Some of the most bitter battles in the war at sea were not fought against the Germans or the Japs, but against the sailor’s oldest enemy—the sea itself. Men braved the sea to save ships and fellow seamen as courageously as they battled submarines and bombers. It was for such a fight against the sea that the U. S. Maritime Administration named the tanker Cedar Mills one of the “Gallant Ships” of World War II.
On Thanksgiving Day, 1943, this new tanker left the harbor of Fremantle, Australia, for Karachi, India, in company with the Dutch freighter Java and the French destroyer Le Triomphant, which was to serve as the escort. This was a “super” destroyer and was rated as one of the world’s speediest men-o’-war.
Because it was more than 4,000 miles to Karachi in the Gulf of Oman, the Cedar Mills was to refuel the destroyer during the voyage. Le Triomphant came alongside the Cedar Mills on November 29 and lines were rigged for fueling, but the destroyer suddenly sheered off in a heavy sea and carried away the hose and lines, besides smashing several plates in the tanker’s side.
The destroyer being low on fuel, the Cedar Mills took her in tow until calmer weather would permit another try at exchanging oil through the fire hoses of the tanker. These fire hoses were longer than the fuel hoses and their use would allow the vessels to stay farther apart during the replenishing operation.
Meanwhile the freighter Java proceeded independently.
Two days later refueling operations were commenced again, but the hawser parted. While the crews were trying to rig up new lines, a sudden cyclone roared across the Indian Ocean. The Cedar Mills was forced to heave-to in the face of tremendous seas and howling winds. Le Triomphant was soon lost to sight from Captain Morgan Maxey and his men on the Cedar Mills.
When the cyclone had blown over after 24 hours or so, the tanker received an SOS from Le Triomphant, followed by direction-finder bearings which enabled Captain Maxey to locate the storm-battered destroyer after a search made under conditions of very poor visibility.
Le Triomphant was listing thirty degrees when the tankermen finally spotted her through the overcast. Only a few men were on her decks. The rest were down below, bailing out flooded compartments in a desperate attempt to keep afloat. Signals flashed from Le Triomphant by a battery lamp reported that the fires were out and that the dynamos had stopped for lack of steam. There was no fresh water to use in the boilers for getting up a new head of steam. Bunker oil was almost gone. Only enough oil was left, the French crew reported, for a few hours of low pressure steaming. In an attempt to raise enough steam to maneuver for fueling, the destroyer was forced to pump salt water into the boilers.
Youthful Captain Maxey, a veteran of ten years at sea, was faced with a problem the like of which few shipmasters are ever called upon to meet. The barometer was falling, foretelling another cyclone. Wind and sea were rising. At the mercy of the storm was a valuable ship with more than 200 men on board. Here was a supreme test for fine judgment and able seamanship.
The seas were too high yet to permit launching of lifeboats.
The tanker steamed back and forth on the weather side of the French destroyer, dumping oil into the sea in an attempt to keep the huge seas from breaking against the ship and capsizing her.
As darkness wore on, the French captain signalled that he thought his ship could stay afloat throughout the night. He told Maxey that he would send up green rockets if his vessel started to founder.
It was fortunate that Le Triomphant stayed afloat, for a night rescue in such weather would have been suicidal. When daylight came the destroyer was seen to lay about half a mile off, listing more sharply and sitting deeper in the water. It was quite obvious to those on the tanker that both ship and crew were in dire straits. There was no time to lose in effecting a rescue, for in her present precarious condition Le Triomphant might swamp or capsize.
Captain Maxey asked for volunteers to make a rescue. Every man on board responded, including several Army personnel who were being carried as passengers. He selected the hardiest of those not required for other duties aboard ship. Although he reminded them of the dangers, not a man changed his mind or backed down from the hazardous assignment.
Two motor lifeboats were maneuvered over the side after a nip-and-tuck race with waves that threatened to smash them against the hull. Each boat stepped its mast so that Captain Maxey could keep track of them amid the huge seas which at times almost hid the destroyer from those aboard the tanker as each vessel slid into long, deep swells.
One huge wave all but rode over a lifeboat, swamping the engine and forcing the crew to ship their oars. The men regained control of their boat, pointed its bow toward the destroyer, and pulled into the waves.
The destroyer had signalled that it was out of bread and fresh water, so each boat was loaded with cans of food and water. Most of the men in the lifeboats became seasick from the violent rolling and pitching, but not a man faltered at his post. The boats crept on toward the battered man-o’-war.
