This is the first time we have received memories from a Merchant Marine veteran. These are the memories of DON's father, George Ritz, who was an engineer on the Liberty Ship USS BENJAMIN BOURN. We hope we hear from more Merchant Marine vets with their stories, as these were incredibly brave guys - they were THE targets of the U-Boats. Here is George's story.

After laying in the harbor Trinidad for about ten days, we were scheduled to go further down the South American Coast to Paramaribo in Suriname (Dutch Guyana) to take on a load of bauxite ore which is the raw material for aluminum. Naturally this was a high priority cargo to support aluminum production for the war effort.

The bauxite loading dock was located at the mine a few miles up the river. The depth of the channel did not permit taking on a full cargo and still get over the sandbar at the river's mouth. We would have to return to Trinidad to top off the last 10% of the cargo. The bauxite in Trinidad had previously been brought up from Suriname by shallower draft ore boats brought down from the Great Lakes iron ore fleet. I never saw any of those ships in action, but they normally made the trip without escort.

So here we go again, another 800 miles round trip through another U-Boat infested area, running alone without a convoy. Just what we needed to make our day. The US Navy assured us that the U-Boats couldn't operate in such shallow waters so we had nothing to worry about. My recent post-war research showed that there were ships being sunk by U-Boats in that location during the time of our voyage.

We would be running alone at about 10 knots so we would be exposed for about two days although it always seemed longer. So early one morning we sailed south through the submarine barriers in the Serpent's Mouth (one of the two narrow passes between the island of Trinidad and the South American coast at Venezuela) and out into the South Atlantic. We hugged the coast as close as we dared taking advantage of our shallow draft. Fortunately, we didn't need any ballast to handle the typically mild sea conditions in that part of the world. However, on the return trip, we would be drawing some 30 feet of water.

Happily, we made our uneventful arrival at Paramaribo and entered the harbor. We could see the rows of brightly painted and gabled Dutch houses that made up the city. There would be no shore leaves as we wouldn't be hanging around very long. They put a few US soldiers on board to see that none of the crew jumped ship during our brief stay.

We went up the river a few miles to the bauxite mine and loading station. Turning the ship was very difficult because the bow protruded into the jungle on one side of the river and the stern on the other side. We couldn't possibly have done it without the local tugboats.

We loaded in about a day because it was a bulk cargo loaded off a belt conveyor. We sailed down the river and squeaked over the bar on a high tide and headed back for Trinidad. We kept our fingers crossed again because we now were drawing thirty feet and could not hug the coast that closely as coming down.

We arrived back in Trinidad on schedule and awaited our turn at the topping-off dock to finish loading. We were scheduled to sail for New York in the next northbound convoy in a few days.

We topped off our fresh water tanks, and the Chief Steward ordered some fresh meat because we were running low. Our lengthy stay in Aruba and our side trip to Suriname was making our little trip a little longer than we had anticipated. After checking with the Chief Steward that the meat came from the open-air market in Trinidad, I decided to switch to the canned corned beef and a vegetarian diet. The memory of all those flies crawling over the meat while it hung in the warm tropical climate in the market was just too much for me. However, I enjoyed the fresh limes that we took on board in Trinidad. I had never actually seen a fresh lime before.

On November 1, 1942, we exited the Trinidadian scene through the Dragons Mouth (the other narrow pass between Trinidad & the South American coast) and formed up into Convoy TAG 18 headed westward toward Aruba and Curacao. There we were to rendezvous with the AvGas-loaded tankers to complete our northward bound convoy. We were to reverse the course that we took on the way down. Somewhere off the tip of Florida the convoy would split with half going northwest to the Gulf Coast ports and the rest of us proceeding north up the East Coast to the port of New York. The convoy speed was to be the usual 8 knots.

The hurricane season was over and the weather was typically Caribbean - sunny, warm, and the ever-present trade winds to temper things off. The convoy of about 25 ships formed up into 2 columns headed by the usual 4-stacker destroyer sweeping our path and the usual PC's and SC's patrolling our flanks. Our ship was in the middle of the off- shore line or right-hand line. Most of the ships were loaded and we were hugging the coast as best we could. We were a mixture of cargo ships, tankers, and one ore carrier with its engine room aft.

The first afternoon we came under U-Boat attack. I happened to be off watch and up on deck at the time of the first hit. An empty tanker one ship back on the inside line took a torpedo in the cargo pump room located in the hull right under the bridge. Although the tanker was only in ballast, there were enough residual hydrocarbon fumes in the pump room to magnify the explosion of the torpedo. It sent a huge fireball skyward, engulfing the bridge on its way. All this was accompanied by a loud boom.

