Maritime

Maritime Tales of the Sea

aboard her as a night watchman making sandwiches and coffee at night and then
getting the stoves coal burning in the morning and waking up the Cooks and Messman

There were women soldiers in the forward part of the ship and men in the back
part of the ship. They all got off at Lingyluen Gulf north of Manila. In the meantime
my contract with the H.J.C. was up so I came back to the US on a 2 stacker of the
President Lines. We got back to the US on the day the soldiers made their beach head
invasion.

I then went to New Orleans, Louisiana to an A.B. school and then to the Coast
Guard station in New Orleans where I took my A.B. test and passed it. Then went
back on a passenger ship to Manila where I went on board the USAT LST 715. On
board the LST 715 we went to Okinawa where we had about 200 Japanese prisoners of
war and sailed to Hiroshima. To have the POWs load up all the ammunition on board
the LST to get it off the island and while we were over there the First Mates came
down with infantile paralyses. So they kept the POWs onboard for two weeks.

We then went to Tokyo, Japan, and then back. My time was up so I came back
to the USA. Whenever I got home in 1947 I went to work as an iron worker in local
715 which later on became 798. And I retired in 1987 after 40 years.

CONWAY PETERSON
RICHLAND HILLS, TX 76180

On November 11, 1944 a Pullman car load of volunteers left Dallas for
Sheepshead Bay, New York. Over 30,000 trainees had passed through Sheepshead Bay
during 1944 before we arrived. We were assigned to barracks no. 4. We went to
clothing issue. We were stripped to our birthday suit and placed the clothes we wore in
a box and they were mailed back to our homes. We lined up and went through the
vaccination process. We were hit in both arms and once from behind. Our last shot
hurt very much. Going down the line we thought it was amusing the way they were
acting on their last shot--until we got ours. Our line of jay birds proceeded on down to
clothing issue. We were given underwear, socks, shirts, pants, shoes, a couple of navy
style caps and a pea coat. We were assembled in a building and were told what was
expected of us and to be good guys and to watch our liberty behavior.

I took Fireman, Water Tender and Oiler training. I was also on the Rowing
Team. Our barracks won first place three Saturdays in a row. Doing this, we were
noticed by the Barracks Watch Officers. I made pretty good grades in the above
training and applied for Pump School and Pump Tankers. After an interview for the
Pump School I ran into Watch Officer Ensign Alfred F. Nadeau. He asked me about
my plans. I told him I had applied for Pump School and with fourteen applying and
only eight openings I felt that I wouldn't make it. He asked who I interviewed with and
he did the rest to get me in that training.

I trained at the Standard Oil Refinery in New Jersey. I roomed in a private
residence on Staten Island. We had access to a lifeboat with a motor that we used to go
to New Jersey. While I was there I helped unload twelve tankers. We were trained by

301

Maritime Tales of the Sea

Captain Eklund who was with Standard Oil of New Jersey Board of Directors. I was
the one hundred thirty ninth trainee for pump man at Sheepshead Bay. After finishing
Pump School I rode a Pullman to Miami and then a flying boat to Coco Solo, Panama.
I spent three weeks in the Margurati Graduate Station. I replaced a pump man who
broke his hand. I rode an open air train along the Panama Canal to the Pacific side of
the canal.

I boarded the SS Murfreesboro, a 2-T tanker, and made two trips to the
Philippines. We sailed back through the canal to Aruba and picked up two loads for
Guantanamo Bay Cuba Naval Base and one load from Aruba to Avenmouth, England
and back to Aruba for a load to Providence, RI. I was on the ship for over six months.
After a brief stay on shore as an Oiler, I again sailed hauling bananas from Guatemala
to New Orleans and Sulfur from Galveston to Antwerpt, Belgium and London,
England.

After that I returned to the farm. After four years of meager living on the farm
I went to work for a defense plant in Fort Worth. While on this job I wrote a letter to
Captain Eklund who trained us to pump tankers. By return mail he offered me a pump
man job. I called him and made plans with the Coast Guard to have my updated
records ready for me at the Coast Guard Office on Wall Street in New York City, just a
couple of blocks from Standard Oil Company office. I moved to Baytown, Texas to be
near my work and I sailed coastwise on the job for a year, loading in Baytown. They
started putting their ships under foreign Rags. I then sailed with Tidewater Co. for
awhile. On these jobs I sailed for three months and was off one month with pay.

My Sunday school teacher worked for J. M. Huber Corp. in Baytown and he
recommended me for a job with them. I worked fifteen years at their plant in Baytown
and I was transferred to California where I was the manager for their new plant. I
retired after ten years in California and moved back to the farm near Roanoke, Texas
where I was raised.

GENE R. PHILLIPS

On May 17, 1945, I graduated from a small town high school in Dillsburg, Pa.
There were 26 in the graduating class including 5 boys who spend most of the senior
year in one of our armed forces. My hometown was Franklintown, Pa, population 225.

While in High School I was accepted for pilots training in the Air Force.
However, as the war in Europe was winding down, this program was ended, prior to
high school graduation. Graduation was on May 17, 1945, and the next morning I was
on a train heading for Baltimore Md. to join the Maritime Service. This was my first
train ride and my first time outside the state of Pennsylvania. This was less than 2
weeks after V - E Day. I was 17 years old.

My assignment was to train in Sheepshead Bay, NY, in the Engine Room and
after 3 months I was licensed as a Fireman- Watertender and also as an Oiler.

The First Trip: My first ship was the liberty ship SS EPHRAIM W
BAUGHMAN. The ship was loaded with army tanks in the lower holds and canned

302

Maritime Tales of the Sea

goods in the upper holds. There were 8 feet of draft remaining, so army trucks in crates
were stacked 3 high on the main deck using every bit of deck space. These stacks were
18-20 feet high. Loading was completed and this odd-looking and unstable vessel
headed for Manila, Philippines. V-J Day occurred in the final loading stages and we
thought that the trip would be cancelled because the war was over and we were hauling
military equipment. This was not the case.

We were nearing the Panama Canal and I was on the 12:00 midnight to 4:00AM
shift. We were traveling "FULL AHEAD" when we received the order for "FULL
ASTERN". Although I was a new sailor, I knew that you do not go from FULL
AHEAD to FULL ASTERN unless there is an unusual situation... The answer was
evident in a few minutes when the ship abruptly stopped and listed sharply. The night
was very foggy, there was no radar, and we had hit the breakwater at the entrance to the
Panama Canal. We missed the light house by about 300 feet.

The damage to the vessel was a hole in the port bow which was contained by a
fresh water tank. All that was lost was a large amount of fresh water and we continued
to the Philippines at our speed of275 miles per day which converts to 35 days for the
10,000 mile trip. The first 4 weeks were uneventful and then things it got interesting.
We hit a major typhoon, with winds around 140 mph. The decks were awash, the ship
was rolling 35 - 40 degrees and with our high center of gravity due to 20 feet high
stacks of trucks on the deck, we were in trouble. At about 2:00 AM while I was on
watch in the engine room, the report came that the tanks in holds 2 and 3 had broken
loose and were banging into each other and to the sides of the ship. At this time, I was
happy to be on watch, because all crew members had to go down into the holds and
lash the tanks together and to the columns. Several stacks of the trucks were lost
overboard.

We survived and continued to Manila and arrived mid-December 1945, where
the harbor was littered by hundreds of sunken ships. The ship was unloaded and it was
decided that the ship would be converted to take a load of Japanese prisoners of war
back home to Japan. The conversion was completed and the prisoners of war boarded
the ship. When the Japanese officials saw the hole in the bow and the damage caused
by the loose tanks, they rejected the ship and removed the Japanese troops. We headed
for the long trip back to New York with an empty ship. On the way back to Panama we
hit a coral reef at full speed (10.8 knots) near the Mariani Islands... Again, we backed

303

Maritime Tales of the Sea

off: and surveyed the damage. Now we had two holes in the bow. We stopped briefly in
Hawaii, where the damage was inspected, and then proceeded thru the Panama Canal
and then north to New York where the trip ended. The total length of the trip was 6
months. My Final Trips: 1. Liberty ship to Casablanca French Morocco; 2. Liberty
ship to northern Norway and Sweden; 3. Victory ship to the Mediterranean; 4. C-2 to
South America; 5. Tanker to Aruba

US Merchant Marine Academy, Kings Point, NY: I entered the academy on
July 1st 1947 as an engine room cadet, with the goal of receiving a license as Third
Engineer and a dual commission as Ensign in the US NAVY Reserve and the Maritime
Service. The plebe year went very well and I earned a scholastic star for being in the top
10 percent of my class and played on the varsity baseball team.

The second year is spent on merchant ships as a cadet. The ship was a
combination passenger and cargo ship. The passenger portion was about 30 people. We
took a load of general merchandise and delivered it down the west coast of South
America, making about 12 stops. Coming back we picked up copper, coffee and
bananas and ended back in New York. A round trip was about 6 weeks. During one of
the trips, some hot diesel fuel was splashed into my left eye. The ship dropped me off
at a hospital in Jacksonville, Florida. After a day or two in Jacksonville, I was sent on to
the Marine Hospital in Staten Island, NY, where I spent the next 3 months. My advisor
from the academy told me that I would have to spend an additional year due to time
lost in the hospital. He also reminded me that the requirements for the academy were
20-20 vision which was no longer my situation. He recommended that I consider
resigning. I was already two years older than most of my classmates and this made it
three years. I reluctantly resigned from the academy and returned home. At that time
the academy was not accredited and the degree was classified as "honorary"

US Army 1950-1952 (Korean War): After a few months at home, I received a
letter from my draft board inviting me to become a soldier. The former merchant
seamen were very popular in the draft in 1950 and there were 6 of us in my platoon.
Basic training was at Fort Belvoir, Va. and I was in the Army Corp of Engineers. We
completed about 4 months of training and were scheduled for Korea in two weeks.
Myself and three other soldiers were headed for home for a weekend pass when a tire
blew out and we hit a tree. Another accident for me. I spent the next 3 months in the
Valley Forge Army Hospital and finished my 2 years commitment at Fort Meade Md.
and Indiantown Gap Military Reservation, Pa. I was then 24 years old, and had spent 7
years primarily in the Merchant Marines, The US Merchant Marine Academy and the
US Army.

"One Company" Career: I began to work for the Goodyear Tire & Rubber
Co in Nov. 1952, in Harrisburg, Pa. After moving to Albany NY, Cleveland Oh, New
Orleans La, back to Cleveland, Chicago Il., and finally to the home office in Akron, Oh,
I was able to settle down. I spent the next 24 years in Akron and retired in 1992 as
Director of Distribution Services with responsibility for the distribution centers and
transportation. I traveled extensively throughout the world. There were 3000

304

Maritime Tales of the Sea

Distribution personnel in North America alone. Upon retiring, I worked as a consultant
for 5 years.

Giving Back Phase: I am still in this phase. I perform about 750 volunteer
hours per year at a hospital, a nursing home and my church. For recreation, I play golf
3 or 4 times a week in the warm months and bowl in two leagues in the winter and the
seasons overlap.

My Family: I married my wife Marilyn on April 7, 1951 while I was still in the
US Army. We have 2 daughters and a son, and 5 grandchildren. Our marriage lasted 45
years until the death of Marilyn in 1997. My daughter Barbara lives in Virginia, my
daughter Mary Lynn lives in Ohio, and my son Richard lives in St. Cloud, Minnesota.
My love for the sea continues as I take 3 or 4 ocean cruises every year.

RODGER E. PIERCY
"STARVING SAILORS SPARE AILING BIRD"

During our country's involvement in several wars this century millions of
American servicemen and women sailed across various oceans. Few, however, had such
a harrowing crossing as did Paradise's Rodger E. Piercy, and his account is the most
dramatic war story I've ever heard.

Before I begin, let me say that Mr. Piercy, a truly modest man, didn't seek me
out and I only learned about him from one of his friends. Even his wife said "I didn't
learn about his wartime experiences until after we were married three years."

But once Piercy began telling me the story, the memories of 56 years ago, when
he survived the ordeal of 31 days at sea in a lifeboat, came pouring out. But let's not get
ahead of ourselves.

Piercy grew up in the small central valley town or Orosi, near Fresno. In 1940,
before Pearl Harbor, he joined the Merchant Marine and made trips to Hawaii on the
Matson Lines. In April 1942, just four months after the Pearl Harbor bombing, a new
Liberty Ship, the Stephen Hopkins was launched in Richmond, and in a few months
Piercy was a crew member on the ship's maiden voyage, which would take the Hopkins
around the world with stops in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.

The Hopkins was lightly armed with one 4-inch cannon, two 37mm guns, four
50- and two 30caliber machine guns. There was a small complement of 15 Navy
personnel on board to man the weapons. The Hopkins stopped in Bora Bora,
Wellington, New Zealand and in Melbourne, Australia, where a number of Army
troops they were carrying debarked and the crew had its first shore leave in two
months.

"We were the first American ship to arrive there and I never will forget that
liberty," Piercy said. "We were welcomed like heroes. People took us to their homes, to
their clubs, took us everywhere." At this time, however, another ship, a German ship
named the Stier, was at sea and destined to playa roll in the Hopkins' fate.

During the early years of the war, Germany armed a number of former
merchant ships as warships, called Hilfskreuzers. These Hilfskreuzers were heavily

305

Maritime Tales of the Sea

armed with cannons, torpedo tubes, and the Stier even had two small, lightweight
airplanes. But all of this armament was hidden and the ships disguised as peaceful
merchant ships.

Since 1939 the Hilfskreuzers had been raiding Allied shipping in the Atlantic
and Indian Ocean and had sunk numerous ships and captured several others. Only one
Allied ship ever escaped after coming under attack by the Hilfskreuzer. In the late
spring of 1942 the Stier was completed and set sail from Germany, the last Hilfskreuzer
ever to go to sea. After a night passage through the English Channel, during which
several small escort ships were sunk by the British, the Stier escaped to freedom. For
the next several months it cruised the South Atlantic, teaming up with another
Hilfskreuzer, and sinking a number of Allied merchant ships but always rescuing the
crews.

On the other side of the world, the Hopkins departed Australia and made its
way across the Indian Ocean, where it was buffeted by a typhoon, finally arriving in
South Africa. After a short stay where it exchanged its load of grain for a load of
bauxite the Hopkins headed out into the South Atlantic for a fateful rendezvous with
the Stier.

Early in the morning of Sunday, Sept. 27, 1942, while many of the crew of 41
merchant seamen and 15 naval gunners slept, and Piercy and several buddies were
having a dice game, the Stier, accompanied by a sister ship, began blazing away at the
Hopkins. Piercy had seen the two ships flying signal flags when "suddenly we received a
blast and knew they were no friends of ours." The crew grabbed their helmets and ran
to man the guns and returned fire. Ensign Kenneth Willett, the head of the naval
gunners, his entrails hanging out from a mortal wound, arrived to take over. As the
naval gunners were cut down, the merchant seamen immediately jumped in and took
their places and continued to fire the 4-inch cannon at the Stier.

The Stier was caught by surprise because rarely had a crew of a merchant ship
ever engaged them in battle, usually surrendering to save themselves. The prize captain
of the Stier in 1963 wrote to an author researching the event, "At once the opponent
opened fire and hit us disastrous (sic) with every salvo. The first shells went into the
engine room and lamed the ship…the opponent fought a very brave battle. In the
meantime our heavy guns were manned and the opponent was hit badly."

