On their voyage home from Brest, France, the troops on the transport Northern Pacific anticipated they would arrive in New York before or on New Year’s Day. The magnificent liner, converted to a troop ship, had been at sea for seven days and was virtually a hospital ship, with most of the 2,518 passengers on board either wounded U.S. Army veterans or supporting medical personnel. They and the crew of 451 celebrated the arrival of the new year of 1919 on board the transport and were just hours from the port of New York. The war was over, they were going home, and they thought nothing could spoil the evening. Something did.
At 0230 on 1 January 1919, the Northern Pacific struck the outer edge of a sandbar at the entrance to Fire Island inlet and grounded 300 yards from the shore of the resort village of Lonelyville, approximately 2½ miles east of the Fire Island lighthouse. She lay nearly parallel to the shore in an east-west orientation. The stranded ship was spotted quickly from the shore by Coast Guard Surfman Roger Smith. The wind was strong and from the southwest, and the sea and the tide were high. The temperature was an unusually mild 48°. Early newspaper reports stated a heavy fog prevailed when the Northern Pacific ran on the sandbar. However, no note of unusually dense fog was made by the Coast Guard, and some of the Army officers on board later said the shoreline was perfectly visible at the time of the grounding.
Shortly after the Northern Pacific landed on the Fire Island sandbar, Army Colonel J. M. Kennedy, chief medical officer at the Port of Embarkation in Hoboken, New Jersey, ordered Lieutenant Colonel S. J. Pierce of the Army Medical Corps to proceed to Bay Shore, New York, 7 miles across Great South Bay from the Fire Island barrier reef, with 220 officers and enlisted men. Other surgeons went to the scene on the Army hospital steamboat General Robert M. O’Reilly.
The rescuing fleet the Navy Department dispatched from New York was led by the cruiser Columbia, flagship of Vice Admiral Albert Gleaves, commander of the cruiser and transport fleet. The naval troopship Henry R. Mallory, the hospital ship Solace, the cruiser Des Moines, 12 destroyers, and a fleet of naval tugs were in the flotilla.
It was ten hours after the Northern Pacific grounded before Coast Guard crews, assisting from the Point O’ Woods, Oak Island, and Fire Island stations, could get a line to the vessel. This enabled them to be ready to begin rescues with breeches buoys strung on highlines should there be a sudden change in weather conditions. Local Red Cross chapters made preparations to feed the men, and the Women’s Motor Corps had six ambulances ready to assist in the transfer onto special trains. Every home in Bay Shore was ready to receive as many wounded men as it could accommodate. More than 3,000 warm blankets arrived from Camp Mills in Garden City, Long Island, as well as a great quantity of other relief supplies.
The rescue of the wounded and sick soldiers and others began on the afternoon of 2 January. At 0600, the wind had shifted to the south and the seas were running heavy and fast. On the shore with the Coast Guard was Colonel Pierce with 65 medical officers. Shortly after 0800, the seas calmed sufficiently to justify a Coast Guard attempt to get a ferry line from the ship to shore. With nine men, Captain Joseph Tuttle set out for the Northern Pacific in one of the surfboats belonging to the Oak Island crew. It required an hour for the men to negotiate the 200 yards that separated the ship from shore. A stout hawser was dropped from the ship to the small boat, and by 0930 it had been made fast ashore. The surfboat started for its first load of passengers using the line like river ferrymen pulling barges across streams. Five lifeboats filled with soldiers arrived soon after, while four other boats belonging to the transport, filled with members of her crew, left the ship for the outlying rescue vessels. When the boats reached a point within 40 or 50 feet of the shore, the lifeguards waded out, picked up the soldiers, and carried them to land, thus saving valuable time.
As fast as the men were landed, officers from the Port of Embarkation recorded their names. The drenched soldiers warmed themselves before huge bonfires kept burning along the beach and received sandwiches and steaming mugs of coffee from the women of the Red Cross. Officers grouped the men in squads before they were taken immediately across the narrow island to a flotilla of small boats waiting to carry them across Great South Bay to Bay Shore. There, those who were unable to care for themselves were placed in the hospital at the naval air station. Others were given warm rooms in citizens’ cottages.
