Proceeding at 8 knots and making slow headway, Tabberer “pitched and pounded” through a dark night filled with “weird sounds of shrieking winds” of gale force. Although the typhoon had “left the scene”—rushing westward before finally curving northward—bolts of lightning electrified the sky, followed by booming claps of thunder.
Chief Radioman Ralph E. Tucker, twenty-seven, of Somerville, Massachusetts, had been hunkered down all day in Tabberer’s radio shack trying to take his mind off the “terrific rolling” of the ship by reading Bob Hope’s book I Never Left Home, the comic’s account of entertaining members of the armed forces during the war. Admittedly very frightened, the barrel-chested and normally happy-go-lucky Tucker would not realize the book was funny “until two days after the storm.”
At 9:50 P.M., Tucker was on an upper deck rigging an emergency radio antenna near the forward stack to restore communications when he heard a shout and noticed a small light shining in the water.
“Man overboard!” Tucker yelled. “Light off starboard beam!”
The radioman was close enough to the bridge to be heard by Plage, who feared “one of our men” had gone over the side. He directed the duty boatswain’s mate to sound the man-overboard alarm, which was soon clanging loudly followed by the “terrifying word” over the public address system that no sailor ever wanted to hear, let alone at night in storm-tossed seas: “All hands, man stations to rescue man overboard.”
Someone from the bridge hollered to Tucker asking what had happened. The chief answered that it was “not one of our men” who had fallen overboard but possibly someone from “another ship.”
Peering through the line of portholes on the bridge, Plage scanned the darkness. He spotted the light off the starboard beam, blinking on and off as it “rose and sank among the waves.” He had the 24-inch searchlight turned on and sighted a “waving man” in a life jacket.
Plage ordered the helmsman to a new course. In picking up survivors, the usual procedure—and one that Tabberer’s crew had practiced countless times—was to maneuver the ship downwind, turn the bow into the wind, and proceed upwind, as a ship did when approaching a mooring buoy. The equipment needed for a rescue comprised two cargo nets thrown over the side, life rings with long lines attached, and other lines with monkey’s fists tied at the end. Also needed were a couple of capable swimmers in life jackets with safety lines attached. As the ship neared the survivor, lines were thrown to the man; in the event he was unable to reach them, they were taken to him by a swimmer. The man would then be hauled in. Two men were stationed on the heavy-webbed cargo nets to help him onto the deck, where other sailors waited to assist.
With Tabberer in position downwind, Plage discovered that as their forward momentum slowed in the face of the gale-force winds he lost steering control, and the “large seas and strong wind” kept pushing the ship away from the man in the water. Plage realized that normal procedures wouldn’t work in this sea state. Electing to take a “calculated and highly dangerous risk,” he drove the ship upwind on the windward side and about 50 yards from the man in the water, and turned broadside to the heavy seas so that the waves and wind would push them sideways toward the drifting man. The seas accommodated the maneuver, taking the ship “in their grip at once.” As Tabberer rolled heavily with the onrushing swells—so far over that the edge of the main deck dipped underwater—she was hurried toward the man like a “huge hunk of tumbleweed” blowing across the Texas Panhandle. Plage knew it would be tricky work bringing the man aboard before the careening vessel overran him. It certainly wasn’t the way he or anyone else had been taught to conduct at-sea rescues.
All the ship’s lights were now blazing so as not to lose sight of the life-jacketed man, and sailors on deck stood at the ready to take part in the rescue operation. With Plage at the conn, the senior officer on the weather deck was the ship’s executive officer, Lieutenant Robert M. Surdam, the upstate New Yorker and bank president’s son who had previously served in the Atlantic on the destroyer Warrington, which had gone down three months earlier in the Caribbean during a typhoon with the loss of more than 250 of Surdam’s former shipmates. In recently recommending Surdam for an appointment to the next class at the prestigious Naval War College staff course, Plage had stated that his second in command “demonstrated outstanding ability and initiative in carrying out his duties aboard this vessel.”
