Losses in WW1

This page includes basic information about the ships and how they were lost, a photo of the relevant panel(s) of the Tower Hill Memorial and information about those that lost their lives extracted from the CWGC database. In the table I have included information about those who served on the ships but who had a normal burial as this seems appropriate to me. In some cases further family information about the individuals may be available on the CWGC website [7].

Minnehaha

Casualties

Minnetonka

Casualties

Minorca

Unfortunately, the location of this panel makes it virtually impossible to get a decent image.

Casualties

Minotaur

Casualties

I am grateful to Charles Anderson for the following cutting from the Hull Daily Mail [70] of 13 May 1915.

Minterne

Casualties

Mirlo

The following moving account of the rescue is reproduced with kind permission of the Naval Institute Press. It is extracted from the excellent book by Dennis L. Noble. Rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard:Great Acts of Heroism Since 1878. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2005 [38].

The Blazing Sea

Four days after Warrant Officer Albert D. Nelson's struggle at Niagara Falls, there occurred a rescue that included one of the worse fears of sailors: fire. In the second week of August 1918, Warrant Officer John Allen Midgett commanded the Chicamacomico Station on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Midgett knew better than most Americans that World War I now encompassed the eastern shore of the United States. During the prior week, on Tuesday, 5 August, for example, a German U-boat had sunk a Dutch ship, the Diamond Shoals lightship, and had forced two steamers aground with fire from its deck gun. Midgett, on 11 August 1918, would come face to face with both the war with the sea and the Germans.

John Allen Midgett brought experience and family tradition to what would become known in the annals of the U.S. Coast Guard as the MMo case. The Midgett family of the Outer Banks has served in the U.S. Coast Guard and its predecessors since at least 1874. One Midgett observed that on the Outer Banks "you could either sit around and fish, or you could go out and save lives" and the family chose the latter. On 11 August, John Allen Midgett possessed eighteen years of experience at the stations along the Outer Banks. Locals called him "Captain Johnny," and his crew addressed him as "Captain." Midgett would need all the experience, family tradition, and guts he could muster before the day was over.

The making of a legend within the U.S. Coast Guard began when Capt. William Roose Williams ordered the British tanker Mirlo underway from New Orleans, Louisiana, on Saturday, 10 August 1918. The 6,997-ton tanker shipped fifty-two sailors and carried a cargo of gasoline and oil. Mirlo rounded Cape Hattcras, North Carolina, on Friday, the sixteenth. Shortly after noon the tanker approached the Wimble Shoals Light Buoy.

As Mirlo approached the buoy, the German submarine U-117 lay submerged about thirteen hundred feet away. Kapitanleutnant Droscher watched through the U-boat's periscope as the ship approached. At 3:30 P.M., at a range of 1,308 feet, Droscher gave the order to fire a torpedo, set to run at a depth of three meters (nine feet, ten inches), from tube number 1. Through the periscope, Droscher viewed a large explosion.

On board Mirlo, the explosion engulfed the engine room, causing the loss of lights and radio communications. Captain Williams ordered his crew to run out the lifeboats while he attempted to beach his ship. Shortly after that, a second explosion racked the ship. Williams gave the order to abandon ship. Second Mate J. Burns, with fourteen of the crew on board, got the first lifeboat away, but it capsized. The crewmen managed to reach and cling to the overturned lifeboat. Two other lifeboats managed to get safely away. One, commanded by First Mate F. J. Campbell, started toward the sailors in the water. Suddenly a third explosion rocked the area, spewing burning cargo out onto the water. The sea was now a blazing inferno of gasoline and oil.

The towering fire separated Captain Williams's boat from the others. "We were almost burning and it was only by the strenuous efforts on the oars that we managed to save our lives, the fire following us within a few feet for half an hour at least," Williams later recalled. He was sure the rest of his crew had perished.

Once clear of the fire, Williams called for his sailors, despite suffering from shock and burns, "to lay on their oars." In the tradition of the sea, Williams felt he must at least try to see if any of his crew survived. At just this moment, the captain sighted a boat on the horizon making toward his lifeboat. It was the powered, self-bailing surfboat from Chicamacomico Station.

