Down to the Sea (30 page)

The new course put the ship “more directly into the sea,” and
Dewey
began to “pitch and pound heavily.” It was a motion that all hands “had come to know only too well during the past two days.” Nevertheless, Calhoun picked up the phone and called one level below to the sea
cabin of the destroyer squadron commander, Captain Preston Mercer, so he would “understand the reason for the slamming.” Mercer responded that he thought
Dewey,
whose forward stack had failed during the storm and was still “draped over the starboard side,” should “turn back to our previous heading,” as there was “some risk that the pounding” might aggravate any other damage
Dewey
had incurred in the storm. Mercer made his decision in spite of being told that a light signal from another ship—identified as
Tabberer
—indicated she was picking up survivors in the water. Calhoun heeded Mercer's “advice and abandoned” lending assistance to the rescue operations. In a darkened state with no searchlights shining and no extra lookouts topside,
Dewey
knifed through blackish waters filled with shipwrecked men without spotting or picking up a single one.

At 1:10
A.M.
, ten minutes after
Dewey
turned away, heading for the Third Fleet rendezvous as ordered,
Tabberer,
operating on her own and with her own storm damage for Plage to be concerned about, picked up a twelfth survivor. A little over an hour later the thirteenth man was brought aboard. The survivors, all off
Hull
and diagnosed by the doctor as suffering “exhaustion from overexposure,” had been found over a swath of ocean covering “some 25 square miles.”

Taking charge of the deck crew during rescue operations was senior watch officer Howard Korth, who stripped off his uniform and dove into the water four times to assist men up to the cargo net—at times from as far as 75 feet away. He worked in tandem with Boatswain's Mate Louis Purvis, also a strong swimmer. Once, coming back with a weakened young sailor who looked to Korth “about 15 or 16 years old and trying to grow his first moustache,” they became caught in “tremendous suction” off
Tabberer
's bow and were “banged against it” and dragged down. Korth couldn't keep his grasp on the young sailor. When the officer surfaced, he realized he had “lost him”—the sailor with the baby face.

Purvis was nowhere to be seen, and Korth, who finally made it to the cargo net, thought he might be gone, too. Soon, however, a sputtering Purvis surfaced on the opposite side of the ship. He had been drawn completely under the hull and had to slip out of his life jacket,
tethered to a lifeline that became fouled on the sonar dome, in order to surface and be hauled aboard like a half-drowned cat. After being “pumped out a bit,” Purvis recovered. He then observed to the delight of all, “Dammit, I bet I'm the first sailor to be keelhauled in 200 years,” referring to the old, outlawed form of punishment whereby malcontents were attached to lines or chains and hauled under ships from one side to the other a prescribed number of times—a “painful and often fatal experience.”

During the night, Plage stopped the ship every ten minutes, and the ventilating blowers in the bridge structure were turned off to reduce the noise level. All lights were also turned off, and everyone topside searched for life jacket lights and listened for whistles and shouts. With the navigational equipment inoperable, the careful box search had to be conducted entirely by dead reckoning. This required constant course changes to the north, east, south, and west at “so many minutes per leg.”

At 3:10
A.M.
, with the emergency radio finally working thanks to the jury-rigged antenna set up by Chief Tucker,
Tabberer
transmitted the first news of the loss of
Hull,
the number of survivors being pulled from the water, and their approximate location.