The Hopkins' firepower was no match for the German "cruiser" and was soon
mortally wounded, but not before the Hopkins' valiant crew also mortally wounded the
Stier. In the history of the Germany Navy, the Stier was the only Hilfskreuzer to be
sunk by a merchant ship. But as the two ships went to the bottom, Piercy's ordeal was
just beginning. He and only about a dozen others escaped into a lifeboat. They cruised
the area picking up another half dozen survivors, some of them seriously wounded.

Although the German ships usually attempted to rescue the crew of the ships
they had sunk, because now for the first time a German raider had been sunk, the
Stier's sister ship made no attempt to rescue the Hopkins crew, but just rescued the
German crew and after circling around the lifeboat one time sailed away, leaving them
adrift in the middle of the South Atlantic.

306

Maritime Tales of the Sea

"They only seemed to look. us over and then took off and disappeared into the
mist,‖ Piercy remembers. There were 21 aboard the lifeboat, all that survived from the
56 on board. And their chances of surviving seemed dim. The lifeboat had sails, a
compass and a few provisions such as some pemmican and malted milk tablets.
Although they were closer to Africa than South America, they knew that the currents
would make it impossible to return to South Africa. So they set sail for South America,
some 1600 miles away.

"We kept sailing toward the north because we didn't want to land in Argentina,
which we knew was friendly with the Axis. We knew we'd be interned if we landed
there," Piercy said. They had to ration out the meager provision but soon they ran out
of food. "We gave the wounded triple rations," said Piercy, "but even that wasn't very
much. During the voyage six of them died and were buried at sea. After we hadn't eaten
for day, all we could talk about was food and that we'd eat anything if we had the
chance. Then a large bird came circling out of the sky and landed right in the lifeboat
among us. It had been caught in the storm and was absolutely exhausted. One of the
fellows reached out, picked it up and said, 'Well, here is that meal we wanted.' That
poor bird had been fighting for his life and needed help just as much as we did. Not a
man among us had nerve enough to hurt it. So we kept it with us for two days and
allowed it to recuperate. Then we let it flyaway. Everyone of us felt better for it," Piercy
remembered.

"We also ran out of water and prayed for rain, which, thankfully, finally came.
We also were totally out of food except for a few malted milk tablets, which we were
saving for when we sighted land. We'd then eat them to give us enough strength to get
through the surf and make landfall."

Finally on October 10, 31 days after the Hopkins was sunk, the 15 survivors,
one of whom weighed just 50 pounds, sighted land, a lonely stretch of the coast of
Brazil. They soon met some natives. Luckily one of the survivors was a Hawaiian born
Portuguese and could speak to them. They took the survivors in dugout canoes to a
small village and Piercy said, "I will never forget the generosity of these wonderful
people."

The natives had sent a runner off to a larger town that had a telegraph and
word got to the American consul in Rio de Janeiro and he notified the American naval
attaché in Victoria who sent a Piper Cub plane, which had to land on the beach, to fly
out any seriously wounded. "The next day the Naval attaché arrived and in a few days a
flat bed pickup truck brought in supplies and clothing and took us to Campos, which
was an all-day trip over rough country. From there we were flown to Rio. Eventually
they arrived back in the United States and returned to sea.

Soon Piercy was sailing aboard merchant ships throughout the Pacific and later
he attended the Merchant Marine Academy and was promoted to 3rd officer. He was
on a ship in Tokyo Bay when the Japanese surrendered to Gen. Douglas MacArthur
aboard the battleship Missouri.

Of the 15 who lived through the 31 days at sea, only Piercy and two others
survived the war. Several who died in the sinking of the Hopkins received awards.

307

Maritime Tales of the Sea

Ensign Willett was awarded the Navy Cross and had a destroyer named after him. The
Hopkins' captain Paul Buck received the Merchant Marine Distinguished Service
Medal. Chief Officer Richard Moczkowski had a Liberty Ship named after him. The
Hopkins was one of only 11 ships to receive the "Gallant Ship Unit Citation" from the
Merchant Marine.

After the war Piercy worked for Aerojet-General in Sacramento and in the retail
grocery business. He moved to Paradise Pines about 20 years ago and to Paradise six
years ago where he lives with his wife. But in his 84 years, he'll never forget the day he
helped sink the German Hilfskreuzer and the 31 days spent in a lifeboat.

FRANK H. PINKERTON

I completed high school June, 1939. As a farmer‘s son, I realized early on that I
should seek another means of a livelihood. Since I had two Uncles who were Marine
Engineers, I decided that was the profession for me and started to sea as a wiper that
July. I sailed for the Atlantic Refining Company, rising to fireman and oiler on the
J.E.O'neil, Francis E. Powell, J.W.Van Dyke, and the Robert C. Tuttle. In the fall of 1941,
when the Germans started sinking our ships off the east coast, I felt it would be better
for my health to get a job ashore. I found employment at Westinghouse's South
Philadelphia Works where they trained me as a machinist. When war was declared, I was
moved to the tool crib of the new turbine plant building turbines for the new Victory
class freighters.

By March of 1942 most of my friends had enlisted in a service. I felt my
experience could best be utilized on ships so I went to enlist in the Navy, thinking they
would give me a rating, based on my experience. All they would offer was ―fireman
third class.‖ Instead, I enrolled in the Merchant Marine Officers school at New
London, Conn. where I received my 3rd assistant engineer's license in September. I was
sent to Mobile, Alabama to board a small freighter, the S/S Chipana on its way to Chile
to pick up a load of tin ore.

Our convoy made its way to Havana, where I first found what it was like to
hear depth charges going off while down in the engine room. Not nearly as scary as
when we had to run from the Panama Canal to Texas City, Texas by ourselves because
no convoy was available. But we knew our load of tin ore, sugar and balsa wood was
high priority. Having to run thru debris from two previously sunk ships didn't help our

308

Maritime Tales of the Sea

nerves any, either.
In January 1943, my next trip was 3rd assistant engineer on the Texas Oil tanker

S/S Vermont, from New Orleans to Trinidad in a convoy to load oil. Back thru the
Canal I went and spent the next seven months supplying oil for the construction of the
Pan-Am Hiway from Guatemala to Chile. Then back to New York where I spent a
month at the U.S. Maritime School to upgrade my license to 2nd Assistant Engineer and
then a month of much-needed R & R.

I was sent to the S/S Markay as 2nd Assistant Engineer in Philadelphia in early
October 1943. We picked up a load of oil in Aruba, then back to the states to build an
extra deck on the ship, which was then loaded with P-38 planes. In a convoy, we then
headed for the British Isles, unloaded half of the planes in Ireland, and then, in a
convoy of ten ships and one small trawler as our guardian, we went to Iceland to
deliver the oil and remaining planes. All the while we knew the German wolf-packs
were looking for us. We left Iceland sans convoy or patrol boats of any kind and
headed for Scotland to pick up a convoy that was headed back to the US. The seas
were stormy and we had to load ballast for control of the ship. Unfortunately, we ran
aground on an underwater cliff at the northern tip of Scotland. After great effort by
two large sea-going tugs, we were pulled off the cliff and sent to The Clyde for repairs.
No shipyard was available to repair us at this point of time, so the ship was sent to
Swansea, Wales where we spent the next five months receiving minimal repairs. A
convoy of some 125 ships was leaving for New York, at a speed of 10 knots and this
we joined, arriving on the 31st of May 1944. Just before entering New York Harbor, a
wolfpack attacked the convoy, sinking a large troop ship and several victory ships. The
escorts were able to rescue a number of seamen.

The next month was spent as before, one month at the U.S. Maritime School
and one week upgrading my license to 1st Assistant Engineer. In August I caught the
S/S Paco, a molasses tanker in Philadelphia as 1st Assistant, went to Cuba for a load of
molasses which we took to New Orleans. Then it was back by train to Philadelphia
where I was port engineer for several months until in December I was sent out on the
S/S Corinth as 1st Asst. Engineer.

We picked up a load of oil in the Caribbean and then to the Pacific and to the
Carolinas and the Naval Base at Manus. Then we went back to Pedro on the west
coast, loaded again and went to Ulithi to fuel the fleet which was going into Iwo Jima
and the Philippines. While in San Pedro the Chief Engineer left the ship and was
replaced with an older Chief who had never sailed T -2 tankers. After a week, the
Captain made me temporary Chief Engineer.

After unloading in a Navy tanker, we headed for the Middle East for another
load. A week of bad weather was enough to put us a few miles off course, and we ran
onto a reef in the islands. Another week was spent anchored at the northern tip of
Australia waiting orders as to what shipyard the Navy would send us to for repairs. A
floating Navy drydock at Manus was available, so it was back to the Carolinas. A partial
repair of the forward deep tanks was made so we could make it back to the States
where permanent repairs could be made. As we were leaving the drydock the skipper of

309

Maritime Tales of the Sea

it called to our skipper that the war with Japan was over. Then it was back to Mobile,
Alabama where I was discharged on September 17, 1945, and to New York to upgrade
and sit for my Chief Engineer's license.

In February I married Dorothy Whitlock, my bride of 60 years. We have two
girls and a number of Grand and Great Grandchildren. Next followed five years
operating a generating plant for The Texas Company at Westville, N.J. After this I was
Assistant Superintendent of the Lansdale, PA Municipal Power System for five years,
and Power Engineer for Avisco and F.M.C. Corporation, three different plants. After
20 years of service to this company, I took early retirement at the Front Royal, VA
rayon plant.

Having delved in the real estate field for several years as a sideline, it was a no-
brainer to start selling real estate. After receiving my broker's license in 1980, I worked
with other brokers, and then I formed my own company and operated it for 15 years.
Then I retired again. Part time in this field and golf now occupies my waning years, as
well as writing my family history.

WILLIE W. PIXLER
FORT WORTH, TEXAS

I was born in Chattanooga, Okla. March 4, 1916, at
which time my parents, ―Sherden and Martha Pixler‖ took command of my life where
we lived in Southern Oklahoma. We lived in several communities in Oklahoma until we
moved to Bridgeport, Texas in 1930. There we found work building Lake Bridgeport.
We farmed and did construction work. In 1932 we moved to Jacksboro, Texas. It was
there that I met my first wife Lorene Brimhall. We were married that same year. That
marriage only lasted a short time and in 1943 we separated. I married Ruby Shortney in
1949.

I went to work for Swift & Company, Fort Worth, Texas in 1942. I had an
older brother who had joined the Merchant Marine in February 1944. So in October
1944 I decided it was time for me to go. I was sent to St.Petersburg in Florida to
receive 12 weeks of training before I was assigned to my first ship the SS William B.

310

Maritime Tales of the Sea

Bloxham in New Orleans in January 1945 signing on as a fireman/watertender. We left
there for New York where we joined a convoy for the Mediterranean. That is where I
was when President Roosevelt died in April, 1945. Naples was the first port of call we
stopped. I remember looking for the post office and found it leveled along with the rest
of the town.

We unloaded a third of our load of grain in Naples and moved on up the coast
to Leghorn where we unloaded some more. All of the ports we visited were almost
destroyed by the war. The grain we were carrying was badly needed by the population
to survive. One of the things you never like to see is little children in the streets begging
for food or something they could trade for food. Wherever you went they were with
you wanting you to go with them, to sight see or to buy souvenirs. You could not help
being moved by their presence. We unloaded the rest of our grain at a port just six
miles from Pompeii. Some of us walked there to see the ruins.

We returned to the US and loaded up with ammunition and airplanes and
headed for the Pacific via Panama Canal. We had just got under way from Panama City
good when we blew out a water pump and had to return to port for repairs. We had
anchored in the harbor and I caught a water taxi to go ashore. On my return as I was
getting on the boat I met my brother who was coming in off a tanker. What a surprise!
I knew he was in the Merchant Marine but I didn‘t know where he was. We went back
to town and had our picture made to send home to our Mother. [See picture].

Next day we headed out to Manila in the Philippine Islands. However we never
made it. It was august 1945 we had bombed Nagasaki and Hiroshima with the atomic
bomb and Japan surrendered. We were about a day and a half out of Manila when we
got orders to turn around and go to San Pedro Calif. When we arrived I signed off the
ship and went home.

HERBERT JAMES PLOWMAN (AKA Herbert James Jicha)
MEMBER OF THE SS STEPHEN HOPKINS CHAPTER AMMV, DFW TEXAS

ADVENTURES AND MEMOIRS OF GRANDPA HERB
This is a picture of me, Grandpa Herb, which is on the front cover of my

autobiography, and was published in the year 2000. This was the story of my life with
special recognition to my wife Jan, our children and grandchildren.

Herb and Jan were married May 13, 1951 and have four children, Diane, James,
Lisa, Gregory, and also five grandchildren, Jeffrey, Michael, Lea, Nicole and Janna.

311

Maritime Tales of the Sea

Joined the U.S. Maritime Service November 28, 1944, at Milwaukee, WI.
USMS Basic Training at Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, NY.
USMS Radio School at Gallups Island, Boston, MA, and Hoffman Island, New York,
NY.
SS India Victory
SS Booker T. Washington (a Liberty ship) . . . .
Army Transport Service and Military Sea Transportation Service (homeport NYPE,
Brooklyn, NY).
Post-war ships of some significance:
Served as Radio Officer on the USAT Blanche F. Sigman, which carried war brides from
Europe to the U.S.
Served as Radio Officer on the USNS General W.M. Black, which brought the first load
of displaced persons from Europe to the U.S. after World War II. This was a historic
event at the time with twelve press reporters aboard. Wounds of the war were being
healed with a new beginning for many people.
Retired from the Federal Aviation Administration, January 3, 1985. (Employed on
Guam, M.I., during Vietnam; maintained electronics equipment utilized by Air Force B-
52 bombers and military aircraft).
I must go down to the sea again to the lonely sea and the sky . . . .
Served as Radio Officer on the USNS Jupiter and the USNS Scan during Operation
Desert Storm.
Member of The Society of Wireless Pioneers: Dedicated to the men who ―went down to the
sea in ships‖ as Wireless Telegraphers—and all those who have earned their living
―pounding brass‖ as Wireless or Radio Officers since the days of Marconi.

JOHN L. POTTS
CHILLICOTHE, TX 79225

I was born December 13, 1922 in Chillicothe Texas where I grew up and went
to school. When I graduated I went to West Texas State 1 year before embarking into a
life of adventure. My sea going career began in 1943 when I went to work for the
Houston-Galveston Towing Co. Among their tugs was an old wooden tug that I sailed
on. R.C. Veiety and the tug Co. helped me to acquire seaman‘s papers so their tug
would be legal when off shore. After working for them a few months I had the
opportunity to join the crew and signed on the S.S. Alpho a molasses tanker owned by
Fleischmann‘s Transportation Co.

Then in 1944 I signed a year‘s contract with the U.S. Army and joined the crew
on the Y-37 Tanker at the time this was the largest the Army had. The Y-37 Tanker
carried aviation fuel to air base strips as far forward into the Dutch East Indies as the
US Army had advanced. One day a Destroyer escort laid a pattern of depth charges just
ahead of us. We passed over them just as they started going off.

312

Maritime Tales of the Sea

The whole ship was lifted out of the water. Loosening the plates on the bottom
of the ship the damage was extensive we started to take on large quantities of water.
Since the ship was a Tanker with large capacity pumps we were able to make it to
Brisbane Australia and into Dry Dock where we spent three months and 10 days
undergoing repairs. I understood this was a new Dry Dock and we were the first ship to
use it.

I was returned to San Francisco in 1945 when my contract with the Army
expired on a Navy Troop ship. The headlines in the paper were: President Roosevelt
had died. It was about mid March 1945. It was then that I found out that I had been
accepted for OCS, but was not to report to school in New London Conn. till
September of 1945.

