Attacked at Sea

by Michael J. Tougias

  There was another man swimming nearby, third mate Thomas Burke, who joined the small band escaping the wreck.

  “Keep going,” said Sorli.

  “No time to stop now,” added the other sailor.

  “I’m trying,” said Lucille.

  “Then why do you keep stopping?” Sorli asked.

  “Because my pajamas are falling down,” said Lucille, yanking up her waterlogged pajama pants.

  Burke snorted. “Okay, can’t help that,” he said. “I think we’re just about out of danger, but we should keep swimming to get clear of the debris and oil.”

  Lucille had taken swimming lessons in South America and knew how to kick and paddle with her arms, so she kept at it, remembering her mother’s glowing approval when she’d advanced a level. That warm, sunny place seemed so foreign and far away now.

  The 11-year-old felt tears and panic welling up with the memory of her mother smiling when Lucille and Sonny demonstrated the swimming strokes they’d learned. But swimming in a Costa Rican lagoon was far different from putting the skills to the test in the open ocean. Waves slapped her face, debris from the wreck got in her way, and there were no sandy beach and dry towel waiting for her. She tried to breathe steadily and stay close to Roy Sorli.

  Human noises could be heard in the darkness, vague groans and men hollering. But there were no voices Lucille recognized. My parents must be looking for me, she thought, but why can’t I hear them calling?

  12

  THE RAFT

  SONNY AND RAY

  Sonny could not believe his eyes. It was as if his father had risen from the dead, the way he’d burst from the water.

  When the boat initially lurched and the family became separated, the avalanche of water pushed Ray back down the staircase and washed him around like a matchstick. Several times he found air pockets, only to be pulled back under the swirling water. Somehow, by swimming and being pushed by the water, Ray found himself in the flooded galley. He hollered for Sonny, Ina, and Lucille, but no one answered.

  Ray repeatedly dived down into the black water, frantically groping around. He was feeling for a body in case one of his family members had also been washed into the room and was trapped. Where are they? They could be on the outside of the ship in the ocean. They could have been flushed to the bottom of the mahogany staircase and unable to get back up. The ship was making terrible groaning noises from metal being twisted by intense water pressure, and there were loud hissing sounds from escaping air. Time was running out. Ray was afraid the Heredia would plunge to the seabed at any moment.

  Seeing light coming from a window, he swam to it and used his feet to break the glass, slashing his right leg just above the knee.

  Ray swam through the glass and kicked to the surface, and the first thing he saw was the tiny upper gun deck illuminated by a bright light. He was confused, but he didn’t waste any time, immediately swimming to the deck and scrambling aboard. The first word he heard was “Dad!”

  Ray hugged his son and then assessed the situation, noting that the captain and Conyea were the only other people on the deck. The U-boat was just 200 yards away, off the stern. Ray thought the Germans might open fire with their machine guns at any second. He turned to the captain and Conyea.

  “What the heck is the matter with you guys? We gotta get off this ship!”

  Captain Colburn responded, “We can’t get the raft out of the mounts.”

  Ray pushed the captain aside, yelling, “You jackasses!” Next, he took a quick look at the way the raft was mounted. He squatted, putting both hands under one side of the balsa wood, and in a single quick motion wrenched it free of the brackets.

  Ray turned back to the captain. “I’m going to have Sonny lie on top of one side of the raft, and while he’s holding on, I’ll slide it into the water. Then we’ll jump in the water and swim to it.”

  “I need to be on it when you slide it off!” shouted the captain.

  “Why?”

  “I can’t swim,” Colburn responded.

  Ray jabbed a fist into the captain’s chest, roaring, “Well, you’re going to learn real quick, because my son goes first!”

  Sonny, watching this exchange, was as stunned as Colburn. He had viewed the captain as the ultimate authority, like a school principal. Now, however, there had been a clear shift in who was in charge, and Sonny sensed that the change was permanent. He knew what his father was like when he was riled and in a hurry.

