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The S.S. Martha Washington |
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World War I Draft Card |
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The S.S. Mount Clay |
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The S.S. Reliance |
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World War II Draft Card - April 15, 1942 |
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The sinking of the S.S. James W. Denver |
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| Name | James W. Denver | |
| Type: | Steam merchant (Liberty) | |
| Tonnage | 7.200 tons | |
| Completed | 1943 - Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyards Inc, Baltimore MD | |
| Owner | Calmar SS Co Inc, New York | |
| Homeport | Baltimore | |
| Date of attack | 11 Apr, 1943 | Nationality:  American |
| Fate | Sunk by U-195 (Heinz Buchholz) | |
| Position | 28.52N, 26.30W - Grid DG 9248 - See location on a map - |
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| Complement | 69 (2 dead and 67 survivors). | |
| Convoy | UGS-7 (straggler) | |
| Route | Baltimore - New York (1 Apr) - Casablanca | |
| Cargo | 6000 tons of sugar, acid, flour, aircraft parts, vehicles, bulldozers and 12 P-38 aircraft on deck | |
| History | Completed March 1943 |
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| Notes on loss |
At 20.41 hours on 11 Mar, 1943, the James
W. Denver (Master Everett William Staley) was hit by one of
three torpedoes fired by U-195
about 475 miles west of Las Palmas, Canary Islands. The ship straggled
on her maiden voyage from the convoy UGS-7
due to overheated engine bearings and was proceeding alone on a
straggler route at 11 knots. The torpedo was spotted by the coxswain
when it was 40 yards from the ship, but it struck on the starboard side
between the #2 and #3 holds before evasive manouevers were taken. The
engines were secured and the ship took a heavy list and settled by the
head, bringing the propeller out of the water. 20 minutes after the hit
the eight officers, 34 crewmen, 26 armed guards (the ship was armed with
one 4in and nine 20mm guns) and one passenger (US Army security officer)
abandoned ship in five lifeboats. A motorboat capsized during launching
and threw 18 men into the sea, but they all get into other boats. The
master stayed on board for an hour and later stayed with his lifeboat in
the vicinity of the sinking until the next morning. The other four boats
set together sail for the African coast, but became separated during the
second night. Six crew members and five armed guards in a
boat were picked up after seven days by the Spanish steam merchant Cabo
Huertas and landed at Las Palmas on 21 April. Another boat with
15 survivors was picked up in 22°42N/35°05W by the Spanish steam
merchant Campana after 13 days and landed at Aruba on 3
May. On 6 May, the master and 13 men landed about 90 miles north of Port
Etienne, Rio de Oro. These men might have died there on the desert, but
they were spotted by a British patrol aircraft after three days, which
dropped food and medical supplies to them. They were picked up the
following day by the submarine chasers PC-2040 and PC-1041
and landed at Port Etienne on 11 May. After 23 days at sea, another
eleven survivors were rescued by the Portuguese steam fishing trawler Albufeira
in 21°55N/17°10W and landed at Lisbon on 10 May, but the second
engineer died of exposure and was buried at sea. |
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From Liberty
Ships, the Ugly Ducklings of World War II |
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Now We Know Another chapter in the Battle of the North Atlantic began on 11 April 1943. The brand new Liberty ship JAMES W. DENVER had straggled from her convoy in a heavy fog, then stopped when overheated engine bearings made it necessary to shut down for repairs. While the black gang labored with sledges, calipers, and scrapers to repair the bearings and get going again, two torpedoes sent the ship down as though she had been scuttled. In the excitement, one lifeboat overturned and the men were spilled into the sea, but were hauled out again. Somehow or other, all the deck officers wound up in the same boat, with the result that two of the boats had no one with any knowledge of navigation. To complicate matters, all the boats were soon separated by heavy seas and never sighted one another again, but resourcefulness and determination carried all of them through their ordeal with the loss of only one life. Deck engineer Dolar Stone was in a boat carrying 18 engineers, stewards and Armed Guard gunners, only two of whom knew anything at all about small boat seamanship. Although he knew more about deck winches and ship's gear than he did about small boats, Stone took command as being the man aboard with the most seagoing experience. Captain Everett W. Staley gave each boat a course to steer toward the nearest land, and a last command: "Hoist sail and let's get going." "There was some light-hearted joking at first," said Stone, "but all in all it was a solemn leave taking from the JAMES W. DENVER. We hated to lose our ship and especially to see her go down without ever having fired a shot from all those beautiful new guns." On the third night out the bow lookout on Stone's boat sighted a vague shape in the dusk and someone yelled, "Destroyer dead ahead!" To attract attention, they switched on their life jacket lights. Almost before they realized what was happening, a submarine appeared directly across their course. "It was a big one," Stone recalled, "and we were careening right down on to it." The lifeboat grated against the hull and a