Editor’s note: Coinciding with enactment of the Merchant Mariners of World War II Congressional Gold Medal Act of 2020, the LOG is reprinting excerpts from a 1951 booklet titled “The Seafarers in World War II.” Penned by the late SIU historian John Bunker, the publication recapped SIU members’ service in the war. More than 1,200 SIU members lost their lives to wartime service in the U.S. Merchant Marine.
Ready Then – Ready Now!
As timely as the next call for duty is this brief story of the Seafarers in World War II. It’s a story of heroism and daring and a tremendous job ably done.
Trained crews from the Seafarers International Union are ready now – just as they were in World War II – to sail the ships wherever the freights of war must go; to bring home those hundreds of vital materials indispensable to our industrial economy.
Before any of the nation’s armed services were ready for all-out duty in World War II, the merchant marine and the men who manned it were on the front lines of global action.
No executive manifestos, no formal enlistment, no testings of loyalty or pledges of devotion to their country’s service were required to put SIU crews into action or prove their willingness to face danger – and death.
They helped to man the nation’s cargo carriers long before there were guns or convoys to protect them, inspired by that sense of patriotism and pride of profession which has characterized the maritime industry and its merchant seamen time and again throughout the nation’s history.
As employees of a private industry which converted almost overnight to 100 percent war service, SIU crews did their jobs in World War II with an efficiency that saved the nation millions of dollars. They were paid at wage rates prevailing in shore-side industries for comparable skills and responsibilities, not to mention the great personal risk to which they were subjected in front line service.
Throughout the war, SIU ships were crewed through the union’s hiring halls in an efficient system of manning which dispatched thousands of men to freighters, tugs, tankers and transports. The union also served as a practical means of recruiting personnel for the merchant service. Through a great expansion of facilities since the war, the SIU is well equipped to do the job of recruitment and manning even more completely in any future emergency.
In these critical days when the nation’s armed forces are scattered over large parts of the world and we are becoming increasingly dependent on foreign lands for raw materials, the merchant marine is one of the country’s most vital assets.
Historically resilient and tough of fiber, nurturing a race of men who are skillful and resourceful, the merchant marine is ever first to make available its men and facilities for the nation’s service. And the men of the Seafarers International Union are ready now as they were in 1942 to write another chapter of loyalty and able performance of duty into the annals of the American merchant service.
The Robin Moor … Prelude To War
This is the story of SIU ships in World War II – the thrilling saga of the cargo ships and the men who sailed them over the far-flung ocean tracks to write an epic chapter in American maritime history.
Here is the story of the storm-swept, submarine-swept, bomb-packed road to Russia over the misty Arctic – the epic of the ships that sailed alone during the first hectic months after Pearl Harbor, when there were no coastal convoys and torpedoed tankers became faming pyres along our eastern seaboard; when the freight ships and the tankers went out unprotected and unarmed but never lacked for crews.
Here, too, is the log of fighting freighters whose Oerlikon guns traced tales of high courage in a myriad of foreign skies. Wherever the freights of war were needed, these cargo carriers sailed them through.
SIU ships freighted everything imaginable in the way of war goods and the necessities of life to our Allies, to our overseas garrisons, to the beachheads and the supply ports for the fighting fronts.
Assorted Cargoes
Ships left the States loaded deep with everything from cigarettes to Sherman tanks; with barbed wire, guns, powder, railroad cars, airplanes, dehydrated eggs, beans, grain, flour, bombs, trucks, clothing, oil, gasoline – and so many other items that a complete manifest could never be made of it all.
In addition to supplying half the world with fuel, food and the tools of war, ships of the Seafarers International Union brought back to this, the world’s arsenal of democracy, the vital raw materials without which a war effort on such a tremendous scale would have been impossible. Little has been said about this homeward-bound traffic from foreign lands during the war, but it was just as important as the bombs, the grain and the cannon that were carried out of American ports in an endless stream for five war-harried years.
Our freighters and those of our Allies brought to this country manganese, burlap, mica, rubber, timber, bauxite, iron ore, sugar, jute, spices and hundreds of other industrial necessities, without which we would have found the fighting of a war not only most inconvenient but downright impossible.
They also helped to carry what normal commerce there was between the United States and Caribbean, Central and South American countries, which depended upon us for the numerous requirements of daily existence.
When the war at sea was finally through and bright lights shone through the open ports of ships at sea, on peaceful missions once again, the Seafarers International Union had paid a heavy price in ships and men.
The merchant marine as a whole lost 6,000 seamen, dead or missing. A total of 1,554 America-flag ships were lost by torpedoing, bombing, mines and the varied other accidents of war. Of these, no less than 570 were lost in direct action with the enemy!
Our merchant marine had its baptism of fire long before Pearl Harbor. The SS City of Rayville struck a mine and sank off Australia in 1940 to be followed by the Charles Pratt, a Standard Oil Company tanker, which was torpedoed off West Africa in December of the same year.