The fourth
Hull
survivor picked up by
Tabberer
had been Storekeeper Ken Drummond, who when he was washed overboard from the overturned ship had thought about how much his death was going to upset his mother. After being pulled down in the water, then “popping out of the water about 20 feet into the air,” Drummond landed “butt first” in a life raft. Dropping next to him within a few seconds had been Boatswain's Mate Chief Ray Schultz, who turned to Drummond and said, “You don't look too good.” Schultz added calmly, “Don't believe the storm's as bad.” With that, another swell hit the raft, sending both men “flying off in different directions.” Alone until almost dark, Drummond bumped into Chief Radioman Francis “Burt” Martin. They discussed the situation and decided to tie themselves together for the night. As they undid their life jackets and were in the process of hooking them together, another swell hit, separating the two men. Drummond did
not see Martin again until the chief was picked up by
Tabberer
the day after it found the storekeeper. After finding himself alone again, Drummond began hallucinating, seeing a vision of a Model A Ford that was “black with chrome around the headlights and grille.” It seemed to be only about 10 feet away, and he thought if he could get on the hood, he might be able to rest. He swam toward the Ford, but it remained the same distance away. The next thing he saw was a “very bright light.” He started blowing the whistle attached to his life jacket “as hard as I could possibly blow.” He heard a voice say, “There he is!” A line was thrown to him. When Drummond became entangled, Purvis leaped off
Tabberer
's deck into the water and supported the struggling sailor as he was hauled aboard.

The next man picked up by
Tabberer
had been
Hull
Seaman 1st Class Carl Webb, nineteen, born in Oklahoma and raised on a cattle ranch, where he “rode bucking horses” and helped his father farm 600 acres of cotton. Webb had the 4:00-to-8:00-
A.M.
watch at a 40 mm gun director, and when he was relieved he decided the sea was too rough to go back to the crew's quarters, so he stayed topside—a decision that saved his life. When the ship went over, he was tossed quickly into the sea, which was fine by Webb because he could “swim like hell” and knew it beat being “trapped below.” As for the 50 percent of
Hull
's crew of 258 men that Webb estimated were below in the crew's quarters—where they “dogged themselves in from the inside” via a secured hatch that “never was broken open” after the ship went over—it was his impression that “none got out and all went down with the ship.” When about 10 minutes later the boiler blew up, it felt to Webb “like a big earthquake.” After being rescued, Webb was given a shower and shown to the executive officer's empty cabin, where he quickly went to sleep in Surdam's bunk.

The growing contingent of
Hull
survivors aboard
Tabberer
that first night included radarman Michael “Frenchy” Franchak, who had escaped from the chart room when it was nearly underwater only to enter the sea amid the dead bodies of shipmates still being battered against the side of the ship. After losing hold of a life raft, Franchak found himself drifting alone in his life jacket, certain that he must be
the only survivor. He soon realized he was “bleeding like a stuck pig” under one arm from something sharp protruding from the small flashlight attached to the life jacket. Several hours later, still bleeding and with his “bloodied dungaree shirttail floating free,” Franchak saw a single fin. When it disappeared under the surface, “shivers went up and down” Franchak's spine. In the next instant, he took “quite a wallop” on his right side, enough to “jerk my head like a whiplash.” Knowing he had been bumped by the shark, he figured “this was it.” Remembering a
Reader's Digest
article about striking two objects together underwater to “scare sharks away,” Franchak started frantically hitting the heels of his shoes together and didn't stop until “the shoelaces wore out and the shoes fell off.” He never had “any more trouble from the shark.” A couple of hours after dark, he heard voices and swam toward them. When he got close enough, he asked if they had a raft. The answer was, “No, have you?” Franchak replied, “Never mind. I'll keep going.” The three
Hull
sailors—sharing one life jacket between them—“pleaded and begged” Franchak to come with them. He agreed, and soon had “these guys hanging on me.” When Franchak went under and came up coughing, he had to knock one of the guys free of him with his elbow. They drifted along with things looking “absolutely hopeless” until suddenly a spotlight appeared on the horizon. Beseeching the three men to swim toward the light, Franchak pretty much had to carry them along, as they kept hanging on to the powerfully built radarman. When
Tabberer
came alongside and lines were thrown to the men, the other three were too weak to get them around themselves, and Franchak had to tie them so they could be pulled in. With the others aboard, a line was dropped in the water for Franchak, but at that moment the ship rolled away from him, after which they had “a tough time” rescuing him. He was finally pulled aboard at 2:30
A.M.
, the thirteenth and last man rescued by
Tabberer
that night.