  Ray felt a sense of urgency beyond the threat of the ship sinking, beyond the possibility of the U-boat’s machine guns firing at them, and even beyond the chance of the ship’s boiler exploding and blowing the Heredia to smithereens. He wanted to get that raft in the water immediately and start searching for his wife and daughter. His bleeding knee throbbed, but he ignored it and stepped toward the raft.

  “Get out of the way!” Ray shouted at the captain.

  Colburn moved aside.

  Ray positioned the raft at the aft section of the deck, where the drop to the water would be only about four feet. Then he lifted Sonny and put him on top, saying “Just hold on tight. As soon as I slide you down, I’m jumping off, and I’ll climb on the raft right next to you. We’re going to be all right.”

  Sonny hugged one side of the hollow square, his fingers digging into the canvas. Terrified of going back down into the dark ocean, he closed his eyes. Then he felt his father slide the raft a foot or two and shove it over the side.

  The raft splashed into the water with a jolt, and Sonny lost his grip but managed to stay onboard. He lifted his head and saw his father, Conyea, and the captain leap off the deck and into the sea. They landed just a couple of feet away amid floating debris. The three men scrambled aboard, and Ray immediately lay on top of Sonny, trying to protect the boy, worried that the Germans might strafe them with bullets from their machine guns. The three adults used their hands to begin paddling the raft away from the crippled ship.

  Ray’s weight was pushing Sonny so low that he swallowed seawater and tried to squirm out from under his father, his lungs screaming for air.

  * * *

  U-BOAT COMMANDER WÜRDEMANN

  Commander Würdemann watched the boy and the men escape the ship, but he kept his searchlight on the Heredia. He stayed nearby to make sure the vessel sank.

  Würdemann and the other Germans on the conning tower were amazed that part of the Heredia was still floating after taking multiple torpedoes to its hull. He could hear people shouting for help in the water, but that was of no concern to him. The commander kept his searchlight on the stricken ship, thinking the time had come to blast it with his deck gun. He watched the men on the raft furiously paddling and kicking away with their arms and legs. The commander decided to give the ship a little more time before he put an artillery shell into its hull.

  Würdemann stood by the Heredia for a few more minutes and then saw what he’d been waiting for. The bow of the ship finally gave up the fight and followed the stern into the sea. The commander later recorded the following in his war diary: “Steamer settles astern quickly. Initially the foreship protrudes up to the bridge, later however that sinks also … Accepted size: 5,200 gross registered tons.”

  Würdemann ordered the sub to move away, to see if he could find and sink another ship in the same night.

  * * *

  Ray’s fear that the U-boat would strafe them with the machine gun was unfounded. Throughout World War II, there was only one documented case of a German U-boat commander ordering his men to open fire on survivors in the water or on life rafts. In the hundreds of other sinkings by U-boats, there was not a single case or accusation of this kind of behavior. In fact, just two days before the Heredia attack, a U-boat commander had gone out of his way to help a survivor: a sailor with a shattered elbow was struggling to stay afloat in the ocean after his ship was torpedoed. He was unable to reach a life raft on which other survivors had found refuge. The U-boat commander saw his plight and “scooped him up with th
e bow” of his submarine. Then, in broken English, the commander called to the life raft to “come on over and get this man.” After the men on the life raft picked up the injured man, one shouted to the U-boat commander that they wanted cigarettes. The commander threw over two packs and said, referring to the attack, “You can thank Mr. Roosevelt for this, I am sorry.”

  German U-boat men, from Dönitz all the way down to the lowest-ranking sailor, had a code of conduct that did not allow the killing of survivors in the water. However, in the Pacific, it was a very different scenario. Japanese submarine commanders routinely tried to kill anyone who didn’t go down with the ship.

  On the night of July 2, 1944, Japanese submarine I-8, commanded by Tatsunosuke Ariizumi, sent two torpedoes into the U.S. ship Jean Nicolet in the Pacific. All of the crew and passengers on the Jean Nicolet were able to safely abandon the sinking ship and board life rafts and lifeboats. A Japanese sailor ordered the survivors onto the bow of I-8, where they were brutally attacked. When the sub crash-dived to avoid an approaching aircraft, the injured were washed into the sea, many with their hands tied. Of the 100 men who evacuated the sinking ship, 24 survived.

