This is a story of my experiences on the U. S. S. Shaw in her collision with H. M. S. Aquitania while escorting her to Southampton, England, in company with three other destroyers. The accident occurred in the pre-dawn hours of October 9, 1918 and, while more or less ancient history now, may prove of interest to some as a narrative of what I consider a narrow escape. The story of the after portion of the Shaw was ably told by Peter Clark MacFarlane in the Saturday Evening Post and in it he paid glowing tribute to those heroes—as such they are—on “the other end” during this trying time. All I succeeded in doing was to save my neck, but here’s the story of it anyway for those who may be interested.
It had been a rough, tempestuous trip; we had lost a man overboard the day before, due to heavy seas, and during the night preceding, the destroyers had rolled and pitched in the darkness as they zig-zagged with the escorted vessel at a high rate of speed.
It was about a quarter to six in the morning; just getting light, the sky was overcast and the seas running fairly high. The Shaw was in a position about 700 yards on the port bow of the Aquitania making about 27 knots while the latter was pounding through the sea at twenty-three. She had on board about 10,000 American troops and the Channel had been reported as harboring enemy submarines in our vicinity.
My room was the center one of three on the port side of the fore and aft passageway in the forward part of the ship, and at this time I was asleep in my bunk, as were all others who were not on watch. Suddenly out of my slumber, I heard the sound of a whistle, siren, and general alarm. As all of us slept fully clothed, except for our shoes, I was prepared for the occasion. I hopped from my bunk, turning on the light as I did so, slipped into my sea boots, grabbed a life preserver (as much for protection against the cold as the sea), and turned inboard toward the door. I had my hand on the door knob when I heard the most terrific explosion; the light went out and I was catapulted across the room, striking my head against the outboard bulkhead, falling amidst shattered glass and water.
Naturally, the blow on my head, coupled with the fact of just having awakened from a sound sleep, left me dazed, and I tried to adjust myself. I had no idea what happened but the explosion sounded as if we had been torpedoed or had struck a mine; but my mind being still slow acting, I had the odd feeling of being in a dream, until my feet began to get wet. My room was slowly filling with water!
You can just bet that this snapped me into action quickly! I had my life preserver clutched in my hand all this time, and in the darkness I put it on instinctively and then splashed my way towards what I thought was the door, only to find a solid wall of steel. A hasty feel of the other four walls brought the same results. You can imagine my feelings at that time.
I was trapped in a room about ten feet square, in total darkness, with water slowly rising around my legs—and I wasn’t getting out! There had been a door to my room when I had turned in, but search as I might, it simply wasn’t there now. I began to get slightly agitated,—to put it mildly. I didn’t want to admit I was scared, but I WAS! and I feverishly searched in the darkness for something—anything—to help me through those quarter- inch walls of steel to open air where I had a fighting chance.
I thought of a flashlight which I always kept handy, but I couldn’t locate or recognize anything in the room. All was in confusion, water, and darkness, and I realized my time was getting short, as the water was rising; rising slowly, but surely to what seemed to me certain death by slow torture.
I couldn’t just sit still and wait, so I mechanically splashed around, always feeling and hoping. Suddenly my hand recognized the familiar feel of the flashlight. Sudden joy rushed through me, only to be followed by a deep foreboding. Would it work? I felt around it for the button and suddenly a beam of light shot out. I didn’t waste any time because by this time the water was well up on my legs and I feared the ship would sink before I could get out.
Rapidly the beam of light flashed from wall to wall. I had been right; there was no door! My hopes dropped completely out of sight when suddenly the light accidentally played overhead, and there, directly above me, was the door. The ship was on her side, and I had been standing on the outboard bulkhead, and in the darkness, water, and general confusion, I had not known it!
Breathing a prayer of thankfulness, I jumped up, turned the knob, and the door, opening inwards, fell towards me and by dint of chinning myself, I managed to get into the passageway above. In passing, let me state, that the door to my room had always stuck when closed, and I always used to hook it open in order to have no trouble in getting out suddenly if necessary. On this occasion it had been jerked closed by the force of the blow, and in doing so, it had become unjammed and worked easily, as any door should. Thus, the works of Providence!
Although better off than before, I still wasn’t out of the woods, or sea in this case. I crawled along the passageway on my hands and knees and came to open air. There were about fifteen men sitting on the jagged edge, where the explosion, or blow, had occurred, dangling their feet in the water, all wondering what it was all about as they too, had been plunged from sound slumber into chaos. All were most surprised to see me, as it had been about fifteen minutes, as I was told later, since the explosion. You can imagine how long those minutes were to me.
None of us knew where the rest of the ship was, nor what had happened. It was just beginning to get light and about a half a mile away was a destroyer, which one I could not tell as her bow was enveloped in flames and smoke, and the air was rent by the sound of an occasional explosion from a four-inch shell. We thought the convoy must have been attacked, and that this ship was firing at some submarine which we could not see, and that our ship had been torpedoed or mined—no one knew which.
About this time one of my friends asked me if I had a camera, which irritated me considerably, as I was far from the mood for taking pictures. Then I heard someone ask who had had the officer-of-the-deck watch the previous night, and how the depth charges had been set. I replied that they had been set to go off at 150 feet.
Believing our stem to be somewhere beneath us—none of us was doing any very clear thinking—some optimistic soul remarked that the stern “should be just about 150 feet down by now.” This was a happy thought, if true. It meant that at any moment fifty 300-pound depth charges filled with TNT would go off directly beneath us and blow us sky-high. To make matters worse, at this moment the bow, which had been on its side, suddenly up ended, incidentally closing the passage way through which I had emerged but a few moments before. This was enough. No one hesitated at all. You have seen frogs leap off a rock in a pond when scared? That is a faithful picture of us as we dove into the water from our perch on the bow.
There were many mattresses, boxes, pillows, and the like; four others and myself annexed a mattress and clung to it. The sea was rough and covered with fuel oil from our punctured oil tanks. We took a rapid survey of our position. A couple of destroyers were in sight a few thousand yards away and we tried to get their attention, but to no avail, and although our abandoned bow was still afloat, we were afraid to go back to it. What to do?
We tried propelling our mattress-raft towards the nearest destroyer. Each time we got near her, after much hard work, as it was directly into the wind and sea, the destroyer got under way and moved a little farther off, in spite of our efforts to attract her attention. We repeated this performance a couple of times and it almost seemed as if she were deliberately avoiding us. This is accounted for by the fact that we were so low in the water that we could not see what was going on. This was most down- heartening, and finally for lack of anything else to do, we came about and tried to paddle to one of the other destroyers, farther off, it is true, but apparently stationary. After much buffeting by the seas and after having swallowed what seemed to be gallons and gallons of oil and salt water (a delicious mixture!), we saw approaching us a whaleboat from the first destroyer we had tried to reach and we were dragged aboard, cold and weak, but happy.
We were taken to one of the near destroyers, the Kimberly, and it was only after getting safety on board that we could find out what had happened. While zigzagging towards the convoyed ship at a converging angle of about sixty degrees, the Shaw’s rudder jammed and the huge vessel passed clean through her cutting off sixty feet of the bow, and passing through the room next to mine. The officer in that room and one in the room opposite were killed as were fourteen men in the compartment almost directly under me. That was too close for comfort!