In the meantime I took a Quartermaster job on the John R. Haney an old Hog
Island ship that was the liberty version left over from WW-1. This ship belonged to the
Army Trans. Corps. We made a Caribbean trip to several Army Bases including Panama
and returned to New Orleans in time for me to go to school.

There were 43 students admitted to OCS class at New London, Conn. And
eight of us graduated about the last of December 1945. I then took a job as third mate
on the USAT Seatrain Texas. Previously this ship had been used to carry Tanks to
North Africa. We carried 39 100 ton Locomotives and 2 100 ton Cranes to France and
Italy. We returned to New York where I was discharged.

My next trip was on the States Lines Liberty the SS Lucretia Mott. We sailed in
ballast to Argentina where we loaded grain for Casablanca. [The Mott was the first
American ship in port there since 1941.] The above was the extent of my Wartime
service Unable to find a good job ashore I continued going to sea retiring in 1982.

After working as Captain of victory ships for the US Government I went to
work for the Lykes Brothers Steamship Co. As Captain for Lykes Brothers I enjoyed a
great relationship with them and consider them the best Company of all that I worked
for. I now reside with my lovely wife Myna in Chillicothe, Texas. We were married in
September 1952. We have one son, David Lee of Beaumont Texas, and I have a ranch
on the north side of Chillicothe where I raise cattle.

Myna is Chairman and I work with her on the Board of directors of the
MEDICINE MOUND MUESEUM, The ghost town of Medicine Mound, Texas. We
hope you will visit with us there. Medicine Mound is just south of Chillicothe Where
Myna‘s Grandfather operated a General Merchandise store in the late 19th and early 20th
century.

In 1961 Captain Potts on the S.S. Dolly Turman had a most trying adventure at
sea, when they rescued the 47 crew members of the Japanese ship the Fukuzan Maru
when she foundered and then sank off Saipan. The following is copies of the official
log of the S.S. Dolly Turman as recorded by Capt. Potts the ships Master. This story
reveals the integrity and true grit the men of that crew displayed that day. This reflects
the kind of courage and bravery displayed by Merchant seamen in war and peace since
1775.

313

Maritime Tales of the Sea

There was another ship the M.V. Ferncliff of Norwegian registry that stood by
and assisted in the rescue. The Ferncliff spread oil over the water on the lee side of the
ship to calm the waters during the rescue. Ferncliff also towed the one lifeboat that was
able to get in the water to a position so the Turman could pick up the survivors taken
them aboard.

Larry Guerin, public relations director for Lykes Brothers Steamship Company,
Inc., presented a certificate of appreciation in behalf of the Adopt-A-Ship Plan to third
mate Frank M. Stuntz, of the Dolly Turman, for an amazingly detailed report describing
the rescue of the 47 Japanese crewmen of the S.S. Fukuzan Maru. Under the Adopt-A-
Ship plan, sponsored by the Propeller Club and the Women‘s Organization for the
American Merchant Marine, the Dolly Turman was ―adopted‖ by the Reagan County
Elementary School of Big Lake, Texas.

T.A. “COTTON” POWERS
MIDLOTHIAN, TX 76065

A few things I can remember in my service to the Merchant Marine is that I am
proud to have served a part of my life for such a great cause -- my country.

I was born in Duncan, Oklahoma, on a farm February 5, 1927. We traveled
quite a lot because my dad worked in the oil fields and I never got to stay in one place
long enough to make lasting friendships.

At the age of 20 I joined the Merchant Marines in Dallas, Texas, and on
February 1945 was sent to Catalina Island for my boot camp training. I always thought
of Catalina as a ―hell hole‖ because my training was tough. After basic training I always
shipped out of New Orleans, La. I preferred Victory ships over Liberty ships. I can
remember realizing on my first trip just how large the oceans of water really were. I
went around the world from New Orleans, LA., back to Hoboken, NJ, back to Dallas,
TX. Quite a trip!!

Some of the ports we sailed to were in the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean,
and the North Atlantic Ocean. They included Perth, Australia; Cape Town, South
Africa; the Congo River, Calcutta, India; Sri Lanka Island, Southern Asia; Cuba, Puerto
Rico, Port of Spain, Haiti, Trinidad and Port of Prince. Although I enjoyed my time in
the service, I lost some of my good friends that I had met during training on Catalina
Island who were on other ships that were torpedoed.

After my service in the Merchant
Marines, I worked in the oil fields of west Texas. Later I moved to Dallas where I

314

Maritime Tales of the Sea

owned a used car business. For the last 35 years I have a real estate development
company and deal in ranches.

I thank my good Lord that I have had a great life. I am married to a wonderful
person for 43 years, her name is Wanda. We have four beautiful children (two boys and
two girls) and they all live close in the DFW metroplex. We plan to travel a lot, just
recently returning from San Francisco. This picture was taken on Alcatraz Island. There
was a Liberty Ship in port. We went aboard later and it brought back lots of memories.
How fortunate life has been for me. I am proud to be a part of and to have served my
country.

RICHARD A. RICE

In July 1942 I joined the Merchant Marines at Cleveland, Ohio. I was sent to
Hoffman Island at New York for basic training.

Three months later I signed on the American Trader, a tanker, and made trips
between the north east coasts and Texas hauling gasoline. January 20, 1943, I signed on
the Liberty Ship Philip Schuyler as Fireman Water Tender. We sailed in convoy across the
Atlantic to England with much needed war supplies. We lost several ships in route due
to submarine attacks. After unloading our cargo at several different ports in Wales and
England we were directed to South Hampton, England where we loaded 400 Army
Engineers. We crossed the English Channel in the invasion and went to the Utah
Beachhead where we unloaded the engineers. We spent a couple months transferring
troops and cargo from England to France. We were the first cargo ship to Cherbourg
where we were strafed and bombed. We were then sent back to the states.

On November 8, 1943 I signed onto another Liberty Ship, the Albert Gallatin
and loaded with cargo and railroad engines. We sailed across the Atlantic, through the
Mediterranean, through the Suez Canal, and into the Indian Ocean bound for Iran.
Two days into the Indian Ocean, January 2nd, we were torpedoed and our ship was
blown up. I lost my hearing in one ear and also my teeth when I was thrown against the
mid-ship house. Later, we were picked up by the British ship, Britannia and taken to
Aden Arabia where we were taken to Suez, Egypt. We were bussed to Alexandria,
Egypt and some of us were taken to the states via another Liberty Ship.

On March 28, 1944 I signed on to the Liberty Ship, Fisher Ames on the east
coast and proceeded down through the Panama Canal to the Pacific Ocean. About two
weeks later in the South Pacific we were hit by a typhoon for three days; we lost two
life rafts, one lifeboat, and one railroad engine that was secured to the main deck. We
finally made port at Perth, Australia for needed repairs and supplies. We then
proceeded into the Indian Ocean, around India, and to Iran where we spent around 6
weeks trying to get unloaded. Unable to purchase food supplies, we were sent to
Madagascar to re-supply, but received further orders not to go there due to submarines.
We were ordered to precede into the lower Indian and Atlantic Oceans and up to South
America, we were 65 days at sea and were forced to eat all of the food from the lifeboat

315

Maritime Tales of the Sea

rations. On the way back to the states from Sao Polo we loaded bauxite ore at Surinam.
This completed a trip around the world.

On May 18, 1945, I sailed on the Liberty Ship, Christy Matthewson from San
Francisco to Pearl Harbor and on to the Pacific Islands of Manila, Cebu, Borneo, and
to Australia where we loaded 450 Aussie troops and took them to New Guinea. We
were later ordered to go to Burma where we loaded gas bombs and dumped at sea.
While there I contracted Elephantitis and was flown by an Army Bomber to Calcutta,
Indian and placed in the 142nd Army hospital. After leaving the hospital a month later
and after the war was over, I spent several weeks in Calcutta trying to find some way to
get home. I finally found a Victory ship that needed a ―Pearl Diver‖ dish washer, so I
washed a lot of plates to reach the US; making another trip around the world.

IRA EARL RICH
BOYNTON BEACH, FL 33472

December 18, 1944 to February 25, 1947

Born in Mankato, Kansas December 10, 1935, Earl moved with family to
Southern Illinois at age 16. His only brother Ralph was killed in action in France while
serving in the US Army.

He joined the Merchant Marines in St. Louis, Missouri on December 18, 1944
and took basic training and cook/steward training on Catalina Island. His first
assignment was aboard the SS Paul Chandler shipping from Portland, Oregon on June
16, 1945 in route to Pearl Harbor to take on supplies.

Ship assignments include: SS Admore (A WW-I Tanker), SS Sag Harbor as
second cook and baker, SS O.M. Bernuth as Chief Steward.

Ports of call include Pearl Harbor, Guam, New York, Los Angeles, Savannah,
Philadelphia, Baltimore, Mobile, and Buenos Aires serving in both the Atlantic and
Pacific theaters with final date of service February 25, 1947.

Earl was married on February 12, 1950 to Barbara Kortz and began working for
F .H. Mcgraw and the Tennessee Valley Authority during the construction of the
Atomic Energy plant in Paducah, Kentucky. Moved to St. Louis Missouri employed
with John Fabick Tractor Company rental division. Accepted position as Chief
Mechanical Engineer for Hawaiian Agranomics assigned to Nigeria with the program

316

Maritime Tales of the Sea

"Green Revolution" producing food crops for the Nigerian Government. Lived in
country with his wife Barbara from November 1981 to November 1984.

In 1984 moved to Florida and opened a restaurant "Great Oaks" in Duneden.
Later sold the business and began working in property management until retirement in
2006. As recent retirees, both Barbara and Earl stay active in church functions and love
entertaining friends and family. Catching early bird specials and staying active are a part
of what keeps us young.

FRANK RINES
QUINCY, MA 02169

The ship was the SS Bert Williams. While docked in Cherbourg I met a signal
corp. outfit I had known back home. They had a mascot (a dog called Major) that they
had acquired in England and had gone through D Day with them. On D Day, a blast
hit the jeep the dog was riding in and he tumbled out, unhurt. Major Hoffler from
Louisiana was very, very attached to the dog, which was an English setter. He desired
to get the dog back home to Louisiana to breed with his own.

After getting the Captain's permission, I took the dog on board. The dog
developed a nasty habit of ―doing his business‖ on the door mat in front of the Chief
Engineer's cabin, which made the Chief Engineer very unhappy. Finally the Chief told
me to swap his mat with the Captain's door mat and thereafter, Major would ―do his
business‖ outside the Captain‘s door. The Captain couldn't understand why Major liked
him so much!

When we landed in New York, the Commodore Hotel said we could put Major
in their kennel on the roof. I was walking through the lobby with Major on a leash and
there was a couple walking in front of me (Major had also developed a nasty habit of
sniffing), when all of a sudden the wife jumped about 5 feet in the air. I pulled Major
back and we all got in the elevator together. I was laughing so hard, I couldn't stop but
the woman wasn't at all amused.

I put Major in the kennel and early the next morning the airline called and said
if I could get to the airport in an hour, they had a seat on a plane for me to go to
Boston. I checked out of the hotel in a big hurry and made the flight to Boston. I then
remembered Major! I called Lt. Daley in New York and asked him to get Major, take
him to Grand Central Station and grab a sailor who was headed to Boston. I would
meet the sailor in Boston and reward him for bringing Major to me. Lt. Daley called
back and said a woman had overheard him talking with a sailor and volunteered to take
the dog to Boston herself. I met the train but could not find the dog or the woman.

Two days later, I received a call from a Navy lieutenant stationed on a
submarine in New London who was sailing the next day. He said if I wanted the dog, I
better come get him. (Evidently the woman was a character, met somebody, and stayed
over in New London.) I talked the Navy Lieutenant into taking the dog to the train
station and getting a sailor to volunteer to escort Major to Boston.

317

Maritime Tales of the Sea

Everything went fine; I rewarded the sailor and took Major home. I managed to
get a traveling kennel and shipped the dog to Louisiana. (Major afterwards had a write
up in New Yorker Magazine because the boys had taught him to refuse a cookie placed
on his nose when they said "Hitler sent this." When they said '"The Queen sent this."
he would eat the cookie.)

The ship was the SS William J. Worth and we were returning from Normandy
in convoy and had been out quite a few days. Being a twenty-two year old kid I was
quite anxious to find out how far we were from our destination - New York City. After
breakfast one morning when we were in the vicinity of Sable Island, I took a bearing
with the direction finder on both a Halifax radio station and a New York broadcast
radio station. At about 11:00 a.m., I took another set of bearings; the bearing on the
Halifax station didn't change a bit and indicated we were heading for Sable Island. As
we were in fairly heavy fog, I told Captain M.E. Ryder how I had taken the bearings at
8:00 a.m. and again at 11:00 a.m. and although bearings taken over land are not
accurate, it looked as if we were heading for Sable Island. Captain Ryder, who could
operate the direction finder better than I, came down from the bridge and took his own
bearings. He then turned to me and said "I'm leaving the convoy.‖

We turned to starboard and had proceeded only a short distance when a
corvette came along side and with his bull horn asked, ―Captain, are you having engine
trouble? Captain Ryder replied he thought we were on a course headed directly for
Sable Island. The corvette Captain actually swore and said he had told the Commodore
he was on a dangerous course. With that, he took off for the head of the convoy and
shortly thereafter we heard the signal for an emergency turn to port. We rejoined the
convoy and the rest of the trip was uneventful. I have wondered all these years what
might have happened had it not been for an anxious twenty-two year old kid.

LEO ROBAS
INDIANAPOLIS, IN 46229

I was a junior at Tech High
School in Indianapolis when Pearl Harbor was attacked on Dec. 7, 1941. After
graduating in 1943, I went to the draft board for my physical examination to enter the
Army, but didn‘t pass and classified as 4F because of a heart problem. I was
disappointed since the rest of my friends were accepted. I asked the recruiter if there

318

Maritime Tales of the Sea

were any other possibilities to serve our country and he mentioned the Merchant
Marines. However the Merchant Marines wouldn‘t take me because of my
classification. I went back to the draft board and asked to be reclassified. Being
classified 2A I finally was accepted in the M.M.

My training was at Hoffman Island N.Y. and I shipped out on Aug. 15, 1943 as
a messman on the Liberty ship S.S. William Whipple. Our convoy sailed the Atlantic on
a zigzag course that took 27 days to get to Gibraltar, and I was sea sick every day. I was
assigned to work in the galley washing pots & pans and it didn‘t help my sea sickness
with the sinks full of water and the ship pitching and rolling, the water sloshing in all
directions plus the heat in the galley. We went through the Suez Canal on our way to
Calcutta India.

On a Sunday morning in Dec. 1943, as we were tied to the dock, we were
attacked by the Japanese. Bombs were falling everywhere and although we were not
directly hit, we suffered over 30 holes on the ship which had to be patched before
sailing back home. Several armed guard were injured during the raid.

The Captain didn‘t approve of the Chief Cook‘s service, so he reassigned him
to the officers‘ mess and promoted me to 3rd Cook. We arrived back in the States
3/21/44 docking at Del. Wilmington. I spent a brief period going to a cook and bakers
school in NY receiving my 2nd Cook & Bakers certificate.

I made a quick trip on a tanker S.S. Wilson‘s Creek, sailing as a 2nd Cook &
Baker. Since this was a newer and faster ship, we sailed alone without a convoy. We left
NY on 5/29/1944 for Avonmouth, England, loaded with aviation fuel and planes on
deck and arrived back in NY 6/27/44.

