Whistles over the Water
By
George Leonard Hirsch
In Memoriam
For Paul S. Hirsch and His
Shipmates on the S.S. Hurley
1
The
S.S. Patrick J. Hurley took on her complete cargo and crew at
She set sail on August 12th. Three days later
on August 15th Unterseeboot (U-512), IXC U-boat of the Kriegsmarine,
left the
The
The Hurley was a converted tanker, part of
the U.S. Merchant Marine lifeline that provided the troops and supplies without
which World War II would have been lost. She was chartered to the War Shipping
Administration because there were so few seaworthy ships of the 1,340 Merchant
Marine fleet that could be refitted for service in the Atlantic sector.
After six months of outfitting between April
and August, the Hurley was deemed ready for her maiden voyage across the
These consisted of steel gun foundations, two
magazines (one forward, one aft), and splinter protection for the bridge and
for the two 50 caliber machine guns mounted fore and aft. There was one 4” 50
caliber gun mounted astern and one 3” 50 caliber at the bow. Each of the larger
weapons had a supply of 2,000 rounds and required two men to operate it.
Officers of the Bridge were issued two 50 caliber browning automatics.
Other precautions included painting the ship
a deep grey, darkening facilities on board, and a fire control communication
system. There were 4 life boats (10 men per boat), 4 life rafts (18 men per
raft), but only 17 life jackets and 23 steel helmets.
In those
early, desperate days of the War, fascism triumphed on every side. German
U-boats were in complete command of the seas sinking 33 Allied ships a week, 1,716
ships a year. They ranged with impunity along the Atlantic coast, destroying
70% of Allied shipping in 1942. In
Merchant Marine casualties were steady and
huge; over 9,000 merchant mariners, ordinary men with extraordinary courage
from all walks of life, lost their lives, proportionally more than every branch
of the service.
By June 1942 in the American defense zone,
losses were so high and the amount of material and fuel destroyed so great that
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill cabled President Roosevelt: “I am most
deeply concerned at the immense sinkings of tankers west of the fortieth
meridian.”
It was into this maelstrom of death at sea
feared by every sailor that the S.S. Hurley sailed in her fateful encounter.
2
My
father’s ship embarked on a mild, tropical day with a slight head-wind under a
There was no convoy of ships to bolster
morale or secure survivors for the Hurley in the event of disaster. Therefore
Captain Stromberg tacked leeward and windward on course, preferring the
relative safety of the evasive maneuver to a more direct, faster route that could
not in any event outrace a U-boat that glided at 17.5 knots on the surface and propelled
7.5-8 knots under water.
On the night of
Men in the bunkers played cards
indifferently, not caring about the hand that would be dealt them but knowing very
well what hand might be dealt them and that the ante in that game was highest
of all; others fretted for their cigarettes while the smoking lamp was out;
still others wrote letters home quickly.
Eight lookouts took their stations with
binoculars: one aft at the gun, one forward at the gun, two on the upper
bridge, two on the after house, two on the flying bridge, the highest 50 feet
above the waves. All radio reception and transmission had been shut down, and
conversation among the men ordered curtailed or muted.
They were now 950 miles northeast of
3
Paul
S. Hirsch, Seaman 2nd Class, was on watch on the bridge at the 50
caliber machine gun, starboard side, scanning the blackness back and forth,
eyes and ears strained for something that lurked out there, shouldn’t be out
there this far south, but was.
At 2030 hours he saw it--a very faint light 3
to 4 points off the starboard bow! Blackout was gone. He flicked the intercom
switch for the lookout at the bow.
“Renfro!
Light just off starboard! I guess 100 yards parallel course. The damn thing’s
surfaced! You see it?”
“Yes!”
They both hit the alarm simultaneously, and
at that moment the sub opened fire with two heavy caliber 6” deck guns and
armor piercing shells, simultaneously raking the deck with machine gun fire and
green tracer shells from a rapid fire 37 mm. gun. Huge shells one after the
other slammed into the ship and smashed the cabin amidships. Snapping the radio
antenna like a stick, they ruptured the starboard wing’s bunker, exploded the
combustion control board, blew the starboard life boats to bits, exploded the
engine room at the water line enflaming other tanks that had been shelled, and
demolished the forward 3” 50 gun. The splinter shields were just that,
splinters!
Captain Stromberg immediately called for all available
speed and swung hard to port but the U-boat followed his every desperate
maneuver and closed in for the kill. Everything was on fire! Burning oil and
gasoline from the burst tanks encircled the ship in a wall of flame. The sub
circled closer. Machine gun fire and rapid-fire tracers raked the decks fore
and aft, mercilessly cutting down men who were on the catwalk running to their
stations. Heavy dense smoke made visibility almost impossible.
