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Yank Sailors ON FOREIGN FLAG SHIPS

Sea Classics, May 2006 by Grover, David

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Today, on the website of the Naval Historical Society the service takes credit for arming the 6236 ships mentioned above, including the 1112 foreign-owned and flagged ships. Then, in the next sentence the Navy says that Armed Guards "were placed aboard a few Allied ships which were foreign flag and owned, but only in exceptional circumstances." If 1122 ships equates to "a few," we can only hope that the Navy's gunfire computations were more accurate than its ship statistics.

The Navy also calculated the number of armed ships lost. The total was 710, of which 569 were under the American flag, leaving 141 under foreign flag. These numbers, compared to the totals cited above, suggest that service on a foreign vessel was slightly more dangerous than service on an American ship.

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Another helpful source of information on Americans serving on foreign-flag ships is the website www.usmm.org which contains the names of such individuals and the ships on which they sailed. However, data on both crewmen and ships is often limited in scope because of the incomplete and uneven record keeping of these ships on such basic documents as crew lists and shipping articles.

How did all of this happen? Why were Americans serving in such numbers on foreign ships? There seems to be no rational explanation that suggests why the foreign ships were assigned American crewmen. The Navy has never offered a clear justification for the practice of placing small Armed Guard crews aboard the ships of Allied nations which were otherwise manned by the regular merchant crews of those countries.

The Merchant Marine cadet program also placed cadets aboard foreign ships without an announced rationale for doing so. In both cases, there were a number of American ships sailing at that time without Armed Guard detachments, and/or without cadets assigned to them. Yet, the government apparently went out of its way to provide such personnel to foreign vessels. Perhaps it was an inducement to companies abroad to let the United States use their vessels in the war effort.

These placements occurred most often on ships flying so-called flags of convenience, particularly those of Panama and Honduras, but the ships of Nazi-overrun European nations were also furnished such American assistance. The casualty lists for Armed Guard sailors identify ships of at least nine nations that hosted US Navy sailors who were killed or wounded: England, Canada, Norway, Netherlands, Panama, Honduras, Cuba, China, and Latvia.

Captain Moore indicates that data is generally not available for casualties on American-controlled foreign ships which were sunk while no Americans were in the merchant crew. However, he lists four such ships with no American merchant crewmen: the El Capitan, which had a ÉÏ-man US Navy Armed Guard crew, none of whom became casualties; the Mambi, which lost four out of five of her Navy Armed Guard crew; the Pompoon, which lost one of four Armed Guard crewmen; and the Sir Huron which had a 10-man Armed Guard detachment, none of whom was lost.

Yank Sailors ON FOREIGN FLAG SHIPS

Sea Classics, May 2006 by Grover, David

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