WAR NEWS: An April 17, 1943, story in The Era told of six U.S. seamen rescued after 46 days in an open boat.
The story said it was the missing lifeboat from the City of Flint, famed U.S. merchant ship sunk by a torpedo in January in the mid-Atlantic.
“This became known today as 18-year-old Arthur Voorhis, one of the six men aboard, arrived in Erie for a visit with his parents. He is an ordinary seaman in the Navy and served on the ship’s gun crew.”
There had been 65 men on board; 48 were saved in other lifeboats; and the death list was reduced to 11.
“Once a submarine shelled their boat, Voorhis said, but missed. Storms hit. The boat’s sails touched water, almost capsizing it.
“We prayed after every meal,” said the youth. “Sometimes we almost gave up, especially when we signaled passing ships and planes and they didn’t see us. We got so desperate we promised to give up smoking and drinking and all those things if we were rescued.”
The men had a “fair supply” of water and crackers, and rationed them. They fished using a “kind of bucket contraption we rigged up.”
He lost 36 pounds in those 46 days at sea, and spent 10 days in a hospital in Gibraltar after rescue by a friendly vessel 12 miles off the European coast.
“The City of Flint won international attention on Oct. 9, 1929, soon after the war began in Europe, when she was halted and seized in the Atlantic by a German warship.
“A German prize crew painted over the U.S. flag, renamed the ship ‘The Alf,’ and flying a Danish flag, sailed her to Tromsoe, Norway. Later the Norwegian government freed the ship and interned the German crew.”
The ship sailed from New York as part of a convoy, but while underway, encountered a storm that caused the deckload to shift. The ship straggled from the convoy. On Jan. 25, 1943, it was struck by a torpedo from a German U-boat. The crew abandoned ship within 10 minutes. The chief cook, Robert Daigle, was picked up as a prisoner by the U-boat, and taken to the POW camp Marlag und Milag Nord, according to the website uboat.net.
He was eventually released.