Several times it looked as though they couldn’t possibly make it. Disappearing from sight amid the massive combers, they would pop up again on a surging crest, with the little marker flags whipping defiantly atop the tiny masts as though they were challenging the ocean and saying; “We will ... we can . . . we’ll do it!”
After what seemed like hours of waiting, men on the tanker saw the two life boats reach the destroyer’s side, where it required fine seamanship to keep the surging seas from smashing them to bits against the helpless hulk. The stores were hoisted aboard by eager hands.
The two captains had agreed that only a skeleton crew should be left on Le Triomphant, so about thirty of the warship’s crew came on deck with lifejackets and prepared for the grim ordeal of returning to the Cedar Mills.
It was too dangerous for the French crew to climb down into the bobbing boats, so they jumped from the careening deck into the sea. All of them were safely fished into the lifeboats.
The crowded little craft then inched her way back to the tanker, where the process was repeated in reverse, the French sailors jumping overboard from the lifeboats, to be grabbed by strong hands and pulled on to the tanker’s wave-swept deck. The Cedar Mills was so deep in the water that every wave washed over the decks. She had so little freeboard that her crew, by hanging on to life lines, could reach out and grab the sailors as they struggled up to the vessel’s side.
When several of Le Triomphant’s crew were about to be carried beyond the Cedar Mills by receding swells, the tankermen jumped into the sea and hauled them to safety!
It took most of the day to make the trip between the two vessels. Not wanting to risk the boats at night, when they could easily be swamped in the still-raging gale, Captain Maxey signalled Le Triomphant that he would stand by and resume operations at daylight. The rescued sailors were given a hot meal and all the coffee they could drink. Crewmen outfitted them with dry clothes and a bunk in which to catch up on lost sleep.
When daylight came, seas were still high but moderating, and lifeboats were swung overside again under more favorable conditions. Again the process was repeated of jumping into the water at each end of the run. Through some uncanny instinct, barracuda had been attracted to the scene. Men stood by the 20-millimeter guns and shot at fish which ventured too near the ship.
A total of 91 men and officers were transferred from Le Triomphant to the Cedar Mills during the day, along with the destroyer’s money and confidential papers.
Most of the crew now having been transferred from the careening destroyer, it was determined by the two skippers that an attempt should be made to save her. The storm had abated enough now to make such an attempt feasible. To do this required tremendous physical effort on the part of the volunteers who remained on the destroyer.
A messenger line was shot from the tanker to Le Triomphant by Lyle gun and, since the former had no towing hawser capable of such a strain, the French sailors had to break out their anchor chain for use as a tow rope! This was a job of almost heroic proportions, for the destroyer had no steam with which to operate the anchor windlass and haul the heavy iron links from the chain locker below decks in the bow of the listing ship.
Straining until they all but dropped in their tracks from sheer exhaustion—their labors made all the more difficult by the difficulty of trying to work on a sharply angled deck—the French crew hauled the chain on deck, foot by foot, and link by link. Once on deck, they had to flake it out very carefully so that it would not buckle when the Cedar Mills began hauling in on it.
It took many tedious hours for this task to be accomplished and for the two vessels to be linked in tow, but it was finally done and the Cedar Mills got under way at a turtle-like speed of three knots.
Captain Maxey now had the difficult decision to make of whether or not to break radio silence and request help. He decided to send an SOS, for if a raider did find them (Japanese subs and raiders were operating in this part of the world) they would both be easy victims. A call was sent out and a directive was received from Colombo for the Cedar Mills to proceed to Addu Atoll.
The destroyer, meanwhile, was still without water and hot food, so the Cedar Mills fashioned some watertight cases in which milk, bread, and other necessities could be floated to the warship, which was wallowing at the end of the make-shift towline. As soon as the cases were pulled aboard and emptied they were hauled back to the tanker, where the cooks filled them again and the unique provisioning process was repeated.
After five days of patient plodding, in which an alert lookout was kept for enemy submarines and surface raiders, the Cedar Mills sighted the low-lying strand of Addu Atoll. Within a few hours the tanker and her tow rendezvoused with the British cruiser Frobisher, thus ending another chapter in the age-old story of men against the sea.
For his skill in saving one of the finest ships in the Free French Navy and in bringing every one of her 200-man crew safely to shore, Captain Maxey was decorated by the U. S. Maritime Commission.
The Cedar Mills, as an honor to her crew of merchant seamen and Navy Armed Guard gunners, was named a “Gallant Ship” of the U. S. Merchant Marine.