LIVERPOOL TO CAPE HATTERAS
As the ship passed the Cape Hatteras lighthouse off North Carolina it was the deck cadet who spoke first: ” I’ve been here before”, he proclaimed.No-one answered until the lighthouse beam flashed, casting an eerie shadow inside the wheelhouse.”Yes, me also” replied the skipper, “but in those days, some thirty years before you were born, it was known as ‘torpedo alley’ and with good reason.”Again no-one answered although this time it was a much more respectful silence as the light illuminated the captain’s profile.
And so it was aboard that Esso tanker in 1972 that the old man gave a brief description of how ships use the advantages of the Gulf Stream gyre and currents to hasten the speed of the vessel and save time. He said very little however about the dreadful loss of life from unrestricted submarine warfare during World War Two which consigned over 400 ships and 5000 sailors and civilians to the depths around Hatteras – this in itself a much higher proportion than those lost during all of the Battle of the Atlantic.
But it is this author’s observation of life in the 1970’s Merchant Navy that few WW2 seamen actually wanted to talk about their experiences. Perhaps life’s functionality, i.e, the need to cope required them to forget and move on.So in the event it is necessary to turn to the history books, and Cape Hatteras – otherwise known as the Outer Banks – is also known as the ‘graveyard of the Atlantic’ as well as torpedo junction; this former description came about partly from powerful hurricanes as well as the treacherous Gulf Stream currents and shoals – on stranger tides, so to speak.
And this October’s recent Hurricane ‘Florence’ once again demonstrated the ferocity of nature as it pounded along the US eastern seaboard before tracking north-easterly away from Hatteras. Most researchers believe that the historic number of wrecks around the islands, sandbars and spits of the Outer Banks are difficult to quantify, although it is reasonable to say that Liverpool ships were well-represented from the first era of colonialism.
And of course, Native American Indians fished and hunted the Banks, no doubt whilst in conflict with other tribes as well as with white pioneers centuries later.But the infamous ‘Middle Trade’ of slave ships – the horrific business of transporting African slaves from the Gold Coast to the US and shipping cotton from there to Liverpool meant that the navigational routes back to Liverpool ran very close to the Outer Banks.
Mercifully, there is little evidence of slave ships foundering there with human cargo – the shoals themselves proving a natural geographic barrier into the Carolinas – indeed most slaves seem to have been landed at Charleston and Savanna well to the south, a point that the author of ‘The Amistad Rebellion’, ( ISBN: 9780143114253) Marcus Rediker makes clear. In the later American Civil war, the CSS Alabama – built at Cammel Laird, Birkenhead, its ordnance manufactured in Liverpool – patrolled the Outer Banks during its New England Expeditionary Raid 1862.
Many of the Alabama’s crew were from the Liverpool area partly due to the expediency of being close to the shipyard; the Alabama being a commerce raider attacked Union vessels all down the eastern seaboard placing Union seamen in irons, an event which prompted one Northern senator to comment that the Alabama’s actions were “no better than piracy.” Nonetheless, if we use the vessel as an example in international case law, it is a fact that none of her 2000 prisoners were ever harmed – all eventually were released.In time the Alabama herself was sunk, preventing more destruction on the high seas but also forestalling embarrassment to British politicians and the builders who by this time were deep in a political scandal of the day – this due to the financing of the rogue vessel.
The Alabama, however, is a story in itself best followed up by books such as ‘In the Shadow of the Alabama’; Renata Eley Long, ISBN: 9781612518367 – quite beyond the scope of this writing. But extreme callousness in war was found in subsequent conflicts.
So if we fast-forward to World War One, Cape Hatteras saw the barbarity of the U-boats as the manned, but unarmed Outer Banks lightship was shelled, followed by the torpedoing of the British tanker Mirlo.The Mirlo with a full cargo of gasoline was torpedoed without warning and it was only due to the bravery of men from the Chicmacomico Lifesaving Station that the majority of her crew were rescued.
Several other sinkings littered the Banks’ shoreline with bodies and debris as the U-boats retaliated against the British blockade of the North Sea on the other side of the ocean. This WW1 blockade is well-documented and although hastening the armistice, questions the complete ruthlessness of U-boat attacks further on in WW2. Tactics abounded and the glow of US streetlights along North Carolina towns was used by U-boats to highlight targets, and following a murderous attack on the tanker MV Empire Gem in January 1942, reports state that the U-boat commander allowed his men – one by one – to witness the tanker crew dying in a sea of burning gasoline.