Earlier, Surfman Leroy Midgett, standing the lookout tower watch at Chicamacomico Station, spotted a ship to the southeast. While he watched, he saw an explosion slightly aft of amidship and a large geyser of water shoot upward. Surfman Midgett gave the alarm. Captain Johnny immediately recalled all hands. The crew ran to the stables and hitched horses to the boat wagon on which rested a 20-foot, 4-inch Becbc-McLellan motor self-bailing surfboat, number 1046.

The lifesavers quickly transported the boat six hundred yards from the Station CO the water's edge and launched into breakers eighteen to twenty feet high. Three times the boat swamped. Finally, on the fourth try, the small craft cleared the surf zone and entered the rough open sea. Midgett noted the time: 5:00 P.M.

John Allen Midgett's boat carried many of the Midgett family that day. LeRoy Midgett was one of the smaller members of the station, with light blue eyes and an oval face. Zion S. Midgett, powerfully built, joined the service before the turn of the twentieth century. Arthur V. Midgett was prematurely gray, with a ruddy complexion, of medium height, with broad shoulders and a thick chest. Clarence E. Midgett, at more than six feet tall, towered above the entire crew. He was slender, with brown hair, blue eyes, and a medium complexion. The only crewmember who was not a member of the Midgett family was thirty-eight-year-old Prochorus L. O'Neal, known as Lee, who was five feet ten inches tall. These six Outer Banks lifesavers would shortly set into motion a rescue that has become an icon in the tradition of maritime lifesaving in the United States.

When Captain Johnny's surfboat reached Mirlo's lifeboat, the keeper raised a speaking trumpet and hailed Captain Williams. Midgett asked if they needed assistance. Williams requested Midgett "to go to the rescue of one boat capsized and one boat intact with part of my crew in it." The two boats were now five miles offshore. Before starting toward Mirlo, Captain Johnny warned Williams to remain outside the surf zone unless other help arrived. Williams and his British seaman watched as the six life-savers and their power surfboat headed toward the blazing sea. Within minutes, the U.S. Coast Guard boat and crew disappeared from view in the smoke.

Within several hundred yards of Mirlo, Midgett found the tanker in two parts, with about seventy-five feet of water between the bow and the stern. The bow being the closest, John Allen Midgett maneuvered toward it. As he closed on the bow, barrels of gasoline continued to explode on board Mirlo. As each barrel detonated, flames shot hundreds of feet into the air. The surface of the sea between the surfboat and the bow was an inferno. As the surfboat neared the flames, LeRoy Midgett yelled to Captain Johnny that he thought he saw the periscope of a U-boat.

Undaunted, John Allen Midgett circled the blazing hulk, looking for an opening in the blazing sea. On the lee side, Midgett found an opening. The smoke cleared enough for the boat crew to see two giant pillars of fire. Near the bow of Mirlo, Midgett spied the tanker's overturned lifeboat, buffeted by heavy swells. At first, Midgett saw no survivors around the overturned craft, but he steered "through the smoke, floating wreckage, and burning gas and oil" toward the lifeboat. As his surfboat chugged along, the U.S. Coast Guardsmen saw a flaming arch and through the arch a man clinging to the lifeboat. Approaching closer, the lifesaving crew now saw other survivors clinging to the lifeboat's gunwales. Only six of the fifteen remained alive, having survived by constantly ducking beneath the sea.

Midgett and his crew pulled the burned, oil-coated sailors from the sea. The heat from the fire scorched and blistered the paint on the motor surfboat. In a classic understatement, LeRoy Midgett later said it was "hot country." Nevertheless, the U.S. Coast Guardsmen searched the immediate area for other survivors. This proved futile. The lifesavers now began searching for the missing lifeboat of First Mate Campbell.

John Allen Midgett concluded that the missing lifeboat might be downwind from the tanker and headed in that direction. Nine miles southeast of Chicamacomico, the lifesavers found the boat. Midgett took the craft in row and made for the location where Captain Williams should be waiting outside the surf zone.

Darkness was setting in when Captain Williams saw the U.S. Coast Guard motor surfboat towing one of his ship's lifeboats. At first, the survivors in William's lifeboat thought that everyone in Mirlo's crew was safe and the British sailors give "a loud cheer." Joy quickly turned to sadness, however, when Midgett announced "a number of lives had been lost.