My
father’s gun station at the 3” 50 bow gun was a twisted pile of wreckage. He
ran back to the bridge to reach the port side when he found the Executive
Officer lying on the deck, his mid-section ripped open and bleeding. He
immediately tried to put on a pressure bandage, but realized it was futile.
“Hey,
Paul,” the Exec gasped, “it’s no use. I’m gone. Get out of here. Save
yourself!” His eyes closed, and his head fell to the side, out of pain at last.
Stunned and sick but determined to get to any
gun station, my father got up trying not to slip on the bloody deck, and made
it to the hatchway toward the port bow gun where Lt. Patrick J. Walsh was
attempting to return fire. My father turned the corner, saw Walsh hit by
shrapnel in the throat and almost reached him when an armor piercing shell
blasted out the starboard bulkhead obliterating the bridge, the Captain, the
crew’s quarters and blew him overboard into the burning water.
“I felt the force of the explosion against
my body. The next thing I knew I was spinning and tumbling head over heels in
the water. It seemed I was a thousand fathoms down, but my life jacket slowly
raised me to the surface where I saw a scene from hell. The heat was intense
and the sounds were unreal. Flames danced on the waves slick wit burning oil,
the ship was cracking to pieces, men were screaming.
I groped through the waves gagging on
seawater and trying to keep the flames away when I heard ‘Over here! This way!’
I swam toward the voice, but when they pulled me on to the raft, a stinging, searing
pain flashed through my head. ‘You’ve been hit!’ I put my hand to the left side
where the blood was pouring profusely from a shrapnel wound and it felt like
the peeling of a thick grapefruit; but I was lucky; if that had hit me anywhere
else on my body, it would have killed me.”
4
While
his mates cleansed the wound with sulfur powder and bandaged him, the ghastly light
from the burning ship illumined their
determined search for other survivors.
“Hey,
over there! Look!”
Three men clinging to a capsized lifeboat
managed to come along side with another not far behind. The men righted the
overturned craft and climbed into both; 23 in one boat, 22 in the other, and each
one with room for only ten men. The two boats were drifting from the blazing
hulk when they heard the explosions.
“Quiet men! Down!”
The sub continued circling from starboard to
port like a prowling beast. There was shell fire and more explosions from the
ship. They could hear voices from the conning tower and crouched low, not
talking, barely breathing, not moving a muscle. They had heard stories of
survivors being machine gunned in the water, and also stories to the contrary,
but those were rare. Finally the putt-putt-putt of the sub’s engines died off.
Drifting away they saw their ship sink stern first. Exhausted lost, hurt and
grieved, they slept the sleep of the dead.
Dawn came with the flotsam and jetsam of a
wreck that was once a ship, a home away from home. The stench of oil and
gunpowder was still in their nostrils. The roiled waves lifted them to the top
of swells and plunged them down twenty foot walls of water; it was impossible to
make headway by using the crowns and troughs of a sound vessel.
My father’s wound ached terribly. ‘I can’t stop
this whistling in my head!’
‘That’s
not just in your head, Paul,’ the Third Mate said. He was the Navigation
Officer, the ranking seaman among them, therefore the Officer of the Day (OD),
and they paid attention. ‘Listen men!’
Since their lifejackets had been equipped
with a
Distress
signal flasher and a whistle, even amidst the rough slaps of the white caps they
could hear the high- pitched sound of another man alive!
Toiling with their burned and bruised hands
through the choppy sea, they finally spotted him at the bottom of a swell going
under. Somehow they reached him and pulled him aboard. He was as water-logged
as his jacket.
‘Thanks,
guys!’ he hawked and wretched and spit out the sea, barely catching his breath.
I was in the water all night…sure I was done for…if you hadn’t found me, I was
gonna give up and sink.’
The look in our eyes prompted his answer. ‘I
didn’t see…anybody else…I don’t think…nobody left but us.’
‘All
right, men,’ the OD said somber but matter-of-fact. ‘Let’s continue searching
for survivors, and then we must decide how to best help ourselves. We must move
quickly before nightfall.’
Their efforts, however, were in vain. The
sea is a harsh mistress and does not readily yield up her victims.
“At first we thought it would be a good idea to
tie the boats together, but it wasn’t long before we realized that it was a bad
idea because of the turbulent sea we were in. If we didn’t cut that line, one
or both of the lifeboats would capsize. We couldn’t risk it.