Just before the rescue operations for the day ceased, the first mishap occurred. The Oak Island surf boat being pulled ashore capsized (at left in opening photo). Captain Tuttle was in the bow of the boat and was holding it to its course by swinging on to the hawser. An unusually heavy comber suddenly tossed the Captain several feet into the air, he lost his grip on the line, and a moment later the crew and all the passengers were in the water. Captain George A. Baker of Fire Island was in charge of the second boat that capsized, also caused by a giant wave that lifted the boat and made it impossible for Captain Baker to hold on to the hawser. One more boat capsized before operations ceased, but no lives were lost in the incidents.
In a message to Vice Admiral Gleaves, Captain L. J. Connelly, the skipper of the Northern Pacific, wired:
Disembarked 237 army passengers, some of these ambulant wounded, and also 17 navy nurses using life-guard boats and breeches buoy. The ship is in no danger. Expect to disembark many more troops tomorrow.
More than 100 Coast Guardsmen took part in the rescue that day and the next two under the direction of Superintendent C. A. Lippincott.
On the morning of 3 January, with an offshore breeze affording a lee to landward, 14 Jacob’s ladders were lowered along the starboard side of the liner, and shallow- draft submarine chasers came alongside and began to take the men off to transfer them to the larger vessels. The rescuers worked methodically, with four submarine chasers taking turns at the side of the big vessel and receiving 150 men at a load, along with 20 motor launches loaded with an additional 10 to 20 men. These vessels carried 300 to 400 soldiers an hour to the waiting ships. By the end of the day, the crews of the antisubmarine patrols and Coast Guard craft, remarkably, had taken 2,100 men off the Northern Pacific without serious accident.
Lonelyville, the Fire Island bungalow town where the Northern Pacific was beached, was populated with Coast Guardsmen, Red Cross nurses, physicians, representatives of the Army and Navy, and volunteer helpers, who watched the exciting marine picture as the wounded men climbed rope ladders down the side of the towering camouflaged hull into the smaller vessels. The Coast Guard boats, which were smaller and more manageable, got alongside without great difficulty, but careful maneuvering was necessary to bring up the antisubmarine craft, which were 100 to 110 feet long and not fitted for accurate work at close quarters. All of the wounded soldiers who could walk were transferred from the transport; more than 200 men who were too ill to be moved stayed on the ship waiting for better conditions for removal by wire litter baskets.
Some of the men conveyed that day had lost their sight temporarily or permanently in the fighting in France. Lines were made fast about their bodies to keep them from dropping into the water should they slip off the rope ladders before they were grasped by the men on the launches and patrol boats. Other men had only one leg; some had only one arm in good working order; others had bandages about their heads or bodies over unhealed wounds. All were eager to get away from the big ship.
The Coast Guard and antisubmarine patrol boats worked in relays, sometimes three lining up at one time beside the helpless transport. As fast as they were filled with soldiers, they moved out and shifted the wounded men to the decks of the waiting rescue ships. Four destroyers departed the area, and each landed several hundred of the rescued men at Hoboken. When the USS Upshur came in, she was welcomed by a military band on the pier. One of her soldiers shouted, “Play ‘Home Sweet Home’—it’s the only thing we are thinking about now.” Men who were transferred to the ferry Shinnecock for shipment to the hospital at Ellis Island gave three cheers as the destroyers passed in review while leaving the harbor.
The last 247 soldiers on the Northern Pacific were removed 4 January. All were stretcher cases. They were lowered in naval litters in which the men were deposited with their blankets and bedding. Experienced naval medical officers and nurses took care of the men when they reached the decks of the submarine chasers. As soon as one of the chasers had a boatload she moved off into deeper water, where the men were hoisted to the hospital ship Solace. It was after midnight before the work was finished.