When they were close enough to the man in the water, Surdam shouted for him to grab the line about to be thrown and loop it under his arms. When the rolling ship was almost alongside, the line “flashed through the air.” The man reached out and caught it. Just then, the ship rocked hard and was pushed by the sea toward him. The vessel went sideways so quickly that it seemed impossible not to overrun the man. Deckhands quickly took in the slack on the line as “green water and white lather swirled over the edge of the deck and retreated.” When the water receded, the man in the life jacket was lying unconscious on the deck. He was quickly carried below to be examined by the destroyer escort division’s medical officer, Lieutenant Frank W. Cleary, twenty-seven, of Burlingame, California. Cleary, a 1943 graduate of the McGill Faculty of Medicine in Montreal, happened to be aboard Tabberer for this patrol—his first sea voyage—rather than on one of the squadron’s other five ships.
As soon as Plage received word on the bridge that the man in the water had been revived in sick bay and was claiming to be from a destroyer that had capsized during the typhoon, he rushed below to get firsthand information.
When Hull quartermaster August Lindquist awakened in sick bay, the first thing he wanted to know was how many of his shipmates from the sunken ship had been picked up. Told that no one knew anything about any lost ship, Lindquist, who had been at the helm of Hull when the destroyer went over, had been as shocked as Plage was upon arriving below and hearing from Lindquist the dramatic details of Hull’s capsizing.
“There are probably more men in the water,” said a weary Lindquist. “Probably right in this vicinity, sir.”
“We’ll look for them,” promised Plage, who told the sailor to rest.
Lindquist, who had been in the water approximately ten hours and was the first survivor rescued from any of the three lost destroyers, did as he was ordered and went to sleep. When he awakened it was past midnight on December 19—his twenty-fourth birthday.
As soon as Plage returned to the bridge, he ordered extra lookouts topside and searchlights turned on in spite of the danger of being spotted by an enemy submarine, a possibility they were keenly aware of, as they were now “only 150 to 200 miles off the coast of Luzon,” where they had been “hunting submarines for the past month or so.” He undertook a retiring search—“start at the center and expand as you go out.” Plage figured they could “get the most men that way,” with less danger of passing up anybody. Steaming on various courses and speeds, Tabberer commenced a systematic search for further survivors. As noted in the ship’s log, results were forthwith:
2215 Recovered second man.
2230 Recovered third man.
2245 Recovered fourth and fifth man.
2255 Recovered sixth and seventh man.
2315 Recovered eighth, ninth and tenth man.
2320 Recovered eleventh man.
Near enough to Tabberer to see “the loom” of her searchlights sweeping back and forth over the horizon, the destroyer Dewey, commanded by Charles R. Calhoun, the Annapolis classmate of both James Marks of Hull and Bruce Garrett of Monaghan, was steaming on course for the fleet’s fueling rendezvous the following morning. On Dewey’s bridge, it occurred to Calhoun that another ship—he thought at the time that the light “must be from Tabberer”—“might have found someone in the water.” He turned his vessel in that direction and “headed over to see what was happening,” knowing that if a rescue operation was under way, “Dewey could be of some assistance.”
The new course put the ship “more directly into the sea,” and Dewey began to “pitch and pound heavily.”
It was a motion that all hands “had come to know only too well during the past two days.” Nevertheless, Calhoun picked up the phone and called one level below to the sea cabin of the destroyer squadron commander, Captain Preston Mercer, so he would “understand the reason for the slamming.” Mercer responded that he thought Dewey, whose forward stack had failed during the storm and was still “draped over the starboard side,” should “turn back to our previous heading,” as there was “some risk that the pounding” might aggravate any other damage Dewey had incurred in the storm. Mercer made his decision in spite of being told that a light signal from another ship—identified as Tabberer—indicated she was picking up survivors in the water. Calhoun heeded Mercer’s “advice and abandoned” lending assistance to the rescue operations. In a darkened state with no searchlights shining and no extra lookouts topside, Dewey knifed through blackish waters filled with shipwrecked men without spotting or picking up a single one.
At 1:10 A.M., ten minutes after Dewey turned away, heading for the Third Fleet rendezvous as ordered, Tabberer, operating on her own and with her own storm damage for Plage to be concerned about, picked up a twelfth survivor. A little over an hour later the thirteenth man was brought aboard. The survivors, all off Hull and diagnosed by the doctor as suffering “exhaustion from overexposure,” had been found over a swath of ocean covering “some 25 square miles.”
