During World War I, on the night of Feb. 5, not one of the 15 lookouts on the U.S. troopship saw the torpedo from German submarine slicing its way through the choppy waters directly toward them.
No alarm sounded to alert the 2,376 Army troops and crew members that the deadly wake of bubbles off the Scottish coast meant a “tin fish” was on its way.
In seconds, the SS Tuscania would become the first troopship carrying American soldiers in World War I to be torpedoed by the Germans. Of those, 2,166 would survive – 210 would not.
On board were men recruited from the Oregon Agricultural College in Corvallis and from forestry and logging industries across the Northwest.
That night in the winter of 1918, they were headed to Europe with lumber for wartime bridges and roads, barracks and hospitals, sanitary facilities, defensive fortifications, and even coffins.
After leaving Hoboken, New Jersey, the Tuscania had joined three other troopships and eight freighters. On Feb. 4, eight British destroyers met the convoy to guide the ships between the cliffs of Scotland and the coast of Ireland.
On Feb. 5, seven miles off Ireland, a German U-boat spotted the Tuscania’s two white smokestacks and, at 5:47 PM, launched a surprise attack. The second of two torpedoes blew a hole in the Tuscania’s starboard side between the engines and the boiler room.
“Our ship was a 15,000-ton vessel and the explosion shook it as if it were a small launch,” remembered Russell R. Rock of Portland, who had been eating dinner when the torpedo hit.
“Troops to boat stations, lifeboats out!”, officers barked into megaphones as the ship starting listing sharply and water flooded in. On the icy, heaving deck, the troops, described as “more woodmen than sailors,” tried to free the lifeboats that had not been destroyed or damaged. In the confusion and darkness, several boats broke away 50 feet in the air and spilled their occupants into the sea. A lifeboat filled with men landed on the one below it, crushing its occupants. Another was sucked into the hole made by the explosion.
The destroyers eventually were able to pull alongside and tossed ropes up so men could slide down to safety.
William G. Robertson of Coos Bay was on his way down a rescue rope, when, in the darkness and smoke, the destroyer began to steam away. Hanging off a 60-foot rope over the water, Robertson let go, preparing to fall to his death. Instead, he fell onto an overturned lifeboat and was later rescued.
Harry J. Cole, a football and track star at what is now Oregon State University, scrambled into a lifeboat, but as it was being lowered, the ropes broke, spilling everyone into the ocean. Cole was able to hold on in the icy water for nearly half an hour until he was rescued, later saying he was only alive because of his athletic training.
As the ship’s list became more pronounced, men jumped overboard. Some couldn’t swim; others were pulled under by their heavy overcoats.
“The ones that were hurt and helpless, there wasn’t a thing we could do for them,” one survivor said. “They just floated there in the water in their lifejackets. It’s something I would like to blot from my mind but can’t.”
The Germans, still circling below, fired another torpedo at a rescue ship, missing it by less than six feet. Two of the destroyers then broke away to drop depth charges targeting the submarine. The detonations delivered such concussive force, men in the water were knocked unconscious.
By 6:55 p.m., 1,350 troops were still aboard the Tuscania and all available lifeboats had been launched. When the last rescue destroyer finally arrived, it took everyone left on board. An hour later, with a series of explosions and a blast from her smokestacks, the Tuscania slipped under the water.
The last lifeboat held University of Oregon graduate Edward E. Harpham, known as Everett, and forest ranger Roy Muncaster. For five hours, they floated and rowed with 35 others, buffeted from wave to wave. Their boat was pushed northward toward the Scottish Isle of Islay’s jagged, offshore reefs.
“Muncaster was handling the oars when the boat struck the rocks,” said Harpham. “He was cool and courageous all through the terrible experience.” The last words he said were “Cheer up, Harp, we will get the Kaiser yet.”
Harpham clung to the rocks until he was rescued by a farmer who waded out in the sea up to his neck to toss him a rope. Muncaster’s body was found the next morning floating in the shallows.
James B. Gurney of Glide was on the Tuscania with his brother, Stephen. Jim Gurney had been in the ship’s infirmary with scarlet fever but had made it into a lifeboat. His brother wrote their mother with the terrible news that Jim’s lifeboat landed at Islay, but he died of exposure. Gurney was the first University of Oregon graduate to die in service through an “act of the enemy.”
Percy A. Stevens from Bend was working for a timber company when he enlisted four months after turning 18, joining the other Oregon men in the 6th Battalion, 20th Engineer Regiment. He boarded his assigned lifeboat cheerfully and calmly, it was reported, and he and the others rowed until after midnight as the waves became increasingly rough and a storm came up. Their lifeboat wrecked on the rocks and Percy drowned. This family was first told that Stevens had survived but five days later, their relief and happiness was shattered when the official cablegram came that he had not. His mother was sent his last Army paycheck for $37 three years later.
The day that Percy Stevens was laid to rest at the Kilnaughton Cemetery on Islay, soldiers, bagpipers, clergy members, and townspeople walked a mile to a grassy slope above the bay. Seventy-eight of the dead were buried in their uniforms. There was no timber for caskets so they were covered with canvas. They were laid to rest under a large American flag sewn by four Islay women. Three volleys were fired over their flower covered graves and the Star Spangled Banner was sung. Others were buried at three other Islay cemeteries.
In 1920, the American Graves Registration Service, with the permission of the families, removed all but one of the bodies and reinterred them at the Brookwood American Military Cemetery in England. The only American grave remaining on the island today is that of Private Roy Muncaster.
“They died for liberty, they died for us, and now they rest by the surf-smitten shores of lonely Islay,” an Edinburgh newspaper wrote.
“On this rocky, rugged headline, far above the ocean, a monument is to be erected commemorating those brave souls who perished in the full flush and vigor of early manhood. It will stand facing the distant homeland across the trackless deep, and will be seen by great liners that come and go in daytime. And from ships that pass in the night, voyagers will see the scattered, twinkling coast lights of Islay and perhaps remember the Tuscania and the noble hearts she carried from the West.”
Lynne Hasselman is a writer from southern Oregon.
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