My next trip was another Liberty S.S. Thomas Nelson Page, sailing as a 2nd
Cook & Baker from Baltimore, Md. We left on 7/11/44 loaded with 500 lb. bombs and
Army supplies headed for Piombino Italy. The Atlantic was dangerous with subs and
we wore our life jackets most of the time. The officer‘s messman made some extra
money by ironing the officer‘s pants. It was comical to see the messman with a life
jacket on and an iron tied around his waist in case we were hit by a torpedo he didn‘t
want to lose his iron.

After leaving Italy, we stopped at Marseille, France. I play the accordion and
had it with me on this trip and played it occasionally. Several of us went to town one
evening and stopped at a bar full of servicemen and a woman entertaining on the
accordion. One of our group asked her if I could borrow it and she said yes. I played
the Beer Barrel Polka and received a rousing reception. Of course after that we didn‘t
pay for any more drinks. We were back in the U.S. on 12/02/44 docking at Norfolk,
Va.

My next ship was another Liberty, S.S. Eleazar Lord, shipping out of Baltimore,
Md. on 1/12/45 as an ordinary seaman. It was not very smart standing on look-out, 4
on and 8 off, in cold weather instead of a nice warm duty in the galley as a Cook &
Baker.

When you are assigned to a ship you never know where you‘re going, except for
this ship – when you see a wooden wheel house on the top deck you know your

319

Maritime Tales of the Sea

destination – Russia. We had misc. cargo in the holds and railroad cars on deck. We
stopped at Glasgow Scotland a few days for our convoy to form, heading for
Murmansk. We lost many ships by subs and planes, even saw escort vessels go down.
Getting close to Murmansk we had to go single file and follow the ice breaker which
led us to port. Not much to see or do on shore except visit the officers club, drink
vodka (limit 2) served in water glasses and chased down with water or hot tea. We
returned home on 5/28/45 docking in N.Y.

My next trip was on a Victory ship, S.S. Duncan U. Fletcher, out of Norfolk,
Va. sailing on an A.B. While the ship was being loaded with Army supplies, the war
ended with Japan. Our destination was the South Pacific, but had to wait several days
for a decision to be made. The decision was go to Hawaii and maybe to some other
island. We shipped out on 8/02/45 and went through the Panama Canal and arrived in
Honolulu where our ship was completely unloaded. We had some free time to walk the
beaches and enjoy nice weather while in Hawaii, the pineapple wasn‘t bad either.

While in Hawaii, the deck maintenance man had to leave the ship and fly home
for personal reasons, so I was elevated to that position. With no more 4 on and 8 off,
and off on Sundays, I felt like a passenger. I was back in New York on 11/03/45 with
several servicemen on board as passengers.

Though the war was over, I made one more trip as Deck Maintenance on a
refrigerator ship, S.S. Exporter, for American Export Lines. I left 1/22/46 from N.Y.
for Calcutta, India, going through the Suez Canal. From Calcutta we stopped at Madras
India to load cargo (hemp) and also stopped at Colombo, Ceylon and Port Said, Egypt.
We arrived back in NY on 4/15/46.

I went with the Navy Memorial Tour 50th anniversary to Murmansk Russia
from 6/23/94 – 7/03/94. It was an interesting trip and, of course, much had changed.

I retired in 1988 from Glenroy Construction Co. as a carpenter foreman and
Superintendent. We did commercial work like schools, hospitals, etc. I also played the
accordion professionally for 60 years.

My wife, Pauline, and I enjoy traveling. We‘ve visited the Holy Land in Israel
and Australia. We‘ve been on a dozen cruises including: Caribbean, Panama Canal,
Alaska, Mexican Rivera, Hawaii, Tahiti, Bora Bora, even a Volga River cruise in Russia
from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

Though dodging torpedoes and bombs was dangerous, sailing with the
Merchant Marines was a great and unique experience. A chapter in my life I will always
remember, and all this happened because I was classified 4F with a bad heart in 1943.
I‘m now past 81 and my heart is still ticking.

MAURICE W. ROBERTS, SR.

CAN A BACKWOODS COUNTRY BOY MAKE IT AT SEA?

History shows that a ship named Mayflower brought a bunch of religious
discontents from Holland to the United States. They were blown off course and landed
in Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts instead of making it to the northern part of Virginia,

320

Maritime Tales of the Sea

to which they had a king‘s decree for a certain amount of property. On board this ship
was a fellow by the name of Stephen Hopkins. His name appeared on the Mayflower
Compact, which was the first attempt at self government in America within the
continental United States. Stephen Hopkins also appeared on the Declaration of
Independence and other papers in the early formulation of our Constitution.

Down the line, a great-great-great niece of his bore a child by the name of Floy
Francis Warner. Floy Francis Warner married Fletcher Alexander Roberts. They were
both reared in the Blue Ridge Mountain area, and they were both trained to be
schoolteachers. Their first child was myself, Maurice Warner Roberts. We were reared
in the hilly, country, back woods during the Depression. Being the eldest child, mother
busy with the smaller ones, I had to kind of find my own way around. We had to find
our own amusement, to say. I can remember having this brown rabbit, which we let
out each afternoon, let him feed on grass and stuff, and put him back in his cage at
night. One afternoon, he did not show up. Part of my daily duty was to go down to
the spring and fetch what they called a syrup bucket full of water and bring it back to
the house for cooking, washing, and so on. This particular night, I stopped by a large
maple tree on a clay hillside between the house and the spring, and asked God if He
were God, to bring my rabbit back. Well, I got to the house, and the rabbit was back,
so being a boy, I had no doubts about creation after that.

I grew up with a puppy. On occasion I had a puppy dog, and we‘d go out sight
seeing and see what God had built up there – all kinds of trees and plants and animals
and stuff, and that was my amusement a lot of times while I was growing up.

My dad worked away from home mostly, worked in shops involving mechanical
repairs. He was a pretty good mechanic. He did have problems with finances and stuff
like that, but at an early age, the boy was put to work. I graduated from the dog. He
kept a mule and as part of the expenses from a job he worked on, and I guess that was
supposed to have been my pet. Anyway, the mule and I got along well. I was just big
enough to stand between the plow handles and get punched in the ribs. We made a
garden, just the mule, my mother, and me, and that was the beginning of my
contribution to the family, along with cutting firewood and pulp wood by hand.

She and dad later set up a saw mill with a steam engine, and I was hardly big
enough to put the wood in the fire box, but that was my assigned duty. I was to fire
that boiler and keep it plenty of steam pressure so the saw mill would operate.

We also had an old model tractor we got a little later on, and my dad set up a
thrashing machine, and we would travel around the country in the fall of the year after
all the harvest stuff had taken place and thrash wheat for the people.

Then the Depression got really bad, and so we started timbering off the
property. We – my brothers and I - were hardly big enough to pull a cross cut saw.
We had to peel the bark for pulpwood back then, and he kept my brother and me out
of school for a year doing that. Prior to school, he kept me out of school until my
brother got old enough so we could go together, so I lost a year of getting started in
school, and then we lost another year at the farm pulp wooding.

321

Maritime Tales of the Sea

After that, during that period of time, I got a connection with trade school, and
then E.C. Glass School in Lynchburg, Virginia, and I accumulated enough money by
working in the grocery store, bagging and carrying groceries, during the non-productive
months, and I had purchased myself a used bicycle and overhauled it and had it in good
shape, so I started going to night school during summer time.

This was between the second and third year of high school, and during the
summer period, regular school opened, and I continued to go to both schools, which I
didn‘t know you weren‘t supposed to do. Along toward the end of the year, the
instructor said, ―You‘re not supposed to be going to both schools.‖ (Well, I didn‘t
know that.) He said, ―Well, you‘re too close to graduation here now. I‘m not going to
tell anyone if you don‘t,‖ so I finished high school and trade school as a basic machinist
not knowing much more than how to sharpen a tool bit and how to operate a machine,
but during that period of time, I secured a little used Stratton engine, a used generator
off some piece of a junk vehicle around, and an old used battery, and I made us a
household generator. A quarter gallon of gas every evening kept lights in the house and
operated a used automobile radio, so we were getting in high cotton about then.

But then the family grew so much that I finally had to leave and go live with my
aunt, use her attic as study room so I could finish high school. I completed high
school, got my diploma, caught the first bus out of town the next morning, went down
to where my uncle was and went to work in the automobile shop. After a little period
of time, I transferred over to Harley Davidson Motorcycle shop, found a decent
motorcycle and bought with part of my pay.

By that time, World War II had started. Production started picking up. I
checked on the Navy Yard in Norfolk to see what kind of position I might could get.
My high school diploma didn‘t qualify me for anything according to Personnel, but
when I told them I had been in trade school at night, they said, ―Fine. Bring us a
transcript down, and we think we can put you to work.‖ So I got a transcript and
brought it down, and they put me to work in the machine shop as a machine operator.
Of course that was basic, but was additional learning experience, worked my way up
several years.

A couple of years later, Pearl Harbor came along. Just prior to Pearl Harbor,
they came around and asked for volunteers to go work at the Navy base at Pearl
Harbor, and I volunteered. I was single, sending my money home to my mother to
help raise the rest of the family. They said, ―You‘re too young. You can‘t go.‖ Well,
that was okay with me. A few months later, they came back a second time and said,
―We lowered the age limit. You can go now.‖ And in Divine Providence, if you want
to say that, I said, ―No, I don‘t think I want to go now.‖ If I had left with that first
group, I would have been over in Pearl Harbor when the Japanese came in. In later
years, I got over there and saw all the damage and everything, what a mess!

I was working eight-hour shifts seven days a week. That started getting old
after a while. So I was walking down Gramby Street in Norfolk one morning (I was
working the night shift.) and the recruiting officers were all lined up – Army, Navy,
Marines, Coast Guard, U.S. Maritime Service. They were all in a line, so I proceeded to

322

Maritime Tales of the Sea

go to each one of them and ask them what they could offer because I was getting tired
of that seven-day-a-week job, and even though I was deferred, I wanted to get into the
action somewhere.

I got to the Maritime Service and asked him, and he said, ―Well, what have you
done? I want to know your background.‖ I finally got to the point of the steam boiler
and saw mill. He wasn‘t too much interested in my machine shop work, but when he
said, ―You fired a steam boiler? steam engine?‖ I said, ―Yep.‖ ―Well, a steam engine is
a steam engine whether it‘s in a saw mill, whether it‘s in a railroad, whether it‘s in a
ship,‖ and he said, ―We‘ve got steam ships and nobody to operate them. Well, in thirty
days of basic camp and training, we‘ll have you on ship.‖ That was brand new to me,
but I said, ―Well, okay, we‘ll take it.‖

Of course, I got in Sheep‘s Head Bay, and they had a scarlet fever epidemic, and
fourteen days after I got there, I had it, so I got put over in Sheep‘s Head Bay in a
Public Health Service hospital for about a couple of months. Then they transferred me
over to Gallop‘s Island, where I completed my training.

We had been promised a thirty-day leave after graduation from boot camp, but
we didn‘t get it. ….came off and put us on a training ship in Long Island Sound, where
they were testing me with power veins, which I was familiar with from the Navy Yard,
but we didn‘t get much training. When we got back to base, the whole class rebelled
and complained for the lack of training. All they did was put us to work doing duties
that the ship‘s crew should have been doing. So about two-thirds of the class went
AWOL and went home for a weekend. I did likewise. I didn‘t have any will or any
paperwork taken care of in case I didn‘t return. I got all of that taken care of, and I
went back, got up there a day late. Well, they claimed they were going to have to take
additional action for going AWOL. I had already sent a telegram back that I would be
late and explained what I was doing.

A call came in from my career field. They had a ship that needed a crew
member. The highest grade I could come out of boot camp, and I made the highest
possible promotion there, so I ended up on a tanker, coast wise (suicide alley), a couple
of them really nice, going around Florida, east Florida, around the Keys and into the
Gulf, where we did see a burning ship that had been torpedoed, quite often more than
one. We found out later on that the people in Miami didn‘t think we were at war. They
kept their lights on so that anything going around had a silhouette, subs just standing
down there and wait for ships to come by. The country didn‘t even realize we were at
war at that point.

The first hurricane I got in was one in the 40‘s down at Galveston, Houston,
and Baytown. We went up in Port Houston to the oil terminal. They told us to go on
in the gulf and ride the thing out. Well, we didn‘t get in the gulf. We got about half
way down the Houston River, right off Baytown, and we had to drop anchor in the
river. When that thing blew in, there were the most beautiful colors you have ever
seen. I mean, the rainbow, right on down until the darkest color got black. I was stuck
on duty. We had only about half a crew on board. The rest of them were on shore

323

Maritime Tales of the Sea

when they told us to take off, and they hadn‘t made it. I remember coming up and
opening the hatch and looking out. The ship had swung around, and the prop hit the
bottom and rotated the engine. I realized then that we had been swung aground. We
kept a fifty-five gallon oil drum, and it was lashed to the aft deck railing. I looked out
there, and that thing was coming full force. One of those fifty-five gallon oil drums
shook loose, and the further it went, the higher it got, and it full of oil. I said to myself,
―I‘ve got no business up here,‖ so I latched the hatch and went back down below to the
engine room, and that was probably my second trip around the coast down in the
Galveston-Houston area. We had to go into Galveston and get our props straightened
up and a few things before we came on back up the coast.

After several other trips around the coast into the Gulf, we got back, and the
fact that I had permanent Civil Service status prior to leaving the Navy Yard on military
leave, I went up to the Army Transportation Service Corps Water Division in New
York, port of embarkation, and I realized that even that old rust bucket that was sailing
around the coastwise proved the old saying, ―They‘re worth more dead than alive.‖
The owners and the government could care less. (They probably would have preferred
to get the insurance out of the old things, and the crew was just an afterthought, okay?)
I went up there, and they put me on an old transport. It was considered a Class A
transport, at that time. All we had was the old SS Great Northern. It was built in 1913,
converted from coal to oil in 1915, sailed in World War I, put in the mothball fleet, and
they were pulling it out.

Now you talk about a learning experience! This was a laboratory from the
word, ―Go.‖ I had learned to go by the Merchant Marine library in New York City
when I was in there and pick up an armful of books to study in my off-duty time
aboard ship. I wasn‘t on there too awful long until I got an on-spot promotion to
electrician. I had played with electricity quite a bit when a kid. The chief engineer took
a look at me and said, ―You don‘t need to be an oiler. You need to be an electrician,‖
so I had to haul freight up to the Marine inspectors and get certified, which I did. This
was a wonderful piece of equipment. It was an old Parson turbine direct drive triple
screw, one so-called high pressure turbine, then they exhausted off into two low
pressures on either side; an old DC current reciprocating generator steam engines. Of
course, there was quite a bit of old electrical stuff we had to keep up, but this was a first
class troop ship. We carried primarily women and nurses and high-ranking, gold braid
personnel on board.

As the Lord would have it, we were assigned to go in D-Day, the second wave
of personnel. Being an electrician, I would rotate all through the ship at night before
we loaded up at Milford Haven in Wales, and at sun-up we were at our assigned station
off Normandy. My battle station was on the bridge wheelhouse to oversee and report
and direct the electrical systems we might have on board. Being in that space, I got a
bird‘s eye view of the whole operation, from Omaha to Utah both directions, and once
the weather cleared enough, I mean I could see it all. Let me say here that this is some
kind of poor, sad sight that you really don‘t need to see. It was obvious that a lot of
mistakes were being made and etc.