Reluctantly the line was cut, and we waived
each other farewell with good wishes. They were out of
sight within 15 minutes in the swift current, and were fortunate to have been picked
up 7 days later by the S.S. Etna, a Swedish freighter out of
5
The situation in the remaining boat was precarious
for the other 23 men. They had to ration their provisions (26 ounces of water
per day, pemmican, hardtack, and malted milk tablets), they had to care for
their personal hygiene and the boat’s, and they had two wounded men, my father
and the Chief Engineer.
My
father was able to cleanse his wound with seawater, but the CE was in bad
shape. A machine gun bullet had severed an artery in his right ankle.
“Although
our Signalman and Corpsman, Tillinghast, applied pressure bandages, these only
exacerbated his terrible agony. When he struggled against it and kicked off the
wraps, the blood shot out like water from a burst garden hose.
This he did several times and caused him to
lose a great deal of blood. Each time Tillie opened the wound to apply a new
bandage the bilges were filled wit blood.
Since hygiene was critical, we immediately flooded the bilges with sea
water and pumped out the bloody water using a hand pump.
The moment the blood hit the sea we were
surrounded by sharks. These guys came in all sizes and shapes from 6’ to 12’ or
16’; and what looked like huge killers of 18 feet, and they seemed almost as
wide.
Several times the biggest creatures would
nudge the boat, causing us to fear they might swim underneath and upend it. We
had nothing to drive them away, and even if we had used a gun a wounded shark
in the water would send them into a feeding frenzy that would surely capsize us”.
‘Okay,’ the OD gave the order. ‘No one moves
without
saying so first, got it? One false step and we’ll all land in the drink with
these man-eaters.’
Whenever a man became muscle cramped and
needed to move, everyone had to move, one after the other; 46 legs crossed over
and under each other in a space designed for 10.
The OD also called to their attention that if
the enemy found them, they would become prisoners of war.
‘If the enemy finds us, we’ll become
prisoners of
war.
You may refuse to be taken prisoner,’ he said with a straight face, ‘and stay
in the lifeboat; but then, you won’t have any choice in the matter.’
6
By the third day the waters became calm
enough to hoist a sail. There were two in the boat; yellow meant quarantine,
red was ‘The Pink Lady’—‘survivors in need of rescue’. There was a steady wind
blowing, and the OD seta course due west with the hope of reaching the free
islands of the
They made good progress at first doing as
much as 10-12 knots on a white-capped sea, but on the 12th day they
awoke to a morning without a breeze and without a sound from the ocean around
them. They had reached the dreaded Horse Latitudes where subsiding dry air and
high pressure literally evaporate the winds.
‘We’re in the doldrums,’ the OD said
grimly.
The sails hung slack. The ocean was a sheet
of glass without a ripple on the surface except the slow interminable slicing
of the sharks’ fins; no sound, no movement, no sight of plane or boat. The days
dragged on as hopeless as the sameness of sea, and the rations decreased with
each bite and every sip. The sun burned hotter and scorched them without relief.
Water was rationed only at night to avoid dehydration.
“The Chief Engineer lay very still, not even
rubbing his left foot against his bandaged right ankle. We fashioned a
makeshift canopy from the sail that shaded him from the sun, but the
unrelenting rays penetrated right through.”
‘Why is it so dark? Why is it so dark?’ he
moaned.
Thinking that he might be going blind, they
persuaded him to keep a bandage around his eyes, and took turns applying a wet
cloth over his eyes. He didn’t protest at all. They saw that he had no hope; he
was past it, he was just going to die, and it was then that they began to pray,
for him and for themselves because now they had no way of guiding their boat. They
had reached the end of the world where the ancient mariners believed that one
falls off into endless space.
The one thing they couldn’t afford to lose
was hope. They had kept their civility, their self-respect, their courage; they
had shared their rations, and their hope. What doubts they had, what despair
they felt; no one spoke.
“I don’t think we stopped praying since we
were hit.
One
man declared he was an atheist, would not join us in prayer. There was a mutual
respect among us regarding this, too. He went to the other end of the boat and
rejoined us after we finished praying.”
7
That
was all they had left until they were awakened by gunfire on the 21st
day! Some thought that they were dreaming, but the ship coming toward them was
the British freighter H.M.S. Loch Dee.
“She was a rusty old tub,” my father said,
“but the most beautiful ship we ever saw! Captain White, who by our great good
fortune was also an M.D., told us that our Chief Engineer would not have lasted
another day.
When we asked about the gunfire he replied
in a bristling Scottish brogue:
‘We didna hold with any sharks comin’
round ye in the rescue at all!’”
The last survivors of the S.S. Hurley were
taken to hospital in
Those men who did not survive in their
courage and stout hearts are still remembered.
“There were 23 of us in the boat,” remembers
George Goldman of