A cardinal rule of convoy practice was that the convoy never stopped for ships that were hit or fell out of formation. It would only place every ship in the convoy in greater danger and play into the hands of the enemy. Any clean up operations to rescue personnel was left to the escort or follow-up vessels assigned to that duty.

The tanker lost steerage way and dropped back out of sight behind the plodding convoy. The next ship to be hit was the ore carrier that the U-Boat probably mistook for a tanker because of its similar silhouette. It was somewhat further back in the inside lane, so we didn't get a good view of the action. The ore boat was undoubtedly loaded with bauxite ore which was another war priority cargo lost.

HARRY's NOTE - the 2,260 ton Canadian steamer KAMPMANN and the 11,015 ton British tanker THORSHAVET were the first two to be hit.

I was assigned to the 4 to 8 watch which changed a couple of hours after the loss of the first two ships. None of us on the 4 to 8 watch was over enthused about going into the engine room for our next 4-hour stint with the thought of those two sunken ships on our minds. There was nothing to do but try to keep your mind off of what was happening outside and keep your life jacket handy.

The escort must have chased the U-Boat off because we didn't hear from them again until we arrived at the Aruba-Curacao rendezvous point. We got there about 9:00pm so it was dark. I had just finished my 4 to 8 watch, so I was on deck. The U-Boats obviously knew about the tanker rendezvous based on their previous experience in the area. There is always a good bit of confusion in the convoy and the escorts as the new ships are blended into the formation, especially at night. That gave the attacking U-Boats tremendous advantage over the escorts.

The U-Boats struck again looking for the loaded tankers who were joining the convoy. At least 3 tankers were hit between 10:00pm and midnight. Apparently they were all loaded with aviation gas because they made huge explosions followed by major fires when they were hit, Again we couldn't hang around to find out exactly what was happening because the convoy continued to steam along at 8 knots throughout the rendezvous procedure.

HARRY's NOTE - Actually, it was only one U-Boat; U-160 under GEORG LASSEN (184-1986) that was attacking this convoy. The last two to be sunk were the 4,034 ton British ore carrier GYPSUM EXPRESS and the 8,546 ton Panamanian tanker LEDA.

We were close enough to some of the action to here some of the tankers' crewmen screaming for help in the fire. Although we couldn't see them, they apparently were trapped in the burning fuel on the surface of the water. The fires continued to bum until we passed over the horizon. It was most frustrating not to be able to help our comrades that were dying such a horrible death.

My mentor, Mr. Brick had been giving me such a favorable indoctrination on the advantages of life aboard a tanker that I was thinking about trying it. All of the positives were wiped out in that one night of horror at the tanker rendezvous.

Apparently the U-Boats were working the southern end of the Caribbean during this time because we had no further attacks for the rest of the trip. We picked up the Gulf Stream in the Straits of Florida and rode it almost the whole way up to New York. The weather was fine including passing by Cape Hatteras on the way.

Technical Problem

We did have a technical problem with the main engine on the way north off Florida. The engineers, including the Chief, felt that the valve feeding the Intermediate-Pressure (IP) piston was making some strange clicking noises. They were concerned that it might get worse and cause a shut down of the main engines for repairs. Nobody wanted that to happen because it meant dropping out of the convoy and going dead in the water.

One of the things that would help in diagnosing problem would be to take indicator cards of the IP cylinder to see that it was performing OK despite the noises in the valve. Although I had read about the theory of the indicator cards in my textbooks, I had no practical experience with the process. It seems that the old timers had even less knowledge because they were also short on theory, so I was elected to do the job.

The Indicator Card equipment was a chrome plated device packed in a felt-lined mahogany box which was kept in the Chief's office for safekeeping. The idea was for the device to give a pressure indication on the vertical axis and the piston travel on the horizontal axis. The result was a line drawing roughly in the shape of a persons foot or a shoe. The line was made by a stylus bearing on a sensitized paper card mounted on a drum.

The indicator was mounted on 1/2" valved piping connections located in the top and bottom of the cylinder to be tested. A stout string was then tied off to the vertical crosshead on the IP piston to rotate the indicator-card drum to reflect the piston stroke.

The trickiest part of the whole operation was getting the string that drove the drum fastened to the crosshead on the moving piston rod. The crosshead was a big chunk of metal that kept the piston running in a vertical path and had a travel of about 3 or 4 feet. Because it was impossible to shut the main engine down, the attachment had to be made on the fly with just enough tension to rotate the spring-loaded indicator drum through a piston travel cycle.