324

Maritime Tales of the Sea

We were briefed on the way over that the British commando was going to have
all the shore batteries silenced, and they would also have swept all the mines all the way
down the coast. There would be no mines. We were going in single file, and the Navy
Transport, Susan B. Anthony, was directly ahead of us. They took two mines in the
engine room before we got completely to our assigned stations. We helped them
unload the troops, put their injured in the little hospital we had on board, and helped
them unload their troops before we did ours. The Susan B. Anthony did not sink until
the next day, but she had oil slick all over. She was Navy operated, as I said. Of
course, we were Army.

Things went pretty smoothly. We made a lot of trips back across. We were
capable of running at 22-23 knots, but we put up a smoke screen, so we had to restrict
that to dark nighttime. I can remember loading up in Yonkers, New York, late one
night - pitch, dark black. We came down the river and crossed the bay, out through the
nets, and just as we got out of the net, we picked up indications of a submarine. It was
already waiting for us.

May I interject here that the Germans had their spies all in the American
shipyards, and everywhere else. So did the British. The British were not our friends in
this war. The way I saw it, on Normandy, when they were supposed to clean the
beaches and all off, they had not. Shore batteries were still there. Mines were still
floating, tied down. What the British did was confiscate all the tugboats and barges
they could get their hands on.

We had a skipper on this boat that was an elderly man, had been called out of
retirement. He was U. S. Navy Reserve Commodore, and I pretty quickly learned that
he didn‘t like the British very much. I was soon to find out why. We had a captain
experienced on the Great Lakes who was first mate on this ship. These people, we
already knew, had seamanship, okay? Our captain spoke five languages, had skipper
papers from seven nations, and chief engineer licenses from five. On one particular
convoy, I can remember running a wolf pack in the North Atlantic. Our ship, as I said,
was faster than most of them, and it was riveted with an inch-and-a-quarter plating and
a really sharp nose. The record reported that if he saw a torpedo coming, he would
turn that bow into the torpedo path: The trigger torpedo, apparently right in the center
of the nose. And that sharp, pointed bow, if it didn‘t hit directly on that bow, it would
glance off. One time in the North Atlantic, it glanced off and hit a liberty ship.

Anyway, at one point, the convoy commander, an Army guy, radioed
Washington that our skipper would not follow his commands. Washington radioed
back, ―This skipper, he is a U. S. Navy Reserve Commodore. We suggest you follow
his instructions.‖ Of course, that was printed and put up on the bulletin board where
we all could read it. It made us very proud.

One time, we got in a dogfight like that. He busted a convoy and went on
ahead. While the submarine was trying to get the rest of the ships, he went on ahead
and ran off, the first one in port. That was a double-duty operation: the first in port
was the first to get a berth to unload. He liked to unload and go again. We didn‘t sit
still very much on that one on any trips.

325

Maritime Tales of the Sea

I also served time on the old USS America, which was a twin-screw quad-
expansion engine room. Once they got the engine synchronized, the whole ship
became synchronized with them. I spent some time on that ship.

Back to this other…Gen. George F. Simmons. We were pulled out of the
shipyard for annual inspection before we finished. Somebody up at the port of
embarkation signed off the ship as being seaworthy. The skipper refused to sign off.
The ship was not seaworthy. They had not finished the work, but this guy said, ―The
convoy commander will be on your ship, and it will go. If you don‘t sign it, then I
will.‖ So he did.

Well, we had the tank tops off the bottom. The tanks – they were trying to
clean the bottom, and they didn‘t have all of them sealed down. Our crew did the best
they could with what they had, except a lot of wood shavings and stuff got in the bilge
pump. By the time we got to off Nova Scotia – Halifax, we had one little bilge pump
on the #3 shaft alley trying to pump the whole ship, so the skipper declared an
emergency. Now we had a full rank of gold braid Army and women nurse corps and
stuff on board, and we got permission to go into Halifax, Nova Scotia, and there were
fog banks everywhere. You couldn‘t see anything, but this first mate, being a skipper
off the Great Lakes, got on the ship whistle, right out front at the wheel house, where
you could hear echoes, and he pulled that whistle and listened for echoes off the rocks,
the banks on either side of the inlet into port. His skill got us safely into the port, and
the first thing we saw – I mean he took us all the way through the harbor – were the
railroad piers in the back of the port. He had already radioed in so we‘d have a railroad
tanker/pumper ready when we hit the dock, and the first thing we saw when we hit the
dock was that railroad pumper waiting for us. Now radar back then was not that good,
and had we not had that kind of personnel on board, we would never have made it.
We‘d have been up there somewhere on the bottom.

Then I qualified, and was accepted for, OCS, New London. I signed up for it,
went up there, and that was accelerated school – I don‘t mean maybe! We had a six-
month period to learn all the highest upgrade techniques and stuff. I mean it was
accelerated, but I came out of there with the highest possible rating. In fact, I got
recognized for the work in the machine shop. Now, of course, wouldn‘t that be a
coincidence?! But anyhow, I made the top-rank machine shop work, and they
recognized me at graduation for that.

From there, I got on a loaded ship. They put me on a liberty ship in Norfolk,
and we carried this load of foodstuff to Pearl Harbor. In Pearl Harbor, they put a
bunch of engineering, bull dozers and graders up on top, put more tanks in down
below. They filled us with ammunition of all types, 100-octane gasoline in fifty-five-
gallon drums, and sent us to Okinawa. In Okinawa, it was hot. They wanted to put us
in Buckden Bay first, but they did not have the equipment there to get the heavy
equipment off deck.

Meanwhile, a typhoon came in, and we were ordered to go to sea and ride it
out. The Seabees had already unleashed everything below, and it was set to just roll
around. If any one of those tanks had started sliding across the lower deck, it would

326

Maritime Tales of the Sea

have gone right out through the side of that ship. Our crew went down there and
lashed everything down the best they could. We went out to sea and rode the thing
out.

We came back, and they sent us out to Norhor, Okinawa because they had
equipment up there to unload that heavy stuff off. We had a bunch of Seabees on
board, Navy, and they were guarding their equipment, I guess.

Anyway, the kamikaze started coming in. One bright, moonlit night, they were
coming in by the dozens, it looked like. The Navy did a fairly good job of covering up
with smoke screen, if you like to sleep with kerosene fumes and boy, that‘s the way to
do it! I stayed up watching about three attacks, but I was sleeping on a hammock out
on a wing at the end of the bridge, and I finally gave up and went to sleep. The next
morning the captain said, ―You slept through five more kamikaze attacks last night, but
I knew where you were in case I needed you.‖

Well, that‘s where they came in. We had three brand new VICTORY ships
over there loaded with ammo, and they knew who had what on board, apparently,
completely. Maybe not us, but anyway, kamikaze got two of those brand new victory
ships, crew and everything – nothing left at all. The third one, the gun crew was sharp
enough to shoot him down before he made it in. Probably, if they had known what we
had on board, they would have sent one after us, but I guess being reloaded in Pearl
Harbor, they didn‘t know what we had.

So we went on to Marshall and Caroline Islands and came back by Guam; we
had run out of food. We didn‘t have anything on board to eat except rice. It had
weevils in it. We had rice soup. You had your choice: you eat the weevils, cooked
protein, or you could scrape them off. It was up to you.

After a time we pulled into the port of Guam; everything went to pieces, it
looked like. Aircraft was up there flying around, all kinds of crazy things. Mock
bombers. The radio finally got the signal that said the Japanese said, ―We quit.‖ So we
brought that ailing vessel in. It had floated a #3 crank bearing on the way back.

I came on, caught a plane in San Francisco, stopped in San Diego where my
aunt lived, in Van Nuys, and spent one night there. I was subject to get bumped after I
got across the Rocky Mountains. Congress was going into session, and the
Congressman and their ladies…the Congressman in their five-gallon hats, and the
ladies all dressed up with their hats and all.

So I got on an old DC-3 (Gooney Bird), and we started out. We left San Diego
at midnight on a bright, moonlit night. You could see all the Rocky Mountains down
below. We got over in Texas and started picking up these legislators and carrying them
up to Washington. There was a hurricane going up the east coast, and it was reaching
all the way over to Little Rock, Arkansas. That Gooney Bird got to started flapping its
wings, and oil was coming out of the engine, running down the wing. These highly
dressed, sophisticated congressmen and their lady friends were getting sick like crazy.
Being an old seaman, it didn‘t bother me, but I couldn‘t help laughing at them. I felt
sorry for them, too. Cardboard oyster cups are what they gave you back then when you
got sick on aircraft, okay?

327

Maritime Tales of the Sea

Well, we got to Little Rock Arkansas, and the stewardess on board was the first
one they had to take off. She was deathly sick. They put a stewardess on from some
other line that didn‘t even work for the company we were on, or whatever. We finally
made it on across to Fort Worth/Dallas, and crossed Monroe, Louisiana. I think we
set that one down in Memphis maybe and came across northern…and came through
Tri-City, north of Bristol and Johnson City, and had to screw ourselves down into the
airport, between the mountains to get into that one and do the same thing coming out,
just circle around and around.

I came by home in Lynchburg, Virginia, spent a night or two, headed on up to
New York, port of embarkation, and got on the H. F. McAndrews, which was the old
Del Argentine fruit hauler that had been converted to a transport. We had a beautiful
engine room, high-pressure GE turbine gears, C & E combustion control, B & W
boilers. I hired on as third engineer. I wasn‘t on it too awfully long before I was
promoted to second. That job I really enjoyed. It was a modern day power plant, but
it wasn‘t, because all the technology had not been put to use. To light the troop
compartment, they had to put on another generator, which was a Westinghouse with
open governor control, but I was able to complete that through an annual inspection.
Meanwhile, I had to sneak off and go to Norfolk to get my second engineer rating,
because I was still on third. That was another spot promotion that I got, and so I went
through that engine room. They added a generator, and that added generator put an
extra load on the boilers, and there had been no arrangements made to compensate for
that, so I checked her out. I had…the boiler blowers were fighting each other on the
intakes, facing one another. I had them rotated forty-five degrees to keep them doing
that so they‘d breathe better. That‘s what the boilers needed, a little extra air, because
they couldn‘t pick up the extra load without some air. Otherwise, they wanted to
smoke when overloaded.

I had five feet added on the stack with a semi crown on it, and to make a long
story short…after many trips over and back different places. We had been in
Bermahaven and picked up a bunch of troops that had rotated out, and coming back
across the English Channel, I was on duty. When I got where I could choose my duty,
I would choose the twelve to four watch. That gave me more time in the engine room,
and also more time on deck in the afternoon before the evening meal. We were
coming back across there, and here comes the skipper, down the ladder into the engine
room at 2:30 in the morning. If you know anything about seaman, the skipper and his
deck crew never go into the engine room or tell the engine people what to do at all.
Likewise, the engineers don‘t tell the people how to navigate. I thought, ―Boy, what am
I in for now?!‖ He said, ―I want to ask you one question. Are you straining these
engines?‖ I said, ―No, sir. I am using bleeder steam,‖ which some of the other
engineers were not familiar with. When I set the plant up, I set it up with that high-
pressure steam…any time you‘ve got a pressure drop without doing work, you‘ve got a
waste of power, so put full steam into the turbine until it gets down to the proper
pressure we need to do something else, and the engine and bleed it off and let it do
that. By doing that, we don‘t waste that amount of power, and it helps, so that‘s what I

328

Maritime Tales of the Sea

was doing. He said, ―Well, this ship is running faster now, fully loaded, than it ever did
on its maiden voyage empty. I wanted to make sure you weren‘t damaging the
engines.‖ He went back up to his wheelhouse, and I never saw any more of him!

After a year or so of bringing the troops back and rotating them, I figured it
was time to go back and reclaim my job in the Navy Yard, so that‘s what I did.

From there, I got a request through DOD, the Department of Defense that my
skills were needed at a place called Eglin Air Force Base, down in Florida. Well, here I
am, a marine engineer, licensed and all, a skilled machinist – in fact, I got promoted up
to toolmaker in the shipyard – and I had just married. So I sent a note down, ―How
badly do you need me?‖ I thought it was halfway a joke, anyway, you know. Well, the
offer they gave me, I could not turn down, all right? So I packed my new wife up,
borrowed my uncle‘s moving van, and down to Florida I came! (Eglin had lots of
water crafts, high speed rescue boats, tugboats, barges, yard service crane, to do with
needs of water ranges, etc.) I worked in the Marine branch for 17 years, transferred up
into aircraft maintenance, and from there, into research and development. I put the
first two automated numerically-controlled metalwork machines on the base, helped
install them, put them into operation, and programmed them. Then I got into research
and development of live ammunition, which included live explosives and machining,
and all this kind of stuff.

It‘s been a real educational thing, all the way up. I received no GI Bill of
Rights, requested no government funds for schooling, nothing. I reared five children.
All of them are college educated, and doing fine. Now I‘m trying to relax on the two
hundred acres of land I‘ve got left, after they put I-10 through the middle of it –
Interstate – and hope to spend a few more years here, keeping this property up and
doing a little bit of improvement around here. I also teach Bible in the local prison
system weekly.

A country boy can make it if he applies himself. My granddad always told me I
could make it, and so I believed him, and I felt Divine Guidance many, many times,
and also in many combat/conflict areas, so America really is – should be – a Christian
nation, as our founding fathers intended for it to be. May God bless you, and may God
bless America! Thank you!

P. S. I am now driving a German VW turbo-diesel auto and taking Japanese
blood pressure medication, and, according to my doctor, doing quite well at 85+ years.

P. S. S. And the question comes to me: Why was Massachusetts Bay Colony so
much more successful and accessible to the natives than was Jamestown?

DENNIS A. ROLAND
2ND MATE MS SAWOKLA
"My Last Days as a Prisoner of War.‖

After we had completed our spur of the Burma-Thailand railroad and the River
Kwai bridges, the Japs had us slated to go to Japan but we were in such horrible
physical condition they decided to stop off at Katchanburi (Thailand). We were

329

Maritime Tales of the Sea

transported in small, metal freight cars blistering hot in the daytime. We stayed at
Katchanburi until the Japs thought we were able to travel and continue the trip. We
were taken to Singapore in the same metal freight cars. Upon our arrival at Singapore
we were taken to a camp at Sime Road, the same place where the British had
surrendered to the Japanese.

This was a lovely place compared to the other places I had been kept. Some
months later, the Japanese authorities decided we would be sent to Changi jail and the
civilians interred there would replace us at Sime Road. I spent about two weeks in a
"jail cell which was supposed to hold one prisoner. They put fourteen of us in that one
cell I got a bad case of claustrophobia.

It was many days after V-J Day before any action was taken to get us back
home. The first I knew of it was when a Jap soldier told me. "Pretty soon all men shake
hands and go home.‖

On September 9, 1945 I was one of a small group of American sent to Kalang
Airport in Singapore. American prisoners were picked to go first because the planes
were American DC-5's. We were taken in trucks to the airport which was about five
miles from the jail. When we got to the airport there were three huge four-engine
planes on the runway. Their size stunned me. I went aboard one of them and into the
forward compartment where the pilot and co-pilot sat. There I saw a discarded peanut
butter sandwich in a waste basket. I picked it up and wanted to eat it right there but
decided to take it back to show the others.

The British, who were in charge of the airport, said the runways were too short
for so large a plane to take off, so we were returned to the Changi jail with the
understanding that a smaller plane would be sent the next day to pick up the
Americans.

The following morning, we were like a bunch of kids waiting for Santa Claus. I
was so excited I could not eat breakfast. Every minute seemed like an hour but the
camp routine went on as usual. Later in the afternoon we Americans were told we were
moving out. The time had come to part from our many friends we had made under the
most horrible of circumstances. It was a sad parting. Our group was made up of U.S.
Army, Navy, Air Force personnel, and a few merchant seamen.

