Ernest Hemingway
They called it a "Hooligan Navy" but they were anything but rowdy and undisciplined. They were patriotic Americans rescuing merchant marines whose ships were torpedoed by U-boats along the heavily traveled Atlantic coast.
In the early days of World War Two, the U.S. Coast Guard and Coast Guard Auxiliary cobbled together an armada of everyday civilian vessels - from cabin cruisers to yachts and even shrimp boats - for security patrols and life-saving missions.
Within months, the rag-tag fleet totaled almost 500 craft, working in long and tiring shifts, fighting seasickness and fatigue, bobbing in all types of weather and waves from the North Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico.
Regular military forces were lean coming out of the Great Depression. A top Navy commander requested "the maximum practicable number of civilian craft that are in any way capable of going to sea" for as long as 48 hours at a time.
Among those to volunteer for seafaring duty was author Ernest Hemingway. So did actor Humphrey Bogart, Boston Pops conductor Arthur Fiedler and the governor of Maine, according to the website Classic Sailboats.
Many of the boats of the Coastal Picket Force, as it was formally known, carried armed active duty Coast Guard personnel. The government provided shortwave radios, electronics and other equipment, too.
Civilian crews, often at great risk, attended to stricken merchant vessels. Hundreds of vessels and lives were lost to the German attackers, with 1942 one of the bloodiest years of the war in or near Americans waters.
U-boats laid mines at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, gateway to the critical port of Baltimore (and the U.S. Coast Guard Yard, by the way.) The U-123, early in the war, approached New York Harbor and could make out the lights of Manhattan but the close-in coastal waters were too difficult to safely navigate to proceed.
Near Miami, brave Coast Guard Auxiliary members rescued 22 survivors from a torpedoed Mexican tanker, Potrero de Lano, as it belched smoke and flames - leaking volatile petroleum products.
There was also a confirmed Auxiliary contact with German raiders - and it was about as close as a crew - volunteer or active duty - could get.
A disabled U-boat unknowingly surfaced beneath the hull of an Auxiliary patrol off Florida, briefly lifting the vessel, and then puttered off. The Auxiliary craft returned to shore with scrapes and U-boat paint steaks as proof of the bizarre encounter.
No one was hurt - and anything but a fish tale!
Popular Science magazine said of the wartime volunteers: "These men would be greenhorns aboard a battlewagon, but along the lines of their own hobby, many of them are extremely good, and so are their boats."
Many Americans - both men and women - joined the Coast Guard as civilian volunteers to guard America's ports against espionage as well as fire, flooding and theft. The piers and warehouses were full of military hardware and in many cases quite flammable. Even others pitched in to help with administrative tasks. No job was too small.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.