Sinking
On 14 March 1942 San Demetrio sailed unescorted from Baltimore, Maryland bound for the UK via Halifax, Nova Scotia with a cargo of 4,000 tons of alcohol and 7,000 tons of aviation spirit. On 17 March she was northwest of Cape Charles, Virginia when the German U-boat U-404 torpedoed and sank her. 16 crew and three DEMS gunners were lost and six crew wounded but survivors managed to launch two lifeboats. Two days later the US tanker SS Beta rescued the Master, 26 crew and five DEMS gunners and took them to Norfolk, Virginia. The Master, Conrad Vidot, was awarded the Lloyd's War Medal.
Read more about this topic: MV San Demetrio
Famous quotes containing the word sinking:
“We of the sinking middle class ... may sink without further struggles into the working class where we belong, and probably when we get there it will not be so dreadful as we feared, for, after all, we have nothing to lose but our aitches.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“I dream of a Ledaean body, bent
Above a sinking fire,”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“We all indulge in the strange, pleasant process called thinking, but when it comes to saying, even to someone opposite, what we think, then how little we are able to convey! The phantom is through the mind and out of the window before we can lay salt on its tail, or slowly sinking and returning to the profound darkness which it has lit up momentarily with a wandering light.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)