In about a couple of hours, I succeeded in getting some good top and bottom readings in the IP cylinder. The Chief and the other engineers looked at the diagrams which agreed very well with the theoretical shape, so the IP inlet valve was judged to be performing OK and there was no need to worry further about it. Everyone in the crew was greatly relieved that we didn't have to stop for emergency repairs to the main engine as a result of my work on the indicator cards.

My general progress in learning the ropes to become a licensed marine engineer had gone very well during this first voyage. In fact the Chief Engineer was so impressed that he told me that he was going to request to the Cadet Corps to let me serve as 3rd Assistant Engineer during the next trip. He had already decided that Mr. Harris the 3rd Assistant was not physically able to make another trip. I told him that the proposed arrangement was fine with me, but I doubted very much that the Cadet Corps representative in New York would buy it. That turned out to be the case, but I did appreciate the Chief's feeling about my efforts to learn the business.

New York

We steamed into New York Harbor on November 17, 1942 and anchored in the Narrows off the Statute of Liberty. The Old Girl looked pretty good to me and I was glad to be Home at least for a visit. After clearing Quarantine, which meant a US Public Health Service medical doctor came on board and looked into everyone's eyes and pronounced us all fit as a fiddle.

We then moved to a dock in Hoboken, NJ and started discharging our cargo of bauxite ore. We were paid off and some of the crew left for leave and other ship assignments. It was good to get ashore with some money in our pockets after being paid off. During the voyage, we were able to draw cash advances against our pay for shore expenses in foreign ports. These pay advances and any Slop Chest purchases were deducted from our pay along with taxes during the paying-off procedure.

The waters around the United' States and the Caribbean was considered a war zone was far as the Merchant Marine was concerned, so we were on 100% bonus in our pay as soon as we left a US port. Cadet's pay was $89.00 per month so that doubled to $178 per month. We were out on this trip for about 3.5 months which gave me a payoff of about $625. A fantastic sum for a guy who had been living on next to nothing for about six months! Considering that my sumptuous living expenses were all paid and I had just completed a tropical cruise in the Caribbean, what else could a young single guy want. It certainly beat the equivalent time spent wading around in the swamps of Louisiana in an infantry training unit! (Who could argue with that!)

The crew was always paid off in cash, so it meant that there was a large infusion of cash aboard the ship on pay day. Given the seedy, high-crime conditions existing in the dock areas, sailors and their cash were often soon parted. To make that easier on us, the Seaman's Savings Bank had a representative at the payoff so one could deposit their funds right into the bank if they had an account. The safety aspects appealed to me immediately, so I opened a new account fight there.

While I had been to New York City to visit the World's Fair as a youth, this was the first time I would be actually living there. After my next voyage, I would be attending the US Merchant Marine Academy located on Long Island Sound at Great Neck, NY. As it turned out, New York was my home port throughout the war.

Meanwhile, I spent the next few weeks in port learning my way around the city which was not a simple task. I had to learn how to get to and from Manhattan from the various places that ships were docked. There were the New Jersey ports of Newark, Weehawken, and Hoboken that required a Ferry trip across the Hudson River before catching the subway. Brooklyn piers were also not easy to reach. Taxi service was not very available between the various New York Boroughs because gasoline was being rationed at that time. Generally, the piers were in the worst part of town, so we newer sailors were always going somewhere away from the docks seeking better forms of entertainment.

As I had predicted to the Chief Engineer, the Cadet Corp. Port Officer did not approve my sailing as the new 3rd Assistant on the Bourn. I would continue on board as the Engine Cadet for the next trip, and we would get a new 3rd Assistant. The 1st Assistant Engineer also left and was replaced by a Mr. Baines from Mobile.

At that time I had no way of knowing that New York would become my home port for the duration of the war. I suppose that this was bound to happen because of the final phase of training for all cadets was at the Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point on Long Island. I just naturally gravitated to the New York City area being from upstate New York to begin with

George, many thanks for this great piece of history from the guys in the Merchant Marine and DON, thanks for getting your dad to put it all down on paper.

MESSAGE FOR CAPTAIN LASSEN

George Ritz would like your memories of this convoy attack. Would you please send them here to SHARKHUNTERS and we will send them onward.

MERCHANT MARINE and ARMED GUARD Vets

Please send us your memories so we can preserve them forever.