This Reprint is Courtesy of the Daily Camera

Sinking of the Tuscania

By Jackie Helstrom

Daily Camera Staff    

"I can still hear that whistle blowing and the bell ringing," Crump said. As the huge transport ship lurched and then plunged below the ocean's surface, the whistle and bell, which had both sounded constantly since the boat was hit by a German torpedo four hours earlier, were finally silenced. Fire, which had been leaping from the two smoke stacks, was doused, and a heavy silence descended over the scene.

Almost 300 men were dead, and the 2,000 survivors had a memory of panic and disaster so firmly implanted in their minds they could never forget. "I dreamed about it the other night," Crump said. Crump, 76, is a retired restaurant operator. He came to Boulder from Texas five years ago to live with his daughter, Mrs. Howard Cox, 440 Japonica Way, and her family. After suffering a stroke four years ago, he moved into the Mesa Vista Sanatorium, where he is still living.

Crump went through the remainder of World War I, was a part of the force to occupy defeated Germany, and has lived 50 years since the sinking of the Tuscania without ever having another experience to equal what he went through on that night, Feb. 5, 1918.

The Tuscania, a 14,000 ton passenger and freight liner, was the last ship left in the Anchor line of Glasgow, Scotland. German submarines patrolling the North Atlantic waters had taken a heavy toll in the British line. A sister ship, the Lusitania, had been sunk off the Irish coast May 7, 1915, and the loss of 128 American lives was one factor that helped bring the United States into World War I.

By 1918, the Tuscania was being used as a transport ship to bring American soldiers to the battle front in Europe. She sailed from Hoboken, New Jersey on January 20, 1918, with 2,156 American soldiers, including Private Oliver Crump, and a heavy cargo of war supplies aboard. "I counted the trains they unloaded," Crump said. "There were 14 complete trains; one whole train of nothing but bacon, and another of just airplane parts." The ship was also carrying supply wagons and 30 mules.

THE TUSCANIA joined a convoy of 14 vessels at Halifax, Nova Scotia, and set out to sea. Seventeen days later the crew sighted the Northern coast of Ireland, and turned South toward Liverpool, England. They expected to dock the next morning. Since they had been in the torpedo zone for some time, Crump said, all the men had been a bit edgy. Every time a hard wave hit the ship, they thought they had finally gotten it. "Those submarines were as thick as hops," Crump said.

But the sight of land gave them all hope that they would reach England safely, he said. Two hours later, in gathering dusk, the dull thud of the German torpedo ripped through the ship's engine room and set the four hour nightmare in motion. "I was laying on my bunk when we were hit," Crump said. "All I could do was to begin trying to think how I was going to get out of this. I had no hope of getting out of it alive," he said. "So many of the men jumped overboard," Crump said, "but I was afraid to jump because I couldn't swim. So of the Corporals were taking whole squads overboard. The Captain was trying to keep them from it, but they jumped anyway."

"As it turned out, the worst thing you could do was to jump. You didn't have a chance then. The men who jumped overboard were drowned." When the ship was first hit, Crump said, they were told it would sink in about 10 minutes. "They just went wild," he said. "You couldn't control them."

Lifeboats were pushing off without being nearly full, and many men were left aboard the Tuscania. Although the British destroyer doing the rescue work pulled alongside and got some of them off, a great number of men went down with the ship. "The lifeboat I was in, carried 24 men, but we only had about 10," Crump said. IT WAS already dark when we got in the water, he said, but they could hear men screaming and hollering for help. They picked up the few they could find, Crump said, including a Lieutenant with a broken leg.

"They gave us all a drink of Scotch when we got onboard," Crump said. "That warmed us up, perhaps about as much as anything." The men were taken to Londonderry, Ireland, where they began the job of sorting through the survivors and counting the dead. Some of the lifeboats, missed by the destroyer during the night, drifted to the Scottish coast, where they were broken up against the cliffs of the Scottish shore line. One boat, with 50 survivors aboard, was picked up by another British ship 18 miles West of where the Tuscania sank. About 50 bodies were found along the shore of Scotland by civilian parties that turned out to search the shoreline. They were all buried in Scotland.

THE TUSCANIA survivors were celebrated up and down England, but the biggest celebration of all was a "Gala Matinee given by the Palace Patrons Wounded Entertainment Fund," at the South Hampton Palace. The Prince of Wales, now the Duke of Windsor since his abdication as King of England, was on hand to greet the survivors. For many years after they all got back home, the Tuscania survivors held annual reunions at first, and then many years later, occasional reunions. Captain Wilhelm Meyer, Captain of the German U-boat that Sank the Tuscania, attended the 15th annual reunion in 1933. "He was a very friendly fellow," Crump said.

2005 INFORMATION SOURCE

Helstrom, Jackie "Sinking of the Tuscania." Daily Camera 4 Feb. 1968: Page 8

Article submitted by Susan Deans & Carol Taylor of the Daily Camera.

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