Taking charge of the deck crew during rescue operations was senior watch officer Howard Korth, who stripped off his uniform and dove into the water four times to assist men up to the cargo net—at times from as far as 75 feet away. He worked in tandem with Boatswain’s Mate Louis Purvis, also a strong swimmer. Once, coming back with a weakened young sailor who looked to Korth “about 15 or 16 years old and trying to grow his first moustache,” they became caught in “tremendous suction” off Tabberer’s bow and were “banged against it” and dragged down. Korth couldn’t keep his grasp on the young sailor. When the officer surfaced, he realized he had “lost him”—the sailor with the baby face.
Purvis was nowhere to be seen, and Korth, who finally made it to the cargo net, thought he might be gone, too. Soon, however, a sputtering Purvis surfaced on the opposite side of the ship. He had been drawn completely under the hull and had to slip out of his life jacket, tethered to a lifeline that became fouled on the sonar dome, in order to surface and be hauled aboard like a half-drowned cat. After being “pumped out a bit,” Purvis recovered. He then observed to the delight of all, “Dammit, I bet I’m the first sailor to be keelhauled in 200 years,” referring to the old, outlawed form of punishment whereby malcontents were attached to lines or chains and hauled under ships from one side to the other a prescribed number of times—a “painful and often fatal experience.”
During the night, Plage stopped the ship every ten minutes, and the ventilating blowers in the bridge structure were turned off to reduce the noise level. All lights were also turned off, and everyone topside searched for life jacket lights and listened for whistles and shouts. With the navigational equipment inoperable, the careful box search had to be conducted entirely by dead reckoning. This required constant course changes to the north, east, south, and west at “so many minutes per leg.”
At 3:10 A.M., with the emergency radio finally working thanks to the jury-rigged antenna set up by Chief Tucker, Tabberer transmitted the first news of the loss of Hull, the number of survivors being pulled from the water, and their approximate location.
The fourth Hull survivor picked up by Tabberer had been Storekeeper Ken Drummond, who when he was washed overboard from the overturned ship had thought about how much his death was going to upset his mother. After being pulled down in the water, then “popping out of the water about 20 feet into the air,” Drummond landed “butt first” in a life raft. Dropping next to him within a few seconds had been Boatswain’s Mate Chief Ray Schultz, who turned to Drummond and said, “You don’t look too good.” Schultz added calmly, “Don’t believe the storm’s as bad.” With that, another swell hit the raft, sending both men “flying off in different directions.” Alone until almost dark, Drummond bumped into Chief Radioman Francis “Burt” Martin. They discussed the situation and decided to tie themselves together for the night. As they undid their life jackets and were in the process of hooking them together, another swell hit, separating the two men. Drummond did not see Martin again until the chief was picked up by Tabberer the day after it found the storekeeper. After finding himself alone again, Drummond began hallucinating, seeing a vision of a Model A Ford that was “black with chrome around the headlights and grille.” It seemed to be only about 10 feet away, and he thought if he could get on the hood, he might be able to rest. He swam toward the Ford, but it remained the same distance away. The next thing he saw was a “very bright light.” He started blowing the whistle attached to his life jacket “as hard as I could possibly blow.” He heard a voice say, “There he is!” A line was thrown to him. When Drummond became entangled, Purvis leaped off Tabberer’s deck into the water and supported the struggling sailor as he was hauled aboard.
The next man picked up by Tabberer had been Hull Seaman 1st Class Carl Webb, nineteen, born in Oklahoma and raised on a cattle ranch, where he “rode bucking horses” and helped his father farm 600 acres of cotton. Webb had the 4:00-to-8:00-A.M. watch at a 40 mm gun director, and when he was relieved he decided the sea was too rough to go back to the crew’s quarters, so he stayed topside—a decision that saved his life. When the ship went over, he was tossed quickly into the sea, which was fine by Webb because he could “swim like hell” and knew it beat being “trapped below.” As for the 50 percent of Hull’s crew of 258 men that Webb estimated were below in the crew’s quarters—where they “dogged themselves in from the inside” via a secured hatch that “never was broken open” after the ship went over—it was his impression that “none got out and all went down with the ship.” When about 10 minutes later the boiler blew up, it felt to Webb “like a big earthquake.” After being rescued, Webb was given a shower and shown to the executive officer’s empty cabin, where he quickly went to sleep in Surdam’s bunk.
