with men hanging on it. He made for the raft, and when he reached it he joined in kicking and paddling in order to move farther away from the ship.

  Rust heard the rumbling before he saw the approaching swell. Looking u
p, he realized they were about to be hit by “a wave 70 feet or better.” When the swell struck, the raft and men tumbled end over end into a seemingly endless pit. Rust was kept underwater a long time before his life jacket finally started pulling him toward the surface. He came up under the raft, which had wooden slats across the bottom. He “almost drowned trying to get out from under the raft” and past all the exhausted men hanging on to the rope handles on the side. Deciding he would be better off alone, Rust pushed off and moved away.

  Rust had learned that each swell could be heard a couple of seconds before it hit, giving him time to take a deep breath before “it swallowed me up.” The waves were “so much and powerful” that they kept him tumbling underwater near the limit of his stamina. Just when he thought he was going to drown, he could feel the water rushing by as his life jacket brought him back up to the surface. He then had only enough time to take a couple of breaths before he heard the next swell coming. This went on for hours—all afternoon, in fact. Rust frankly wasn’t sure where he was finding the endurance to take such a beating.

  A nagging thought kept coming to the newly licensed barrister who had not yet set foot in a court of law as an attorney. Lloyd Rust knew he might have to be “resigned to the fact” that he was going to die.

  Fifteen

  It was several hours before the thirteen Monaghan survivors were able to fix the lashings for the wooden “latticework” bottom of the oblong raft and “let the wounded climb in.” Before that, each huge swell that hit ripped the men away from the handles and lines they were clutching, and scattered everyone in different directions. They kept having to “fish around to help the wounded back,” which left everyone “tired and weak.”