On the evening of April 10, 1942, an American oil tanker, the S.S. Gulfamerica, was steaming north along the Florida coast making 12.5 knots. As it approached Ponte Vedra, it stopped zigzagging and made a course nearing due north. They had no idea they were being hunted.
A German submarine, part of Operation Drumbeat, the U-123 commanded by Reinhard Hardegen, had been chasing the ship north for almost 45 minutes. They had picked up the tanker silhouetted against the lights of St. Augustine. When the Gulfamerica was off Jacksonville Beach, the U-123 fired a single torpedo at a radical angle from astern.
At 9:24 p.m. local time, the torpedo impacted with the oil tanker on the stern starboard side, near the engine room. An orange red mushroom cloud leaped almost 500 feet into the air. On shore, people were riding the roller coaster and the Ferris wheel, walking up and down the board walk, in and out of the bars and bath houses. People were dancing on the pier and hotel roof tops. The Jacksonville Beach Volunteer Fire Company was holding their first annual ball on the old pier. Couples danced to the music of the Rusty Allen Orchestra under the green glow of the 7-Up sign.
At first, spectators heard the explosion and saw the ocean on fire and assumed there must have been some sort of horrific accident. The idea that a hostile submarine had just attacked a friendly ship five miles off our coast seemed completely uncomprehensible. What happened next changed their minds. Hardegen maneuvered his boat between the stricken ship and the shore and opened fire with his 10.5-centimeter desk gun while simultaneously using his machine guns to take out Gulfamerica’s radio antenna so she could not send a distress signal.
On the Gulfamerica, what had started as an orderly effort to abandon ship devolved into complete chaos. Lifeboat No. 2 capsized. Men jumped into the burning sea. Nineteen men died tragically that night.
On shore, people watched in horror. Some took to lifeboats and attempted to row out to the sinking ship to lend aid. One man, honeymooning at the Inn and Club, convinced some cabana boys to help him launch a dingy from the lagoon. The tide and wind swept him out to sea. The next day he was rescued 10 miles off the coast, suffering from intense sunburn. His new bride consoled herself with room service gin and tonics.
One of the controversies that persists to this day is why did Hardegen take his U-boat to the landward side of the Gulfamerica. In a biography that was written about him in Germany in 1943, it was claimed that he did so because he was scared he might miss the oil tanker and hit innocent bystanders on shore. That story remains popular to this day. But this was the fourth U.S. ship Hardegen had sunk along our coast in three days. In each case, he had taken his boat to the landward side in order to shell the keel of his prey.
The bow of the Gulfamerica bobbed on the surface for six days before finally slipping beneath the waves. For years debris washed ashore; dead bodies, flotsam and, for decades, oil in the form of tar. Into the 1980s beachgoers would come home from our beaches with tar on their feet, little knowing that tar was the last remnants of a doomed casualty of war.
Scott A. Grant is a local author and frequent contributor. He welcomes your comments at scottg@standfastic.com.