The whole ship erupted in a towering fireball of gasoline before breaking in two and settling on the seabed at lat 35 x long 75 W. Only two survivors from a crew of 57 were rescued from the Empire Gem some five hours later.Similarly, the Lady Hawkins, a Cammell Laird-built ship of the Canadian flag was destroyed without any forewarning with the loss of 221 souls. Although perhaps there was some humanity amidst the madness of war, for in contrast, an attack on the tanker Dixie Arrow was staged in such a way that the U-boat fired shells toward the ship seawards in order to avoid civilian casualties in houses along the shoreline.
Indeed, using the case study of the Dixie Arrow, researchers have found through digitalisation of wrecks that U-boats were particularly clever in hiding in the deeps of the Outer Banks before attack (‘Draining the Ocean’, C5, 10/12/18).Known as the ‘Second Happy Time’ to U-boats on account of a lack of retaliation by the Royal and US navies, sinkings continued: the SS San Delfino, the freighter Empire Thrush and the trawler HMS Bedfordshire being notable casualties.
The few bodies from Bedfordshire that washed up are buried in Ocracoke’s local cemetery: ‘a corner of some foreign field that is forever England’ reads one of the inscriptions taken from Rupert Brookes’ famous poem.It would be ludicrous to state that in time of war, survivors of lifeboats were immediately taken off pay once their ship had sunk – a particularly cynical move by shipowners – but this is exactly what happened!
This ruling gives a new dimension to what we now know In the new millenium as a ‘zero hours contract’ but in not so a benign way – for it was only pressure by shipping unions in Liverpool on the government, plus the disproportional losses of the Second Happy Time which prompted pay for all survivors: the Emergency Work Order (MN) Notice.Of the civilian population around Hatteras, in 1942 residents were regularly woken by the sound of night time explosions at sea with witnesses telling of rattling furniture and window panes together with huge orange fireballs on the horizon.Residents tried to live as normally as possible amidst the constant oil and debris washing up on the shore – the thick fuel oil especially making identifying objects in itself difficult.On the Outer Banks, new strategies prevailed against the Nazis such as air patrols to the extent that four U-boats sunk by North Carolina were the most ‘kills’ by any state.
The attacks gradually lessened, although continuing to May 1945 underlining the fanaticism of the U-boats.What of later years? Well, although most physical encounters of ships and U-boats have vanished, submerged still are countless wrecks, unexploded depth charges, mines and torpedoes.A powerful hurricane in 1950 – Hurricand ‘Dog’at 145 mph – released large amounts of materiel from sunken ships along the shoreline including .303 ammo, bottles and other objects as being clearly British, as also they continue to do so especially when Hurricane ‘Floyd’ in 1999 shifted further war debris on the sand.Locals tell of the wreck of the Empire Gem lying in 25 fathoms of water.
Now a popular dive site, it is known as the ‘stink wreck’ or ‘smell wreck’ due to the hydrogen sulphide still emitting from heavy fuel oil in the vessel’s forward deep tank, but at the same time attracting shoals of fish especially red snapper, sea bass and sand tigers.Although of concern to the US environmental protection agency which regularly monitors the smell wreck’s eighty-year old oil, the ship has entered the folk-lore of the islands by having a street named after it: Smell Wreck Lane, Hatteras (zip code NC 27943) is now an exclusive development of residences facing the ocean.Amidst the more pleasing and less esoteric street names of Sea Oats Lane and Surf Side Drive, there is also an Empire Gem Road too – a sincere tribute to the dark days of war here.
One that remembers the sacrifices made by all sailors in the conflict.Of course, Outer Banks’ beaches in peacetime are now a major tourist magnet not only for maritime archaeologists, but also divers, sport fishermen, plus anyone who is seeking a quiet holiday in a setting between land and ocean.
Children play on the sand and surfers glide in on the waves, and even after October’s hurricane season there are always walkers and horse-riders.And watching seabirds on a sunny day whilst the Gulf Stream current flows at an average speed of 5.6 knots towards the north-east – indeed in the general direction of Liverpool – people along the Hatteras shore may reflect about the value of peace in life.
Peace – isn’t it sweet?