  13

  A MOST HOPELESS NIGHT

  SONNY AND RAY (FIRST HOUR IN THE OCEAN)

  The raft’s square shape didn’t help, but Ray, Conyea, and the captain were able to get some distance from the sinking ship. At any minute they expected disaster to strike from an explosion of the Heredia’s boiler, or a whirlpool of suction if the ship suddenly went down. Bits of debris floated all around them, but they saw no other survivors.

  Sonny had managed to squirm out from under his father, and he was now in the middle of the raft. His arms clutched the raft’s edge and his legs dangled in the ocean. The three adults were in similar positions, either on the middle or outside edge of the raft.

  Conyea started to say something, but Ray suddenly yelled, “I can hear Ina shouting! I’m going back!”

  “You can’t go back,” hollered Captain Colburn. “You’ll never make it!”

  Conyea, too, shouted at Ray. “The ship is going to sink any minute! The sub is still there. I can see its light!”

  “I don’t care,” boomed Ray. “I heard Ina!”

  “You can’t be sure it was her!” pleaded the captain.

  Sonny was terrified that his father would leave him and never make it back. He watched in fear as his dad moved from the middle of the raft to the outer edge. Conyea positioned himself next to Ray, grabbing Ray’s life jacket. “Your son needs you here!”

  Ray swatted Conyea’s arm away, then looked back at Sonny. He was torn between keeping his son alive and making a dash for the voice that he was sure was Ina’s.

  “Let’s listen,” reasoned Captain Colburn, “and see if we hear another shout.”

  Ray moved back toward Sonny.

  The four survivors didn’t speak as the raft drifted farther from the death throes of the Heredia. The vessel continued to emit loud bubbling and gurgling noises as it settled lower in the water.

  Finally, the captain broke the silence. “The sub has moved off. I can’t see its light.”

  “Can anyone see the ship?” asked Conyea.

  Without the light from the sub, none of the survivors could see the vessel, nor could they hear the noises it had made just minutes earlier. Ray tried to put Ina out of his mind and focus on saving his son.

  “We can sit on the edge of the raft,” said Ray to the others, “but we gotta spread out.”

  Conyea took two strokes and perched on the edge opposite Ray. The captain, his face in a tense grimace because he didn’t know how to swim, slowly inched to the side just to the right of Ray and carefully pulled himself up. Sonny went to the side of the square to the left of his father. The boy pulled himself up and into a sitting position. Because Sonny weighed only a third as much as each of the other men, his side of the raft rose out of the water, while the captain’s end was so low that the water almost reached his neck.

  “This won’t do!” bellowed Ray. “One wave and we’re going over. Mr. Conyea, you and I gotta scoot over closer to Sonny’s side.”

  This simple move helped balance the raft. However, the weight of the three men plus Sonny was enough to submerge the raft a few inches, so that from the waist down their bodies were underwater. It was a delicate balancing act, but at least their upper torsos were relatively dry, which would help ward off hypothermia.

  Ray glanced at Sonny, worried that the boy would be the first victim of the cold ocean because of his small size.

  “Are you cold, son?”

  “I’m okay, Dad.”

  “Well, if you get really cold, just tell me, and you can sit on my lap and I’ll wrap my arms around you.”

  The air temperature was in the upper 60s and the water temperature about 75 degrees. The relatively warm temperature of the ocean might not seem dangerous, but it was far short of the normal 98.6-degree body temperature. Making matters worse, cold water draws off a person’s heat about 25 times faster than air does at the same temperature. If Sonny’s core temperature dropped to 95 degrees, he’d start shivering. Soon his extremities would start to feel numb as the blood vessels constricted. That is the body’s way of decreasing heat loss through the skin and keeping blood flowing to the vital organs. Layers of fat would also slow the cooling of the blood, but eight-year-old Sonny was as thin as a sapling.