At sunrise, Plage, still on the bridge, decided that rather than heading belatedly for the fleet's fueling rendezvous,
Tabberer,
still limping along without radar and limited radio communications, would keep searching for survivors in seas that had settled to a height of 8 to 10 feet
with winds not exceeding 20 miles per hour. His decision was soon rewarded with positive results:

0605 Recovered fourteenth and fifteenth survivors.

0630 Picked up sixteenth survivor.

0708 Picked up seventeenth survivor.

0723 Picked up eighteenth survivor.

One of the survivors picked up that morning—all from
Hull
—was Chief Quartermaster Archie DeRyckere, the former youth boxer from Montana who, when the ship rolled over the last time, had assisted the injured Greil Gerstley to the highest point atop a searchlight platform next to the bridge. When the destroyer sank beneath them, DeRyckere had come struggling to the surface just as the boiler exploded. Gerstley, the executive officer who might have relieved Marks of command in an effort to save the ship except for his dread of being “tried for mutiny and hanged,” was never seen again. DeRyckere did see Marks in the water, however. That evening, as
Hull
's captain floated past in his life jacket, he asked DeRyckere if he would like to know the time. “Appreciate it,” said the chief, without grasping at all why the time of day would be useful information. Checking his watch, Marks said, “Five after six,” then drifted away. Some hours later, DeRyckere spotted a ship, which the quartermaster signaled in Morse code with blinking dots and dashes on his small flashlight: “SOS. Send help.” The ship, apparently signaling another ship in the area, flashed a Morse code message that DeRyckere was able to read: “We are departing area.” DeRyckere's angry thought weighed heavily on him throughout the long night:
They're leaving us out here.
*

At 8:30
A.M.
on December 19,
Tabberer
rescued a solo survivor in a life jacket who turned out to be James Marks. When Plage greeted
Hull
's commanding officer, he found him with “eyes as black and blue as could be,” although the doctor could offer no reason other than “salt spray driving so hard into his face that it bruised him.” Marks didn't have much to say
other than that he had gotten so hungry in the water that he tried to chew on his whistle, and when that “didn't taste very good” he had ripped a piece of leather off a shoe and chewed on that.

 

0852 Rescued twenty first and twenty second survivors.

0854 Rescued twenty third survivor.

0908 Rescued twenty fourth survivor.

0920 Rescued twenty fifth survivor.

0930 Rescued twenty sixth survivor.

0950 Rescued twenty seventh survivor.

 

Picked up by
Tabberer
that morning alone in the water in a life jacket was Lieutenant ( j.g.) Arthur L. Fabrick, twenty-four, of Gainesville, Florida. A graduate of the University of Florida, Fabrick—shy, slender, and soft-spoken—served as
Hull
's radar officer. On the bridge when the ship went over, he experienced the event “in slow motion.” After exiting the bridge and climbing to the side of the ship, he jumped quickly, thinking that the faster he got into the sea the better. It was “not a good idea,” however, as he was “sucked down,” and when he surfaced he was “bashed against the ship.” But he was a “pretty good swimmer with a Red Cross lifesaving badge,” and being in the ocean was nothing new to him as he had grown up swimming in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. He swam rapidly away from the ship and soon cleared it. When he saw a “bunch of guys banding together around life rafts and all trying to climb in at the same time,” Fabrick decided “the hell with that” and kept swimming. At one point, he turned back—about half an hour after the ship went over—in time to see
Hull
“just slide down into the water” and sink from sight.

After the twenty-seventh survivor was picked up at 9:50
A.M.
—in the vicinity of where several others were rescued—no one else was observed in the area. With the seas “flattening out,” Plage decided it would be possible to expand the visual search to cover an area of 1,500 yards on each side of the ship. Ordering a speed of 10 knots from the engine room, Plage had dye markers dropped in the water at each turning point on a new leg in order to have a “visual check point.”

At 10:05
A.M.
, two Curtiss SB2C Helldiver planes circled
Tabberer.
Plage quickly flashed a message asking them for assistance in searching for men in the water. The aircraft replied they did not have time to assist because they had their own patrol to complete, and flew away.