Even before these actions, the SS City of Flint had made the headlines and caused an international furor when it was captured, while en route to Norway in October 1939, by the German pocket battleship Deutschland on the charge that it was carrying contraband.
After the eventual release of this ship and her crew, it was still many months before Pearl Harbor. Then came the incident of the SIU-manned SS Robin Moor, bound for South Africa from New York, which was shelled and sunk by a German submarine, eliciting from President Roosevelt a historic pronouncement on freedom of the seas.
Chief Officer Melvin Mundy was on the bridge of the Robin Moor at four o’clock in the morning of May 21, when he saw a light blinking on the horizon, signaling in international code the letters AAA or “what ship are you?”
Mr. Mundy answered: “American Steamship, Robin Moor.” Captain William W. Myers came on the bridge, and to the Moor’s question “Who are you?” the answer was signaled back “Submarine.” This was followed by the command, “Don’t use your wireless.”
A boat was then launched from the freighter, according to the U-boat’s orders, and pulled over to the submarine, where the Germans questioned First Mate Mundy about the vessel’s destination and cargo. The sub commander insisted that the Robin Moor carried contraband, despite Mr. Mundy’s assertions that the cargo included nothing more warlike than pleasure automobiles, engines, tin plate, and general merchandise for South African stores.
Crew and passengers were given 20 minutes to dress and get into the boats, after which the sub put 33 shells into the ship, sinking her in 18 minutes and without any chance to dispatch an SOS. Until weeks later nothing was known of the freighter’s fate, for the submarine departed without reporting the incident and the 45 crew members and passengers were left adrift.
Of the four lifeboats that got safely away from the ship, the first was picked up by a freighter 13 days later and the last was not found until it had sailed 700 miles, its occupants subsisting on a meager ration of biscuits and water.
When the first survivors of the Robin Moor were landed and news of the sinking stirred the nation, President Roosevelt sent a special message to Congress. The date was June 20, 1941. Said the President: “I am under the necessity of bringing to the attention of the Congress the ruthless sinking by a German submarine of an American ship, the Robin Moor, in the South Atlantic Ocean (25 degrees and 40 minutes west, 6 degrees and 10 minutes north) while the vessel was on the high seas en route to Africa.
‘We are not Yielding’
“…. We must take it that notice has now been served upon us that no American ship or cargo on any of the seven seas can consider itself immune from the acts of piracy. Notice is served on us, in effect, that the German Reich proposes so to intimidate the United States that we would be dissuaded from carrying out our chosen policy of helping Britain to survive. “….
Were we to yield on this we would inevitably submit to world domination at the hands of the present leaders of the German Reich. We are not yielding and we do not propose to yield.”
There were other incidents involving American ships prior to Pearl Harbor: the bombing of the Steel Seafarer in the Gulf of Suez; the sinking of the freighter Lehigh; the mysterious disappearance of the tanker Astral, and the sinking of the freighter Sagahodac only four days before the attack upon Honolulu.
But it was in January 1942 that the merchant marine felt the full fury of the war at sea. And then, with a suddenness that found us totally unprepared, the U-boats struck – not in foreign waters nor on the convoy routes to Europe, but along the shores of our own Atlantic Coast.
One of the first ships to feel this Nazi thrust in the western Atlantic was the SIU-manned City of Atlanta.
U-Boat Lane
There was a chill breeze and a long, glassy swell on the sea, as the SIU-manned Seatrain Texas came up the Carolina coast at full speed in the morning of January 19, 1942.
Captain Albert Dalzell was on the bridge and every officer and unlicensed man aboard was on the alert, for Sparks had been receiving messages of ships being attacked by submarines.
During the night there had been flashes of gunfire on the horizon and, though they supposed it was practice fire by the Navy or Coast Guard, they were taking no chances. The ship was holding as close to the shore as safe navigation would permit.
The officer of the watch had just taken a bearing on Wimble Shoals buoy, when a call came from the lookout that there was wreckage on the water ahead.
Captain Dalzell got his glasses and swept the sea in the direction toward which the lookout had pointed. There were small black specks bobbing on the long swells and, as he focused more clearly on the area, he saw a man’s hand wave from one of the bits of flotsam. It waved again, weakly. All he could see was the hand, for the man’s head and shoulders were too close to the water.
Turning to the Mate, the Skipper ordered a boat prepared for lowering. The engine room telegraph jingled as speed was decreased, and the freighter ran swiftly up on the scattered wreckage now becoming more visible.
They could see pieces of boards and shattered odds and ends of ship’s fittings strewn for a mile here and there across the undulating water, but careful scrutiny through the glasses revealed only five bodies amid the debris. One man was holding onto the frame of a wheelhouse door.
As the Seatrain Texas came to a stop, the lifeboat was put quickly over the side in the well-coordinated movements of a veteran crew and was soon pulling through the water-soaked wreckage.
The boat’s crew worked fast, for Captain Dalzell couldn’t endanger his vessel and her crew a minute longer than was necessary. For all they knew, a submarine was watching every movement they made.
To Be Continued
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