  * * *

  INA (FIRST HOUR IN THE OCEAN)

  Ina, too, was chilled by the unforgiving ocean. She floated near the ship and could hear horrifying sounds of people screaming and the vessel breaking apart. A broken board bumped into her and she grabbed it, leaning forward and kicking her feet to propel herself away from the ship, the destruction and carnage.

  She and her family had been told countless times during lifeboat drills that a sinking ship creates tremendous suction and whirlpools that might drown anyone nearby, but now it was real. As she fought to put distance between herself and the doomed Heredia, the water around her boiled with bubbles, and debris popped up to the surface.

  She found her voice. “Raymond! Sonny! Lucille!” she screamed again and again, knowing it would be a miracle for her shouts to carry above the cries of the injured and the awful noises of the ship being torn apart by the sea. Her mind was wild with thoughts of losing her children. If only she had held tighter to Lucille. The girl’s last plea for her mother haunted Ina’s thoughts.

  When she stopped for a breath, she felt small fish bumping against her legs, sending Ina into a frenzy of kicking to keep them at bay. Being alone in the water in the darkness of the night, coupled with the thought of predatory fish, tempted panic. Ina was traumatized. Fortunately, she could hear other voices from time to time, men’s voices, so she knew that others were nearby. She hoped a rescue ship would be arriving quickly. And she prayed that both Lucille and Sonny were with Ray.

  * * *

  LUCILLE (FIRST TWO HOURS IN THE OCEAN)

  “Where are the life rafts?” Lucille asked Sorli. “I can’t swim much longer.”

  “We’ll take care of you,” Sorli said. He grabbed a wooden box that was bobbing nearby. “We might be able to use this.” Then he popped the lid open and pulled out a long string of colorful flags. Lucille recognized them as the signal flags that had fluttered high up on the Heredia’s yardarms just the day before, when the ship arrived in Corpus Christi. They were a stark contrast to the black water all around, but she couldn’t imagine what they’d do with flags. Perhaps wave them at a passing ship?

  Sorli grabbed a hatch cover that was floating nearby, and then a piece of wood. Burke helped him lash the flotsam together with the flags. “Okay, Lucille, climb up here,” Sorli said, helping her onto the makeshift raft. The sailors hung on to the edges to stay afloat, sometimes talking softly to each other and looking down into the dark water below.

  Lucille looked back at where she thought the ship had been, but it was now dark in all directions.

  �
�Who’s that?” called a voice nearby.

  “Sorli, Burke, and Robello, and one civilian!” Sorli answered.

  A man hanging on to a board appeared from the gloom— another member of the crew. “Any idea how many made it out?” he asked. Nobody answered.

  Sorli had been on watch when the first torpedo hit, and he knew the ship was just a few miles from the Ship Shoal buoy. He worried that the current of the nearby Mississippi River would push the survivors far into the Gulf by the time rescue planes were sent out. He estimated that by midmorning the New Orleans harbormaster would alert the navy that the Heredia was overdue. Because they were subject to radio silence, the harbormaster might hesitate to send search parties out immediately, giving the ship a buffer of time to reach its destination. If that were true, rescue planes might not launch until afternoon. And it could take the searchers more than 24 hours to find them. Sorli wondered if any of them would still be alive.

  Two torpedoes had ripped through the hull of the Heredia, ensuring that there was no time to send distress signals. Those same torpedoes blew apart the life rafts. The survivors would have to rely on the flotsam from the wreck to keep their heads above water until help arrived.

  Burke, at 23, was among the youngest of the sailors in the group, a recent Massachusetts Maritime Academy graduate who knew the code of the sea. Sailors always rendered help to others, but war was upending everything he knew. These U-boats were sinking anything they came upon, whether an oil tanker or a merchant ship. Burke hoped the Germans had spared the shrimp boats that plied the Gulf, knowing those were their best chance of rescue—if their paths crossed.