German officer shouted at them from the conning tower. "Where are you from?" "Brooklyn!" The German laughed. "That's where the baseball comes from," he said in good English. As DENVER was stenciled on the lifeboat equipment, they answered up readily enough when the officer asked the name of their ship: "JAMES DENVER." The German laughed again so the men guessed this was the submarine that had sunk them. "Well, well," he said. "You are from one of the new Liberty ships." A German sailor handed them a carton of cigarettes. From the bridge the officer shouted a course for them to steer, and the U-boat moved off into the night on the hunt for more victims. In another boat, some unidentified man, probably first mate Andy Del Proposto, kept a log of their 23 day ordeal. Such chronicles are rare. This one is well worth reading because it fittingly describes the fortitude and patience of men who waited out their fates for more than three weeks and won:
In the captain's boat there was a sextant but no mathematical tables, so he relied on dead reckoning, steering with a compass held between his legs. Several men tried to jump overboard -- a phenomenon of human behavior in almost every lifeboat trip of any duration -- but were restrained. When food ran out they wondered if they would live to sight land again or if some passing steamer would eventually find only their mute skeletons. The captain had a chart and each day's dead reckoning position provided a constant reminder of their progress and was a great morale builder. Sometimes the captain would strike up a song and most of them would join in. He would dole out the water with: "It's only water now, boys, but keep your spirits up and you'll be drinking champagne one of these days soon." Finally, on 5 May, the twenty-fifth day after leaving the ship, they made land -- the beach at Rio del Oro, West Africa. They were so weak no one could walk. They crawled up the beach on hands and knees, exulting in just being on dry land, but their joy was considerably mitigated by the discovery that they had landed on a desert -- no water, no signs of human life, nothing. After five days of blinding sandstorms and unrelenting bright sun, intensified by the burning sands, they might have died there had it not been for another German submarine. In a strange paradox of war, a U-boat had been sighted and depth-charged offshore by British planes a few days before and on 10 May a plane hunting for evidence of this marauding German sighted the DENVER's lifeboat. Some hours later a patrol vessel, which was also hunting for the U-boat, landed several armed men who thought at first that the DENVER's crew might be German survivors. They were soon aboard ship and headed for a hospital where all of them recovered from their ordeal. Hardy sailors, most of them went back to sea when they returned to the United States. |
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RETURN TO CAMDEN'S INTERESTING PEOPLE PAGE
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USS
DeKalb (ID-3010) USS DeKalb (ID-3010) was a transport in the United States Navy. She was named for General Baron Johann de Kalb after being seized. DeKalb was launched 18 June 1901 by Vulcan Company, Stettin, Germany, as Prinz Eitel Friedrich. She put in to Norfolk 11 March 1915 for repairs, and failing to leave in the time prescribed by international law, was interned in April and moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. When the United States entered World War I, she was seized by Customs officials and transferred to the Navy. Reconditioned and refitted as a troop transport, she was renamed DeKalb, and commissioned 12 May 1917, Commander W. R. Gherardi in command. DeKalb was assigned to the Cruiser and Transport Force, Atlantic Fleet, and on 14 June 1917 sailed in the convoy carrying the first troops of the American Expeditionary Forces to France. In the next 18 months DeKalb made 11 such voyages, carrying 11,334 soldiers safely. With the end of the war, she continued her transport duty returning 20,332 troops from Europe in eight voyages. On 6 September 1919 she was turned over to the Commandant, 3d Naval District. She was decommissioned 22 September 1919 and returned to the Shipping Board for disposal the following day. |
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USS DeKalb (ID # 3010), 1917-1919USS DeKalb, a 14,180-ton (displacement) troop transport, was built at Stettin, Germany, in 1904 as the passenger liner Prinz Eitel Friedrich. She was a German Navy auxiliary cruiser during the first seven months of World War I, then was interned in the United States. Seized when the U.S. entered the conflict in 1917, she was turned over to the Navy, converted to a troopship at the Philadelphia Navy Yard and renamed DeKalb. She was commissioned in May 1917 and a month later helped carry the first contingent of U.S. troops to the European war zone. Later registered as ID # 3010, she continued in her vital work until the fighting ended in November 1918. During this time DeKalb made a total of eleven trans-Atlantic voyages, transporting over eleven-thousand men. After the Armistice, she reversed the process, bringing home more than twenty-thousand troops in eight trips. USS DeKalb was decommissioned in September 1919 and transferred to the U.S. Shipping Board. Subsequently refitted for commercial employment, she operated as SS Mount Clay during the early 1920s and was scrapped in 1934. This page features, or provides links to, all the views we have concerning the World War I troop transport USS DeKalb (ID # 3010). For other views related to this ship, see:
Click on the small photograph to prompt a larger view of the same image.