Once again we were taken out to the airport. Waiting on the runways were the
same three C-5‘s, the ones the British said could not take off with a load. They had
bucket seats and were
those metal seats cold as we were still dressed in rags. There was absolutely no
provision made for us in the way of blankets, food or water. The Army doctor, who
had been sent on board to care for us, wept unashamedly when he saw the condition
we were in. Among us were some very sick men.

After we became airborne, our pilot made three passes over the Changi jail
grounds at about 500' altitude. We had our faces pressed to the port and looking down
we could see our former comrades-in suffering jumping up and down waving their
arms. Then the plane climbed and they disappeared. I left part of me there with them.

Some time later we landed at Dum-Dum Airport in Calcutta, India. This was in

330

Maritime Tales of the Sea

the early hours of the morning. Ambulances took us to the 142nd Army Hospital. We
were questioned and processed. Then we were turned loose in the mess hall. Like the
others, I passed along the line where we were served huge portions of food. I staggered
to a table and tried to eat. After one or two bites, I could not eat any more. I looked at
the huge tray or food and wondered what my friends back in Changi jail were doing for
food. To throw this food away was something beyond my wildest imagination.

As a prisoner, I had nightmares of fresh food and water. As a kid living in
Greenwich Village in New York, I played with match sticks sailing them down the
gutter into the sewer. I often thought of all that fresh water just going down the sewer
to be lost forever. Now I was faced with a tray full of delicious food and couldn‘t eat it.
My stomach simply would not take any more. It all ended up in the garbage can and
was taken away by the local Indian help who used it for their meals.

After our arrival at the 142nd, the various Armed Forces men in our group were
taken in tow by their respective services but the merchant seamen had absolutely no
one to guide them. We were given cast-off khakis to put on. The others were given
brand new uniforms and accessories. What was wrong with us? We were Americans
too! Our ships had been sunk in action; we had been taken prisoner, and imprisoned
with military men. Now owe were suddenly outsiders, like a fifth wheel!

The first night, we were taken to our beds. They were so clean and white. I did
not have the heart to disturb them. So I did what I had done for three years. I slept on
the bare concrete floor until a day later when I got the courage to get into the bed.

During our stay at the 142nd, the merchant seamen in our group were taken to a
nightclub by some American Export Line people who knew us from visits to Calcutta
on Export Line ships prior to the war. One evening, some representatives of the
United States Seamen's Service came to the hospital and gave us a dinner party of sorts
and also gave us ten American dollars each. I will never forget this kindness shown by
the United Seamen‘s Service.

Merchant Seamen were being shipped out on the first available planes with a
second class priority. One day, four of us were cleared for departure. We finally got
aboard a plane bound for the U.S.A. This time it wasn't the bucket type seat but it was
an upholstered one. We weren‘t served any meals. We had to purchase box-type
lunches at 25 cents per box. We paid for these with the money given us by the United
Seamen's Service and money advanced on our salaries by American Export Line
representatives.

After leaving Calcutta, the plane stopped at Casablanca, Santa Maria in the
Azores, Gander, Newfoundland, and finally LaGuardia Airport in New York City. We
landed early in the morning of September 15, 1945.

We were met at the plane and taken to St. Alban‘s Hospital in an ambulance
and bedded down on cots. Two days later an ambulance from the Marine Hospital in
Stapleton, Staten Island came to St. Albans and picked us up. I remained at that
hospital overnight. Then I went home.

After three years in the hands of the enemy, both German and Japanese, I was
home!

331

Maritime Tales of the Sea

Author's note: Dennis A. Roland passed away at the age of 76 in December 1984 at his home in
Astoria, NY. He had fought for years to get recognition from the U.S. Government for the U.S.
Merchant Seamen who served in World War II. He was 2nd Officer of the MS SAWOKLA when
she was sunk by the German Raider MICHEL and spent the remainder of the war as a prisoner. He
was one of the few survivors of the infamous Burma-Thai Railway. This article was excerpted from a
larger account.

LLOYD J. SCHROEDER

I was born on a cotton farm in Sagerton, Haskell County, Texas. I attended
Sagerton School where I participated in all sports, football, softball, basketball, track
and tennis. After graduation in May on 1944, I turned eighteen in September and
classified 1A for the draft. I had two brothers in the Navy and one in the Air Force.
Their advice was do not get drafted into the walking Army. My choice was to join the
Merchant Marine. November of 1944, I was on my way to Santa Catalina Island,
California where I took basic training and came out with Fireman Watertender papers.

First vessel assigned was a T-2 tanker - SS Bandelier bound for the South
Pacific. Stopped at Pearl Harbor, Manila Bay, Saipan on into the Persian Gulf, on our
return we picked up three Merchant Seaman who had been POW's for nearly a year.
They had some interesting stories to tell.

Came through the Panama
Canal and four shuttles to Curasol and Aruba and came into Baltimore Harbor on
Christmas Day 1945. On March 16, 1946 sailed a Liberty Ship, the Kyle V. Johnson to
Oran and Algiers, North Africa with a load of Oats. Returned to Charleston, South
Carolina, James River, where the ship was anchored to be dismantled. June 16, 1946,
joined the C-2 SS Mandarin headed for South Africa. Interestingly, deck cargo was six
head of white faced cattle. A sheik was going to start a herd. They arrived in good
shape. Made ten ports and paid off September 27, 1946 in New York.

I returned to Baltimore, married and raised two sons and started a career. First
job was with Gulf Oil Corporation in the gas station operation for five years. In 1952, I
had the opportunity to join the C&P Telephone Company as a cable splicer assistant
and progressed through the ranks to cable foreman supervisor. I transferred to
Southwestern Bell for the last ten years and retired in 1983. To fill my free time I drove
a school bus for five years then retired again to our farm in Emhouse, Texas.

332

Maritime Tales of the Sea

It is my pleasure to know and be in the same AMMV as Moses Barker who was
a member of the Navy Armed Guard on the SS Stephen Hopkins when it was sunk by
the German Man of War Stier. The Hopkins also sank the Stier. The only merchant
vessel to sink a war ship. Best wishes to all and Smooth Sailing.
Member of the SS Stephen Hopkins Chapter AMMV, DFW Texas

J.C. JAY SEALS
GRAPEVINE, TX 76051

I joined the Merchant Marine in Denton, Texas in November 1944. I had no
idea what I was in for. I just knew I did not want to be drafted.

I was put on a train to St. Petersburg, Fl. with about 40 guys from Dallas and
surrounding area. I must have been the greenest young guy aboard, having been raised
on a farm and ranch a long way from a large town. The boys were playing cards and
dice – so I was left out because I had never played either before.

I made it through training just fine, being used to strong
discipline at home. After training, I was put on a tanker for Aruba, when we arrived the
harbor was on fire from a sunken tanker. In a day or two we went in and loaded, then
sailed back up the coast to Charleston, South Carolina.

Later, I was on two Liberty ships and more tankers. I shipped to France,
England and the Panama Canal gone a few times.

After sailing to Le Harve, France, in August, 1945, I came home and received
my discharge. I was shocked to learn we did not qualify for benefits as the other
services.

I married Fondell Shearer in November 1947, the luckiest day of my life. We
had a daughter born in 1950, Barbara, and a son born in 1954, Donald. They are
parents of three girls and two boys. We are very proud of our children and
grandchildren.

I worked at LTV Aircraft for 30 years and retired to my first love, horses and
cattle. We now live in Grapevine, Texas and are retired.

I had my 80th birthday this past August. We thank God for giving us a long life
and good health and wonderful children.

333

Maritime Tales of the Sea

WARREN SEVIER
MID-COLUMBIA CHAPTER MEMBER, KENNEWICK, WA

Facts taken from Captain Moore's book" A careless Word, A needless sinking
Warren Sevier was on the Liberty ship SS Robert Rowan when it was

bombed by German aircraft at 1345 GCT on July 11, 1943 while anchored in the
Harbor of Gela, Sicily. The ship had left Oran, Algeria on July 6 as part of the invasion
convoy, with a cargo of ammunition, gasoline, guns, jeeps and U.S. Army personnel
and equipment.

At 1345 GCT, 3 bombs struck the ship almost
simultaneous. The first penetrated the main deck near # 1 hatch, passed through the
tween deck and out of the starboard side above the water line, before disappearing into
the water without exploding. The second struck in #2 hold, and the third in #3 hold.
These bombs started fires in both holds, which in turn caused the ammunition to
explode. About 20 minutes after the attack, the ship exploded in a single, shattering
roar. She burned for hours before sinking on an even keel, with all her superstructure
still showing.

All aboard abandoned ships in lifeboats and rafts. They rowed to nearby ships
and were taken aboard.

Warren said he had met a friend of his named Tom Sweet that was in the army
aboard the Robert Rowan. When they started abandoning ship the army had picked
their men up by a Port Battalion. He frantically started looking for his friend. He
spotted him and could tell he was looking for him as well.

He met him again years later at a home town celebration in Ohio. What a great
reunion they had!

ROBERT SINZ
BUTLER, PA 16001

I would like to introduce my favorite wife, Dorothy. Next month we will
celebrate 55 years of marriage. Our oldest son lives in Missouri and will retire next year
with 35 years of service with the Department of Defense -- he and his wife have a
daughter and son. Our one and only daughter, Eileen, gave us three grandsons, the first
two of whom were twin boys. Our youngest son and his wife live in Butler; they have a

334

Maritime Tales of the Sea

daughter who graduated from Penn State earlier this year. No sign of any married
grandchildren as yet.

I graduated from Butler high school in January 1942. Shortly before I turned
18 I wasn't ready to enlist in the military so I put my application in at ARMCO Steel
Corp. I was told by the personnel manager at that they would not hire me because I
was too close to the draft age. Two of my buddies who had finished high school in
June of 1941 were working at Curtis Wright in Beaver, Pennsylvania. They told me I
should apply there for a job as they were hiring at that time. Curtis Wright was a
defense plant making propeller blades for airplanes.

I drove down to Beaver on a Monday morning, filled out an application and
met with the personnel manager who interviewed me. They sent me to the infirmary
for a physical and were then sent back to the personnel manager who hired me and said
I would be a welding inspector. I told him I didn't know anything about welding and
he said they would teach me. He asked me when I could start and I said tomorrow.
He told me he wanted me to start that afternoon on the 4 - 12 shift. I was sent to the
Safety Department and was fitted up with safety shoes and safety glasses. I worked
there seven days a week for 13 months and I changed shifts every week. I worked 8
hours a day plus two hours driving time. We worked every holiday including
Christmas, Thanksgiving and all the others; I never missed one day the 13 months I
worked there.

After working there for about 12 1/2 months, a fellow I got to know who
worked with me said to me one day, ―Hey Bob, let's join the Merchant Marines.‖ This
fellow was from Newcastle and his name was Ed Prichard. To make a long story short,
he and I drove to Pittsburgh and signed up. I passed the physical and he didn‘t. He
went back to Curtis Wright and a couple weeks later I got a notice to report to PGH
with several others. We were put on a train at Penn Stations and sent to Hoffman
Island, New York.

Shortly before I finished basic training at Hoffman Island, Father Madden, one
of the chaplains asked me if I would be interested in becoming a cadet after I finished
basic. He said to think it over and let him know in a day or two I decided to give it a
try and he helped me fill out the necessary papers. It was required to be sponsored by a
United States senator or representative. Father Madden took care of that and I got my
appointment.

After I finished basic they gave me a seven day leave. After my leave I reported
to the Academy's office in New York and they sent me to Great Neck, Long Island.
That is where Kings Point is located.

I served three months preliminary training, and then it was required to ship out
and have a minimum of six months sea duty. I was assigned to a ship, the SS John
Vining, in November 1943. I didn't know where we were going until we were out to sea
in our convoy - bad news - we were heading to Murmansk, Russia. At that time we
didn't know it but our convoy was the bait to draw the German battleship
―Schonhaust‖ out of her hiding place up around the North Cape. When she came out
of hiding to sink our ships the British Navy with the help of our convoy‘s, U.S.

335

Maritime Tales of the Sea

Destroyer escorts sank the Schonhaust. We found out later that German battleship had
been responsible for sinking many thousands of tons of our ships in the north Atlantic.

Before we got into Murmansk our ship cracked from the gunnel to the water
line. With temporary repairs we made it into port, discharged our cargo then
proceeded to a shipyard. The Russian workers drilled a hole at the very bottom of the
crack then welded 18‖ wide plates from below the crack to the gunnel on the inside and
outside of the hull. We then took on ballast waited for a convoy to form and headed
back to New York in March of 1944. The entire time we spent in Russia the
temperature was 38 - 40° below zero.

Since I didn't have the required six months sea duty, I was reassigned to the
John Vining and thought we would be going back to Murmansk, but I was wrong.
Instead we were sent to Marseilles France. They assigned a new Captain for this trip;
his name was Captain McNab, a name I'll never forget. He was from Scotland and was
the meanest man I have ever come in contact with in my 78 1/2 years of living. He and
his family owned and an island off the coast of Scotland. It's too bad he didn't stay on
that island.

We got back to New York at the end of July 1944 having completed 8 1/2
months sea duty. As a cadet I was granted a seven day leave to come home; after my
leave was up I returned to the Academy to begin my advance training. After several
months into advance training, I started to have trouble learning calculus and celestial
navigation, so I and two other cadets went to the administrator and asked to resign our
appointment. He offered to assign us tutors but we refused because we were young
and fall of (you know what) and wanted to ship out again. We received an honorable
discharge from the Naval Reserve.

The three of us had D.S. papers but wanted to sign on as A.B.s, so we decided
to go to Baltimore and go to up-grade school. When we arrived in Baltimore we got
one room at the Mount Royal Hotel and the three of us stayed in that one room while
we went to up-grade school. It was a short training course and we all passed the Coast
Guard test and received our A.B. Papers. We signed on a ship, City of Omaha, in
February 1945 and made a short trip to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and returned in March.
We joined the national Maritime Union and made Baltimore our home port.

We signed on the Abigail Gibbons in March and returned from Europe at the
end of May 1945. I signed on as deck maintenance for that voyage. My two shipmates
and I split up after that as we couldn‘t manage to get a ship together again. In June
1945 I signed on the S.S. Renald Fernald as deck maintenance and sailed to Leghorn and
Naples, Italy. I returned to Baltimore in early September and I came home for about
10 days. Then I returned to Baltimore and signed on the Henry Hadley as an A.B. and
sailed for Edinboro, Scotland, then to Ireland and then to Manchester, England,
through the Manchester Ship Canal to Liverpool, England and returned to Baltimore in
February 1946.

In March I signed on the S.S. Bjarne A. Lia as an A.B. and sailed for Marseilles,
France again returning to Baltimore the end of May 1946. That was my last trip and I
came home to Butler for a good. After I was home for two weeks I applied for a job at

336

Maritime Tales of the Sea

Armco Steel and went to work there a few days later. I applied for an apprenticeship in
the machine shop, graduated four years later as a journeyman, and worked my way up
to General Foreman of the machine shop and forge shop. I retired from that position
after more than 37 years and that was 19 years and two months ago since I retired.

