Yank Sailors ON FOREIGN FLAG SHIPS

Although these foreign-flag ships did operate with no Americans in the merchant crew, it was more common for Americans to be one of several or sometimes many nations represented in the crew. For example, the Tambour had twelve nations represented in her crew, while the Chenango's casualties alone included 13 Americans and 24 foreign seamen representing twelve nations, plus one survivor from still another country!

Examining specific situations makes the irony of the circumstances faced by Americans on foreign ships easier to understand. Consider the freighter Firethorn which had been the Danish ship Norden but had been shifted to the Panamanian flag, and was under the control of the War Shipping Administration and assigned to US Lines as operator. When this ship was torpedoed off South Africa in 1942, she lost ten crewmen, two of whom were Americans: the deck cadet and engine cadet, who were the only Americans in her merchant crew. She also lost two of her Armed Guard detachment from the US Navy.

Later, the survivors of the Firethorn were en route home from Cape Town as passengers on the former Dutch liner Zaandam, which had a similar operating arrangement with the War Shipping Administration. Aboard this ship were survivors of four other sinkings in addition to those from the Firethorn. The Zaandam was then torpedoed and sank, with most of the repatriated ship crews which were aboard losing additional men including the Firethorn which lost ten more from her merchant crew. The Zaandam herself, with a Dutch crew and flying a Dutch flag, lost a considerable number of her own men, as well as members of the five crews. Included in her own casualties were six men from her US Navy Armed Guard crew.

One of her Armed Guard crewmen, Basil Izzi, went on to considerable fame when he survived 83 days in a liferaft following the sinking of the Zaandam. Ironically, during the last ten days of this ordeal, one of the other occupants of the raft had died, the Armed Guard officer from the ship.

Multiple torpedoings in rapid succession were all-too-common. In the Caribbean, in 1942, crewmen from the torpedoed Panamanian vessel Sylvan Arrow, a tanker which, under the same name, had served in the US Navy in WWI, were repatriated in a Dutch freighter named Crynssen. En route to the United States, this vessel was also torpedoed. One of her lifeboats reached the Mexican coast, and the other one was picked up by the ore carrier Lebore. This ship, in turn, was torpedoed, and five men from the Sylvan Arrow went through their third abandon-ship experience in four days! Ultimately, they were picked up by a US Navy destroyer and taken to the Canal Zone for repatriation, this time by air.

A disproportionate number of Panamanian ships in WWII were tankers, belonging to affiliates of such companies as Esso, Socony, and Gulf. These ships criss-crossing the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico were particularly vulnerable in 1942. Another Panamanian vessel whose crew and Armed Guard detachment went through double jeopardy was the Stanvac Palembanq of the Standard Vacuum oil Company. She was torpedoed off Tobago, and lost two crewmen in that original sinking, along with three men from the Armed Guard crew. Lifeboats managed to reach Tobago where the survivors were eventually repatriated toward New Orleans on a venerable East Coast nightboat, the Robert E. Lee. Even though she had an escort vessel, this ship, was torpedoed almost within sight of the Mississippi passes, and one more of the Palembanq's crew was lost, as well as 25 crewmen and passengers from the Lee.