For other views related to this ship, see:
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USS DeKalb (ID # 3010),
1917-1919 --
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If you want higher resolution reproductions than the digital images presented here, see: "How to Obtain Photographic Reproductions." |
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Photo
#: NH 54660 |
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#: NH 54661 |
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Photo
#: NH 41702 |
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#: NH 54656 |
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#: NH 82951 |
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For other views concerning this ship, see:
USS
DeKalb (ID # 3010), 1917-1919,
and
Prinz
Eitel Friedrich (German Passenger Liner, 1904).
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Prinz Eitel Friedrich
(German Passenger Liner, 1904). Prinz Eitel Friedrich, a 8797 gross ton passenger liner, was launched at Stettin, Germany, in 1904. She spent nearly a decade in commercial service under the flag of North German Lloyd. When the First World War broke out in August 1914 Prinz Eitel Friedrich was at Tsingtau, China, where she was quickly converted to an auxiliary cruiser for the German Navy. For the next seven months the ship operated on the high seas with Vice Admiral von Spee's squadron and as a detached commerce raider. Among her victims while in the latter role was the schooner William P. Frye, captured on 27 January 1915 and scuttled the next day, the first U.S. flag vessel sunk in World War I. On 10 March 1915 Prinz Eitel Friedrich, now low on supplies and burdened by many prisoners, arrived at Newport News, Virginia, where she was interned. Later taken to the Philadelphia Navy Yard, she remained under the German flag until seized by the United State in April 1917. She served from May 1917 to September 1919 as USS DeKalb, then returned to civilian control, initially as DeKalb and, after 1920, as Mount Clay. After briefly operating for the United American Lines during the first half of the 1920s, the ship was laid up. She was scrapped in 1934. This page features all the views we have related to the German passenger liner Prinz Eitel Friedrich, which was USS DeKalb during 1917-19. For pictures of this ship during her U.S.
Navy service, see:
Click on the small photograph to prompt a larger view of the same image.
For pictures of this ship during her U.S. Navy service, see:
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| Prince
Eitel Friedrich of Prussia From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
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Prince Eitel Friedrich (Wilhelm Eitel Friedrich Christian Karl) (July 7, 1883–December 8, 1942) was a son of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany by his first wife, Duchess Augusta Viktoria of Schleswig-Holstein. He was both born and died in Potsdam, Germany, and was a member of the Royal House of Hohenzollern On 27 February 1906 Prince Eitel married Duchess Sophie Charlotte Holstein-Gottorp of Oldenburg (2 February 1879 Oldenburg, Germany - 29 March 1964 Westerstede, Germany) in Berlin, Germany. They were divorced 20 October 1926 and had no children. From 1907-1926 he was Grand Master of the Lutheran Order of St. John (Johanniter-orden). Prince Eitel was in the front line from the beginning of the First World War and was wounded at Bapaume, where he commanded the Prussian First Foot Guards. He temporarily relinquished command to Count Hans von Blumenthal, but returned to duty before the end of the year. The following year he was transferred to the Eastern Front and during the Summer of 1915, was out in a field in Russia when he had a chance encounter with Manfred von Richthofen (The Red Baron) who had just crashed with his superior officer, Count Holck. The two men were hiding in a nearby tree line from what they thought was the advancing Russian army and who turned out to be the grenadiers, guardsmen, and officers of Prince Eitel. 1921 he was found guilty of fraudulent transfer of 300,000 Mark and sentenced to a fine of 5000 Mark.[1] |
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