HAROLD SKINNER
SPOKANE, WA

TWO WEEKS ON A CARGO SHIP AT OKINAWA
On June 26, 1945 the Liberty ship S.S. Francisco Coronado arrived at Okinawa in

an eleven-ship convoy accompanied by four escort vessels. The day before had been
long and stressful. As a Navy radioman in the communications team, whenever I was
not on a four-hour duty in the radio shack, I assisted the signalman. Since the convoy
was operating in close formation, we used ship-to-ship TBY radios, but in those days
their performance was often poor. Signal-flag operation was another duty. We snapped
them onto the halyard, ran them up and executed for change of course in zig-zag
sailing or other procedures. The gun crew was standing at general quarters in gun tubs,
and long into the night I had carried coffee and sandwiches to the men as we
approached the embattled island. After dark, the horizon directly ahead was filled with
distant red flashes. The flash-lightning display we assumed to be heavy bombardment
or anti-aircraft fire. We were unaware that three days before the main combat on
Okinawa had ended with the last Japanese positions overrun, nor did we know that
only shortly before had the enemy reluctantly called off their suicide-plane attacks in
order to conserve their dwindling kamikaze force for the final defense of the home
islands. Japanese pressure on the American invasion armada was still severe, however,
and only later did I learn that an Armed Guard friend on S.S. John Muir, another
Liberty Ship having also just reached Okinawa, was wounded by shrapnel from a near-
miss bomber attack at 2 A.M. on June 26.

The Francisco Coronado dropped anchor in a pre-assigned position about a mile
from shore, awaiting our turn to be unloaded. The next few days were fairly
uneventful. On one occasion smoke was seen billowing from a pile of deck lumber.
Fire hoses soon put out the fire. On the night of June 29 a ―red alert‖ was received,
indicating an impending attack. Immediately the ―smoke boats‖ from nearby circled
the cargo ships, releasing their smelly fog and clouding the air to camouflage vessels in
the hope of hiding them from the eyes of enemy pilots. It proved to be another visit by
―Washing-Machine Charlie,‖ a Japanese bomber that occasionally dropped bombs on
the beach area. What an ear-jarring noise arose from the radar-controlled anti-aircraft
batteries on shore! My battle station, where I stood on alert with steel helmet and life
vest, was the radio shack with the Merchant Marine and other Navy radioman. In the
sultry July weather, being inside and wearing the extra protective gear was anything but
comfortable.

Some combat marines visited our ship one day, loaded with Japanese flags,
cigarettes, and other souvenirs. For three or four quarts of whiskey I could have had

337

Maritime Tales of the Sea

anything in their possession. On July 2 some Seabees came aboard and started
unloading cargo. I helped to paint the radio shack. A constant roar overhead reminded
us that our planes were returning from another mission. On July 5 I saw something
most unusual. A strange aircraft came fluttering across the harbor at a low altitude. It
hovered motionlessly over the deck of a Liberty ship, and then alighted gently. It
reminded me of a grasshopper, having no wings and only two propellers strangely
located above the plane. I had just seen my first helicopter!

As the days wore on we heard reports from shore that Japanese survivors were
still being flushed out of caves and woods. I stood radio watch on a regular schedule,
our chief means of receiving emergency information. Earlier I had stood signal
watches on the bridge, receiving and relaying blinker-light messages. Several Navy men
managed to go ashore souvenir-hunting, but somehow I missed the chance to see the
island.

By July 10 our ship was finally unloaded of ammunition, food and medical
supplies. On July 12 we sailed in a convoy of 16 ships headed for Ulithi Atoll and a 26-
day voyage to San Francisco. The war ended for me there on August 7 when we left
the ship and heard about the dropping of the first atomic bomb.

RALPH NELSON SMITH

In January 1945 I signed up for the Merchant Marines. The rule then was you
must be signed up before you turned 17 ½ years old so I had to leave high school one
month before I graduated. I trained at Catalina Island, California and was assigned to
the S.S. H. Weir Cook from Wilmington, Ca. pool. I went to a port in San Francisco
Bay to load explosives and sailed under the Golden Gate on my 18th birthday on July
29th.

There were many fire drills during our crossing. One drill that was memorable
was during the middle of the night I got up and proceeded to my station on the next
deck up at my hose. When I went out the whole ocean was light as day. I looked aft and
all I could see was fire. My first impulse was to run forward because I knew there was
390 tons of dynamite right under the fire… The oiler‘s station next to mine was
unmanned. I grabbed his CO2 bottle and headed for the ladder-way down to the fire.

338

Maritime Tales of the Sea

By the time I was able to get there the fire was almost out. Somehow the hatch cover
had caught fire and burned quickly.

On August 15 we received information that a uranium bomb had been dropped
on Japan and that they had surrendered. That night I was with the bow watch when we
saw two phosphorus trails coming toward our port bow. As I watched I heard the
watchman cranking the phone to bridge. A moment later I heard him say, ―If it had
been what I thought you would have known it by now.‖ We looked to starboard and
watched the two trails continue on. The next day we were told that we were about 50
miles off Enewetak and that a cruiser had been sunk in our vicinity the previous night.
We arrived at our destination and were anchored for another 30 days at a place called
Guigan, Samar Island, Philippines.

With the war over no one wanted our explosives and ammunition. We were
finally taken into dock. Some unloading was done. We were then sent to Manila. We
anchored at anchorage #26 for a good while. A large barrage with a huge crane tied up
to us and began unloading the explosives. We then were taken into dock where
unloading was completed. At this time we were sent to Subic Bay, City of Olongapo,
where all guns were removed, and then back to Manila and to dock where carpenters
built stairways to each level in our holes and also built cook shacks on deck. Our ship
was being given to Japan for them to begin hauling home their troops from all over the
Pacific.

We left Manila for Tokyo in late December or early January and became
embroiled in what was called the Okinawa typhoon. For three days everyone was
seasick while the empty Liberty made 28° rolls, light was visible under the keel at
midship and the screw came completely free of the water. Some cruiser lost a 100 foot
off its bow, but we made it. We were anchored in Tokyo bay for a week or so before
the change of crew was made and we were sent to a Japanese facility about 40 miles
from Yokohoma to await passage home. We were told that the facility had been where
they trained their officers. After about a month we were taken to Yokohoma and
boarded the General John Pope. Five thousand two hundred eighty personnel were
crammed into that Navy tub for the 13 day trip to Seattle. I lost 20 lbs. those 13 days.

During the entire Pacific trip I experience several cases of sunburn that my
dermatologist says may be the cause of all the skin cancer I have had and the cause of
many surgeries.

January 1946: After a few weeks of rest and visiting I went to work for JF Smith
& Sons. Owned by my father and his brother. I had worked there in the summer time
since I was 14. In 1950 my father sold his half of the business to his brother.

In the summer of 1947, I had joined the Air National Guard, 181st Fighter
Sqdn. By 1950 the Korean problem had become big time and it looked like I was about
to be there. So I quit JF Smith & Sons and went to work for the Guard full time in early
1950. My original enlistment was for 2 years. After that there were 3 one-year
extensions and I was discharged a Tech. Sgt. In 1952.

I worked again for my uncle for a short period while looking for other
employment. In late 1952, I moved from Dallas to Mobridge, South Dakota to become

339

Maritime Tales of the Sea

parts manager of a Pontiac-Cadillac-GMC dealership. Now man listen up! I‘m here to
tell you SOUTH DAKOTA is too cold for Texas boys. Forty below Zero. BR-R-R-R!!!

By March 1954 I was on the road to Texas. Big D, warm weather, little snow
and people who spoke Texas, not ―walves‖ for valves or ―Wolkswogen‖ when I know
it‘s a Volkswagen.

With no money but a lot of dreams I managed to finagle a truck and some
stock and started a battery business traveling 21 counties in North West Texas. My
customers were people that farmed and operated on credit until harvest, and then they
paid up all their bills, which meant all my customers were carrying their customers on
the books. We were all betting on after harvest.

About 3 days before harvest was to begin a hail storm came through my area
and beat down every head of grain in the Texas panhandle—and me. I went to work in
the electric supply business for the next 10 years.

In 1964 something happened that I never thought could happen. I got BONE
tired. I had joined two friends in the restaurant business. We eventually were operating
11 restaurants scattered from Bay City, Texas to Watterloo, Iowa. Seven days a week
and 20 – 22 hour days made me tired so I got out only $50,000 in debt.

Then I went to work selling World Book encyclopedia door to door. After a
few years I had 95 people in my organization. I paid off my debits. Then the law
changed and the future for this kind of work looked grim. After the book business I
spent 7 years helping other people‘s bad boys get their life under control. Two years at
Dallas County Boys Home, two years at Circle H Youth Ranch in Ouachita National
Forest, and almost three years at Youth Home, Inc. in Pine Bluff, AR.

I arrived back in Dallas Dec. 31, 1982, and started Nelson‘s Service repairing
lawn care equipment. Everything was okay until mowing season ended and I was
looking at a two month vacation that I could not afford, so I went calling on any
business that used equipment powered by small engines. On January 1, 2001, I turned
the business over to my youngest son who had come in January 2000. Everything was
good until Sept. 11, 2001. After little business for 4 years my son went back to work as
a locksmith for a friend.

I have continued to operate his business which has shown some promising
signs of revival since July 2005. I suggested to him that maybe he should keep his day
job until spring 2006 and see what transpires. Then he can consider coming back to
operate his business himself so I can sit down for a little while. I‘m getting tired… also
I need some time to reflect on what grand trip this life has been.

WILLIAM G. SMITH
NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10021

I much enjoyed out pow-wow on the phone last week and as mentioned I'm
passing along a much abbreviated account of my own Merchant Mariner war time
memories, and a copy of my Navy Log record which mentions my Sea service with
the USMC signal detachment on USS Estes, AGC12. (an ex-C2)

340

Maritime Tales of the Sea

The enclosed photocopies still give me the shivers when I look at them. In
1942 my ports of call on the oil tankship Markay and the routes we followed, went
through the oil slicks and debris of these ships and many, many others.

No doubt we passed each other in the Sabine and Houston' Channels, to and
from Port Arthur, Galveston, Houston and Texas City, and we lucky ones didn't even
know what was happening in those waters beyond our limited horizons.

Sometimes at the Esso Club bar in Aruba, or a seamen's club in Reykjavik,
there would be mini-reunions meeting fellow shipmates when we learned bits of news
(usually sad or bad).

In April, 1943 I signed on an old rust bucket, the Mt. Evans. WWI vintage, and
had better weather for awhile on the Med run. We didn't run into any U-Boats after
passing Gib, but did get whacked by German bombers in Oran and south of Sicily.
Departed Oran July 2 having taken aboard 290 Italian POW's for discharge Norfolk.
After all that it was back to the North Atlantic and the Clyde and Mersey ports. May
1944 docked Southampton, loaded troops/ordnance, and my first visit to France when
we dropped the hook rather close (too close!) to what .became one of the world's most
famous beaches, OMAHA. From that day in June we made 26 channel crossings
carrying ordnance and vehicles to UTAH beach, OMARA, and eventually to Le Havre
and up the Seine' to .Rouen. Of the group of the Liberty‘s on this job naval records I
inspected not long ago show that a dozen or so hit mines with resultant damage and
casualties. My ship, the SS Jane Long finally wore itself out and we returned to the
States in the spring of 1945.

My last war time voyage was aboard the SS Stephen Beasley (a Liberty) and I
enjoyed another cruise in the Med, this time via Port Said and Suez to Bombay and
Karachi. V-E Day came and went during this time but the war was hot and heavy in the
Pacific. Our ship didn't get close to the kamikaze action of Okinawa, but the Arabian
Sea was most certainly not yet "neutral waters". Heading homeward on August 3d via
the Suez Canal I received an urgent signal from Aden (I was ship's Radio Officer) that
two unidentified U-Boats, alm9st certainly. Japanese had been spotted ahead of us. We
could not run the risk of breaking radio silence, but didn't have to. As in a "bad news,
good news" joke we were ordered to turn South and proceed to Durban. We arrived in
the USA 30 days late after stopovers in Beira, Durban, and East London. The two big
bombs had dropped while we were in the Mozambique Channel so the rest of our
return trip was a "peace .time voyage". The Gunnery Officer and gun crew had a blast
with their 3"50 and the 20's to celebrate. They had dumped all the brass overboard as
we passed around the Cape and when the ship returned to Stapleton the shoreside
Naval Officer raised Hell with our man for violating regulations and not returning the
brass States-side. Home is where the heart is (and the chicken - s__t)!

341

Maritime Tales of the Sea

January 2, 2007
Rate/Rank: WO1 Service Branch: USMM, USMC
Service Dates: 8/1941 - 8/1945, 12/1948 - 3/1953

Significant Duty Stations
 SS MT. EVANS - MERITERRANEAN SEA
 USS ESTES AGC-12 - KOREAN WAR
 SS MARKAY - CARIBBEAN, NORTH ATLANTIC
 SS JANE LONG - NORMANDY LANDINGS
 SS STEPHEN BEASLEY - INDIAN OCEAN

Significant Awards
 USMM COMBAT ACTION RIBBON * PRESIDENTIAL TESTIMONIAL

LETTER
 WORLD WAR II VICTORY MEDAL
 ASIATIC PACIFIC CAMPAIGN MEDAL
 ATLANTIC WAR ZONE MEDAL
 MEDITERRANEAN MIDDLE EAST MEDAL

PHILIP J. SOUTHWELL
I was born on November 5, 1923 in St. Paul, Minnesota. I graduated from

Humboldt High School and started working as an auto mechanic in an auto repair
shop.

I joined the Merchant Marines at age 19 and trained at Sheepshead Bay in New
York on January 1943. I was transferred to Wilmington, California in June 1943. I went
to Cooks and Baker School in Portland, Oregon in 1944. This earned me my Cook and
Baker certificate to be able to sail in that capacity on board ships.

342

Maritime Tales of the Sea

All my sailing was in the South Pacific. I went to several islands delivering
whatever supplies we had on board. Some of the ports of call were Hawaii, Samoa,
Marshall Islands, Guam, New Hebrides, Panama, Aruba, Curacao, Sipan, Philippines,
and Japan. I never saw any action – I guess I was very lucky.

My last trip was to Japan, and then I left the service and came home.
I had various small jobs, married Priscilla in 1946 and had one daughter,
Laureen; we have two granddaughters, Elise and Malana.
I went to work at Merit Chevrolet in St. Paul, Minnesota as a new and used car
salesman and stayed there for 33 years.
We bought a 5th wheel and traveled into Canada and Mexico. In 1989 I retired
and we sold our house and everything we owned and moved to Texas where we built
our home outside of Valley View Texas. From 1989 until 2004 we spent winters from
November to March in Acapulco Mexico and still continued to travel. On each trip we
would take stuffed animals and toys and deliver them to the poor sections.

Active Duty Service

Ship Date Disc. Date Rating Vessel Name
06/28/43 08/31/43 General Utility Illinois
09/25/43 10/26/43 Messman Gulfwave
10/27/43 03/06/44 Messman Gulfwave
06/13/44 09/19/44 Baker S.V. Stewart
10/26/44 01/15/45 Baker American Packer
02/13/45 03/31/45 Cook Antigua
05/13/45 06/30/45 Cook Catham
07/01/45 07/08/45 Baker Catham
07/09/45 08/15/45 Cook Catham

343

Maritime Tales of the Sea

DON SPANGLER
WARRANT OFFICER-U.S. MERCHANT MARINE

I was 17 years old in Columbus, Ohio and working summers at Jeffrey Mfg.
with my father, who was a 1st class machinist. The company was busy making
conveyors for the U.S. Navy, to bring ammunition to the guns from storage below
deck. I graduated from high school in June 1944. The war was raging and I felt that I
should enlist and assist in the war effort as most of us did. I tried getting into the Navy
Radar Program, but I was not selected due to many college graduates that were
applying.