Captain Johnny took Captain Williams's boat in tow and started toward Hatteras Island. Within two miles of Chicama-comico, the wind freshened. Midgett ordered Mirlo's lifeboats anchored outside the surf zone. He then took his motor surfboat, with the six survivors pulled from water, through the surf into the shore. Citizens from the surrounding area and the U.S. Coast Guard crew from Gull Shoal to the north illuminated the shore with lights. They helped in taking the burned and oily sailors to shelter. John Allen Midgett and his crew again headed out into the surf.

Midgett steered to Mirlo's lifeboats. The lifesavers transferred some survivors to the motor surfboat. Captain Johnny and his crew shuttled four loads of survivors to the beach. On the last trip out, U.S. Coast Guardsmen went on board the now empty Mirlo lifeboats and then beached the craft. The last survivor came ashore at 9:00 P.M. After securing the boats on the beach, John Allen Midgett returned to Chicamacomico Station and closed his log at 11:00.

In a letter to his company, Captain Williams wrote that "the eyes of all the life saving crew were all bloodshot, which was caused by their getting so close to the fire as to be partly gassed and smoke into their eyes." Further, the lifesavers had "done one of the bravest deeds which I have seen." John Allen Midgett and his entire boat crew received the Gold Life Saving Medal and a special medal from King George V, and the British Board of Trade gave John Midgett a silver cup. Nine years after the rescue, on 23 July 1930, John Allen Midgett and his crew received Grand Crosses of the American Cross of Honor, presented to them by the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, Rear Adm. Frederick C. Billard.

John Allen Midgett went on to serve in the U.S. Coast Guard for another twenty years, retiring with a total of thirty-eight years of service. He participated in 40 major rescues and in hundreds of smaller ones." The man who escaped the flames of the torpedoed Mirlo and other dangerous rescues at sea would die in an automobile accident two days before Christmas 1937. He lies in the family plot at Manteo, North Carolina.

Casualties

Missanabie

The following eye-witness account is from the New York Times [36]:

TRANSPORT MISSANABIE SANK IN SEVEN MINUTES

AN ATLANTIC PORT, Sept. 19. - The first details of the sinking of the British transport Missanabie, sixty miles off the Irish coast, on Sunday afternoon, Sept. 9. was brought here today by passengers arriving in the convoy of which the former Canadian Pacific liner had been a member. While the failure of the convoy to await a final checking up prevented the passengeres from knowing how many were lost, the general opinion was that all assigned to the bow lifeboats had been lost.

We sailed from an Irish port on Sept.8 at 11:30 o'clock in the morning' said a passenger. 'We were in convoy, and the Missanabie was the only ship inthe fleet carrying passengers and mails. We proceeded, in fairly choppy weather at about eight knots with the Missanabie the last ship in line. She had had engine trouble and had been foced to drop behind the main body of the convoy.

On Monday monring however she caught up. At 11:15 o'clock that morning she was hit by a torpedo. The missile struck aft and a few seconds later another torpedo hit the vessel. For some reason it was impossible to stop the Missanabie's engines. A few moments passed and then the ship's magazine exploded and the vessel immediately began to sink by the stern. The crew began to lower the boats and within four minutes the stern was well under water. This made it impossible to launch the forward boats owing to the slant of the steamship. Some of the aft boats got away but I saw at least one boat overturned. Because of the choppiness of the sea I am sure that it would take wonderful seamanship to keep any of the small boats afloat very long.

From a ship next to the Missanabie I could see some of teh passengers jumping into the water from the stern. Destroyers and patrol boats immediately the ship was observed in distress rushed to the scene and commened to drop depth charges in the area from when the torpedo had apparently been discharged. No one saw a submarine nor was a periscope visible at any time. I am unable to say from my knowledge whether the depth charges proved effective.

The Missanabie by this time had sunk well down by the stern and the water going through her funnels caused her to stand almost perpendicular. The bow disappeared from view within a short time and the life of the steamship from the time she was struck to the time that she sank was about seven minutes.

As we came away I saw seven lifeboats inthe water and apparently having a hard time of it. There were also many people in lifebelts afloat. The rescue vessels were near at hand however. Shortly after the Missanabie was hit a torpedo was fired at another ship in the convoy but this missed going astern. When the stricken steamship was almost perpendicular with her bow pointing skywards, her engines, anchors and other heavy material crashed towards the sterm and this and the blowing up of the magazine undoubtedly caused her to sink so rapidly.

Casualties

Missir

Casualties

Mistletoe

Casualties

Moeris

I do not have useable images of the panel for this vessel at present but will add them at a future date.

Casualties