While a watch of 10 or 20 men would have been sufficient to hold title to the transport against salvagers, Captain Connelly decided to retain a crew of 250 to assist the wreckers’ efforts to release the big ship. Should weather force abandonment of the ship, two Coast Guard crews of 16 men were kept on the beach with their boats ready for launching, and the breeches buoy was slung on a cable running to the transport. Officers and men of the Army’s 13th Infantry Division maintained guard while Medical Corps and Sanitary Corps officers also were kept in place.
When the ship initially grounded, she was proceeding at moderate speed and came to rest approximately 300 yards offshore. By that evening she was driven shoreward for another 100 yards and was imbedded in about 16 feet of sand. By 4 January, the North- ern Pacific had been worked seaward only about 25 yards, despite the efforts of powerful wrecking tugs. Even after all troops and baggage had been extracted, her steel masts cut down and removed, and her fuel oil pumped out, the transport was still aground on 6 January. During high tide at 0845 on 18 January, after four tugs had pulled on the vessel all day, the Northern Pacific finally was afloat again.
By order of Admiral Gleaves, a court of inquiry convened on 21 January on board the Northern Pacific, docked at the 35th Street pier in Brooklyn, New York. After four days of testimony, the court’s opinion was that the grounding was the result of inaccurate navigation, failure to use the ordered course for approaching New York Harbor, failure of the officers of the deck to inform the captain of thickening weather, and failure to take soundings.
The court concluded that the ship’s navigator calculated an incorrect position when taking his last astronomical fix approximately 220 nautical miles from Fire Island Light, about 11 hours before the grounding. Using this position, he laid out a course he thought would carry the vessel 15 nautical miles south of the Fire Island light, not allowing for current. Using the same course, with the position corrected by the court, the vessel still should have passed 7 nautical miles south of Fire Island light with no allowance for current. Although the tidal currents in the vicinity had a mean velocity of only 0.2 knots, currents important with respect to navigation could develop with sudden reversals in wind direction. Such changes could have caused currents in the range of 1 to VA knots. That same morning a steamer, also westbound, had come dangerously close to shoal water on the nearby Jones Inlet bar but was warned off in time. This indicated an unusually strong northerly set was running at the time.
Initially, Captain Connelly stated he had wide latitude in setting his course for approaching the port of New York. He later admitted his written orders were more specific. To approach the Ambrose lightship in a channel swept for mines, he was required to take soundings at the 100-fathom bank and make his approach on a course of 295° (true). His ill- fated course of 276° (true) reduced his margin of error for clearing the south shore of Long Island.
Orders for the night of 31 December 1918 required that the officer of the deck notify the captain and navigator when lights were sighted or if fog set in. In case of fog, the sounding machines were to be manned. According to the officer of the deck, when Captain Connelly retired from the bridge at 2230, the weather was overcast with high visibility of 6 to 7 nautical miles. By the midnight change of watch, most accounts were that the weather was changing fast, varying from drizzle to heavy squalls to fog. From then to the grounding, watch officers and crew reported visibilities of greater than 2 miles and no soundings were taken at any time. At 0208 when Fire Island light was sighted, the visibility was 5 nautical miles. The sighting of this rotating light at ½ point off the port bow totally surprised the officer of the deck, who expected to see the Fire Island light ship and Fire Island light off his starboard bow at about 0230. Adding to the confusion, an unknown steady light also appeared on the starboard bow and disappeared in 10 minutes. Although the officer should have been able to identify the lighthouse after mentally timing the light on three occasions, he made no attempt to alter course. He then ordered the captain and navigator be notified and at about 0218 he ordered half speed ahead. The Northern Pacific grounded at about 0220, before the captain or navigator could reach the bridge.
Although the grounding of the Northern Pacific may have been the result of had seamanship compounded by New Year’s Eve celebrations, or simply bad luck, there is no question the rescue efforts were extraordinary. After three days of cold, wet work in a biting wind, more than 2,500 men, nearly 250 of them severely wounded, were removed without a loss of life from a vessel stranded in heavy surf. The grit of the rescued soldiers and the courage and skill of the Navy and Coast Guard rescuers, along with the full commitment of the commanders in charge, turned what might have been a nightmare of suffering and death into a rescue without parallel in U.S. shipping.