So, in December 1944, I joined the U.S. Maritime Service. I went to Cincinnati
and spent the full day being indoctrinated. On January 3, 1945, I went to Cincinnati and
took the train to New York City. We were transported to Sheepshead Bay where I got
my basic training. I applied for radio school at Gallups Island and was transferred there.

My high school sweetheart, Donna Love, came to Boston and rented an
apartment in Beacon Hill, where we were married on April 21, 1945. I played piano, so
I was in the little band that we formed and played for a big dance at the USO Buddies
Club on a Saturday night. After I got my 2nd class radio operators license, Donna
moved back to Ohio and I went to New York to get assigned to a ship. My first ship
was a T-2 Tanker, U.S. Churubusco. My next trip was to France and England on the
liberty ship, U.S. Warren Delano. The war had just ended, but there were plenty of
mines we all had to watch for. We stopped at La Pallice, France and my friend and I
heard about a German U Boat base, where Germans were kept prisoner. We slipped
into the base undetected and talked with the prisoners. I was amazed that this was the
base that housed U Boats, with a complete machine shop to repair subs. It could hold
several subs at one time. The concrete enclosure was so thick that bombs could not
penetrate the roof or walls. I traded cigarettes for two sub plaques, made from shell
casings that I still have as souvenirs. I remember that the German U-boat crews were
treated with the utmost respect for destroying so many Merchant Marine Ships and
they were the elite of the Nazi military force.

After that trip, I returned to Ohio and started doing radio and TV repair. I was
one of the first TV repairmen in Columbus. We were blessed with our first child, a
daughter Teresa in 1948 and she is still teaching school in Grove City, Ohio. In 1952,
we were pleased to have our son, Mark, to complete our family. He became an attorney
and is practicing in Orlando, Fl.

344

Maritime Tales of the Sea

I became an operating Manager with Graybar Electric and was transferred to
Portsmouth, Ohio where we supplied equipment to the one of the first Atomic Plants
in the U.S. After 10 years with Graybar, I decided to go into real estate sales and home
building. That lasted for 40 years.

My wife and I are still married and living in Lake Mary, Florida. I am still
working part time as a building manager in Maitland, Fl. We have lived a full and
wonderful life, and enjoyed our children and grandchildren. We lived through the
depression, where all of us had to sacrifice to survive. This year we will celebrate our
61st wedding anniversary, but we will always remember World War II and the many
military people that did not come home. Most of the sailors on my ship had been
through torpedoing and sinking of their ship. My entire experience aboard ship in the
Merchant Marine, certainly helped me realize, what an important part they played in
World War II.

CALE STEPHENSON

I was born in Detroit, Michigan on January 6, 1927, to Cale & Pearl
Stephenson. We lived in Detroit till I was 6 years old, then moved back to Oak Cliff,
Texas, in 1933 where I grew up during the depression years. I went to school there and
quit school when I was 16 years old and went to work for Consolidated Aircraft in
Grand Prairie, Texas until I was 17. In January 1944 my mother signed me up in the
U.S. Maritime Service. I was sent to St. Petersburg, Florida for training.

My first trip on a Liberty was the SS Jonathan Elmer as 2nd Cook & Baker. We
left Charleston, S.C. for New York to join a convoy. In route we were caught in a
hurricane along the Eastern Seaboard. We at one time did a 45° roll and did not turn
over. We were all scared and went to the mess hall and tied ourselves to a chair so we
would not be banged around. After about 4 or 5 hours we came out of the storm and
proceeded to New York.

On this 1st trip we went to Leghorn, Italy where we dropped off troops and
returned to New York. My second trip after a quick trip home was on the S.S. William
Tyler Liberty out of New York. We were in a convoy to Liverpool. In route, an
ammunition ship lost its rudder and we had to leave it derelict in the water with a
destroyer escort. It was late in the evening and at dusk we were looking toward it and
the whole sky lit up. We knew it had been hit by a torpedo. We went from Liverpool to

345

Maritime Tales of the Sea

Manchester where we discharged our cargo. We returned to Boston where I was
discharged. At the time of my discharge I was asked to take a night Baker job on the
troop ship S.S. Marine Wolverine. We went to Southampton, England, where we got
orders to La Havre, France, and picked up prisoners of war to bring to Boston. There I
was discharged to go to Texas. That was my last trip to sea.

In 1950 I was drafted into the Army and sent to Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, where
I was the Baker for Company B 81st medium tank Battalion. It was while I was there I
met my wife, Joan, in Salisaw, Ok., where she was a nurse. We were married on the
post in June 1951. After 2 years in the Army, I came back to Texas and went to work at
Vaught Corporation in the aircraft industry. While there in Tooling, I worked on the F-
7U and the F-8F fighters, also the Regulus Missile. I left there in 1958 and went to
work for Brunswick Bowling for three years before getting back in Aircraft with
Murdock Engineering as Tooling Inspector. After 26 years I retired in 1991.

During this time I and my wife raised 5 children in Arlington, Texas (three boys
and two girls); seven grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren.

FORMER MERCHANT MARINE AWARDED MEDAL
BY THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
RALPH TAYLOR

Ralph Taylor enlisted in the U.S. Navy on December 2, 1942 in Detroit,
Michigan. Because the quota was full, the Navy asked that he serve in the U.S.
Merchant Marine. Since he was told that it was another branch of service with the
same benefits, he gladly complied. He reported for duty at Sheepshead Bay in New
York for training.

Ralph made numerous trips on different ships, but one of the most
memorable was when he and other Merchant Mariners, along with some British and
Norwegian servicemen, kept Russia from collapsing during the war. Winters in Russia
then, as now, were brutal. People were dying from cold and hunger by the thousands
with little relief in sight other than that supplied by the Merchant Mariners in their
large convoys. Convoys carried supplies for every facet of war and life in Russia which
literally saved lives and the country from annihilation by Hitler's army.

Taylor's convoy consisted of 26 ships that supplied fuel for the escort. It was a
huge operation covering a large ocean area. Unfortunately such a large operation was
easily spotted by the enemy as they passed near the Norwegian coast during the winter
months, directly into the path of German aircraft and submarines. Their supplies
could be disbursed into the Russian interior through only one inland route,
Archangel/Molotovsk and Murmansk, ten miles from the German front. This
involved passage through the White Sea, iced solid year-round, that had to be cleared
by icebreakers, slowly, as they entered. The convoy was in constant danger.
Taylor's ship, the SS Williard Hall was filled past capacity above and below decks. Their
ship was overloaded by at least 1,700 tons of cargo and would have sunk immediately if
hit by enemy fire. They had weapons to protect themselves but near proximity to the

346

Maritime Tales of the Sea

German lines made each passage dangerous. The convoys usually made a trip every 30
days.

Taylor recalled the convoy shooting down a German plane and being attacked
in retaliation the following day by 48 torpedo bombers. The convoy shot down seven
of them and another seven the next day. As they continued passage, a gauntlet of 11
German subs in waters filled with floating mines had to be run before delivering
precious cargo to Russian allies.

However, not every memory was of the enemy or battles. Ralph laughed a little
as he told of the ship passing too close to the ship in front of it, accidentally bumping
and bending the propeller. The entire convoy was held up and they found themselves
in a winter wonderland with time on their hands. Ralph and a friend got the bright
idea to go seal hunting to provide their wives and mothers with seal skin coats. They
sneaked down onto the ice floes and walked to the ship behind them calling up to
their friends on deck. Unfortunately they forgot the time and with no warning, instant
darkness sets in at the Arctic Circle. As snowy darkness cut off their sense of direction
as well as their view, they barely made it back to their ship. Of course they received an
unprintable tongue lashing by their commanding officer for their antics, leaving them
with truly unforgettable memories of the day.

Each Merchant Marine had to have a Russian shore pass and was allowed to
visit on land while cargo was being unloaded. As unbelievable as it may seem, our
government kept no records of their activities, so after the war the men decided to
keep their own records. Somehow Taylor not only managed to smuggle out his
Russian shore pass, he smuggled out stamps, currency, part of the captain's records,
and many other items, which provide a history of the Merchant Marine and their
wartime objectives. They have a network across the United States today that rivals
WWII underground intelligence, including detailed records and long lists of each
other's names, addresses, wartime activities and heroic deeds. They realized they had
contributed an invaluable service to the war, as well as to the Russian allies and
decided to apply for veteran status from our government.

Ralph Taylor awarded medal at the
Russian Embassy in Washington DC for

Murmansk voyages during WWII

347

Maritime Tales of the Sea

Imagine how pleasantly surprised and proud they all were to learn that the
Russians wanted to award them with medals for their life-saving efforts on behalf of
the Russian allies during World War II. Vladimir P. Lukin, Ambassador of the Russian
Federation sent personally written invitations, along with formally printed invitations
to as many Merchant Mariners as he could contact to receive a medal from Russia. On
January 1, 1992, 50 former Merchant Mariners were awarded medals. Due to their
information network, they informed the Russians of other Merchant Mariners and
how to locate them. On October 7, 1992, another 250 received medals and on
December 8, another 300 showed up at a third ceremony. The Russians were
overwhelmed by the response. They were not expecting so many to care enough to
make the trip to Dundalk Marine Terminal in Baltimore to receive recognition.

Ralph Taylor received his medal from the Russian Federation on October 7,
1992, inscribed with "40 years of victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945. To a
participant in the war." The original ceremony was scheduled to be held on a restored
liberty ship in Dundalk. However, so many men showed up they had to move the
ceremony inside to the terminal on base. During their ceremony, they had a chance to
visit with old friends and meet those they had only communicated with through the
mail or phone. They listened as the ambassador spoke of the "black days of the old
Russia" being gone forever.

Ralph married his fiancée, Bette, on December 25, 1943, and they were
married almost 62 years. Previous to their marriage Bette joined the U.S. Navy
WAVES serving with Naval Intelligence in Washington, D.C. She, as well as her
husband and all former Merchant Mariners, are very proud to have served their
country during the war against Germany and Japan. They are proud to have been a
part of the fight for freedom among allies, who are once again becoming reunited,
possibly due partly to a small band of civilians who fought so valiantly for their
country in a harsh, cold land so long ago.

Ralph Taylor crossed the bar on November 15, 2005, at the age of 83. Ralph
was a very loyal and cherished member of Stephen Hopkins Chapter of the American
Merchant Marine Veterans. Although his experiences during and after World War II
are certainly unique, Ralph was a seaman through and through and typifies the spirit
and dedication of all those who sailed in World War II. Ralph served his country with
pride. His obituary read as follows: ―… Ralph served in the U.S. Merchant Marine during
WWII from December 1942 to June 1946. Years later upon learning of his eligibility for veteran
status, he devoted his time to inform and help other Merchant Mariners receive the long awaited
honors they deserved…‖

A very touching thing happened when Ralph was under Hospice Care, the
hospice nurse happened to be British and when she was told he had been in the
Merchant Marine in WWII, she said she wished to thank all the Merchant Marine
because if it were not for you, she would be speaking German instead of English.

348

Maritime Tales of the Sea

SHIP TYPE DATE TRIP

SS Yankee Sword: AB Hog Island 8 Oct - 6 Dec New York to Galveston, TX

1943 to Baltimore, MD

SS Cedar Mills: AB T-2 Tanker 17 Feb – 23 Mar New York to Avonmouth

1944 England to New York

SS Henry St. G. Liberty 5 April – 23 Aug New York to Norfolk VA

Tucker: AB 1944 around the world & back to

Portland, Maine

SS Amelia Earhart: AB Liberty 26 Sept – 17 Nov New York to Liverpool,

1944 England to New York

SS Willard Hall: AB Liberty 8 Dec 1944 – 30 New York to Clyde

May 1945 Anchorage, Scotland to

Molotvsh & Murmansk

Russia to Glascow, Scotland

SS William N. Liberty 17 July – 6 Nov Los Angeles, CA to Batangas,

Pendleton: AB 1945 Philippines to San Francisco

SS Charles J. Colden: Liberty 8 April – 31 May San Francisco, CA to

Third Mate 1946 Tocopila, Chili thru Panama

Canal to port of discharge,

Charleston, SC

Ralph Taylor was awarded by the U.S. Department of Transportation:
The Merchant Marine Combat Bar, Atlantic War Zone Bar, Pacific War Zone Bar,
Mediterranean Middle East War Zone Bar, Victory Medal and Philippine Liberation
Ribbon.

ROGER TILTON

Hearing the call for sailors to serve in the US Merchant Marine in June of 1942,
I ROGER TILTON being patriotic, adventuresome, and immortal, answered the call
on a hot, steamy afternoon in Baltimore, Maryland. In no time I was hustled off to
where I was fingerprinted, and photographed. Then the Coast Guard issued me
seaman‘s papers.

349

Maritime Tales of the Sea

After acquiring all the necessary clothing and gear befitting a proud sailor I was
eager to embark on my first trip. Hurry up and wait; no ship was available. To fill the
time while waiting, I signed up for what must be one of the dirtiest jobs on earth---
cleaning out Tankers cargo holds. After a ship has been unloaded, its tanks are steam
cleaned with high pressure nozzles in a process called ―butterworthing.‖ After the wash
water has been pumped out, a gooey residue of tar, sand, and rust clings to the bottom
of the tank and must be laboriously scooped out with a trowel.

Visualize a work site at the bottom of a cavernous gloomy space, accessible by a
ladder, lit only by a shaft of sunlight coming through a small hatch thirty feet above.
Add the infernal temperature and humidity of summer sun on steel plates, and you
should begin to get the picture. As each bucket of sludge was hoisted up, it would
swing into the ladder showering the wretches below with oily slop. Sweat streamed off
our bodies in rivulets, requiring constant replenishment with quarts of water and
quantities of electrolyte-replacing salt tablets. Soaked with sweat, black with oil, eyes red
and stinging, we were like phantoms from some Kafkaesque hell. As the days wore on,
the crew sloped off until only two of us remained to wipe down the bunker oil tanks
with rags. Situated just forward of the boiler room, the heat in these fuel spaces made
the cargo tanks seem cool by comparison.

My time in purgatory finally came to an end with my assignment to a ship ready
to depart. She was the Standard Oil Company‘s John D Archibald, named after John D
Rockefeller‘s right hand man. At the time of her launch in 1921, she was the largest
tanker in the world; 572 feet long, 75ft wide, with 14,055 lbs. of displacement, and a
speed of 10.75 knots. The ship was under charter to the War Shipping Administration
Standard Oil had its own Company union; there were no problem with signing the
ships articles and joining the crew.

My watch section shared a compartment with half a dozen tiered bunks. When
I entered, I was greeted by one of the most memorable characters of my life. ―Blackie‖
was of medium build, with a friendly, bright smile that blazed across his swarthy face
like Douglas Fairbanks in a pirate movie. He welcomed me aboard and briefed me on
all I would need to know about shipboard routines, shipmates, meals, women, politics,
and even vaster subjects about which he seemed to have unlimited knowledge.

What made him cosmically unique however, was his reconstruction of the
English language. Two words were ever spoken together without the interjection of a
certain four-letter word (! #&*), which in his usage, became noun, pronoun, adjective,
adverb, preposition, connective, or punctuation mark. Thus ―We! #&*‖ better! #&*
eat! #&* before we! #&* have to! #&* go on! #&* watch.‖ When four letters were
insufficient, he would creatively add prefixes or suffixes to further expand this one
word vocabulary.‖ Thus ―! #&*ing ―or mega!#&*‖ and similar construction could be
heard enriching his personal lexicon. My new shipmate‘s overuse of this once-useful
profanity reduced it to an everyday term, years before Mario Savio and Ali McGraw
introduced it on campus and into movies, completing its socialization and reducing it to
meaninglessness.

350