The growing contingent of Hull survivors aboard Tabberer that first night included radarman Michael “Frenchy” Franchak, who had escaped from the chart room when it was nearly underwater only to enter the sea amid the dead bodies of shipmates still being battered against the side of the ship. After losing hold of a life raft, Franchak found himself drifting alone in his life jacket, certain that he must be the only survivor. He soon realized he was “bleeding like a stuck pig” under one arm from something sharp protruding from the small flashlight attached to the life jacket. Several hours later, still bleeding and with his “bloodied dungaree shirttail floating free,” Franchak saw a single fin. When it disappeared under the surface, “shivers went up and down” Franchak’s spine. In the next instant, he took “quite a wallop” on his right side, enough to “jerk my head like a whiplash.” Knowing he had been bumped by the shark, he figured “this was it.” Remembering a Reader’s Digest article about striking two objects together underwater to “scare sharks away,” Franchak started frantically hitting the heels of his shoes together and didn’t stop until “the shoelaces wore out and the shoes fell off.” He never had “any more trouble from the shark.” A couple of hours after dark, he heard voices and swam toward them. When he got close enough, he asked if they had a raft. The answer was, “No, have you?” Franchak replied, “Never mind. I’ll keep going.” The three Hull sailors—sharing one life jacket between them—“pleaded and begged” Franchak to come with them. He agreed, and soon had “these guys hanging on me.” When Franchak went under and came up coughing, he had to knock one of the guys free of him with his elbow. They drifted along with things looking “absolutely hopeless” until suddenly a spotlight appeared on the horizon. Beseeching the three men to swim toward the light, Franchak pretty much had to carry them along, as they kept hanging on to the powerfully built radarman. When Tabberer came alongside
and lines were thrown to the men, the other three were too weak to get them around themselves, and Franchak had to tie them so they could be pulled in. With the others aboard, a line was dropped in the water for Franchak, but at that moment the ship rolled away from him, after which they had “a tough time” rescuing him. He was finally pulled aboard at 2:30 A.M., the thirteenth and last man rescued by Tabberer that night.
At sunrise, Plage, still on the bridge, decided that rather than heading belatedly for the fleet’s fueling rendezvous, Tabberer, still limping along without radar and limited radio communications, would keep searching for survivors in seas that had settled to a height of 8 to 10 feet with winds not exceeding 20 miles per hour. His decision was soon rewarded with positive results:
0605 Recovered fourteenth and fifteenth survivors.
0630 Picked up sixteenth survivor.
0708 Picked up seventeenth survivor.
0723 Picked up eighteenth survivor.
One of the survivors picked up that morning—all from Hull—was Chief Quartermaster Archie DeRyckere, the former youth boxer from Montana who, when the ship rolled over the last time, had assisted the injured Greil Gerstley to the highest point atop a searchlight platform next to the bridge. When the destroyer sank beneath them, DeRyckere had come struggling to the surface just as the boiler exploded. Gerstley, the executive officer who might have relieved Marks of command in an effort to save the ship except for his dread of being “tried for mutiny and hanged,” was never seen again. DeRyckere did see Marks in the water, however. That evening, as Hull’s captain floated past in his life jacket, he asked DeRyckere if he would like to know the time. “Appreciate it,” said the chief, without grasping at all why the time of day would be useful information. Checking his watch, Marks said, “Five after six,” then drifted away. Some hours later, DeRyckere spotted a ship, which the quartermaster signaled in Morse code with blinking dots and dashes on his small flashlight: “SOS. Send help.” The ship, apparently signaling another ship in the area, flashed a Morse code message that DeRyckere was able to read: “We are departing area.” DeRyckere’s angry thought weighed heavily on him throughout the long night: They’re leaving us out here.*
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