Three heavily laden cargo carriers, slogging along abreast and escorted by four slim, gray steam yachts, groped through a misty night north of Belle lie, bound for Brest. Ahead, the U.S.S. Aphrodite plunged, with squalls intermittently blotting her from the sight of the ships behind. Off to starboard was the U.S.S. Alcedo; to port, the U.S.S. Kanawha; while the U.S.S. Noma kept guard astern.
It was November 4, 1917, and on board the Alcedo her captain, Lieutenant Commander W. T. Conn, Jr., U.S. Navy, kept the bridge with the officer of the deck, Lieutenant (j.g.) John T. Melvin, U.S. Naval Reserve. Darkness and mist clouds made the convoy invisible at times as the yacht zigzagged on her station about 1,200 yards from the nearest ship, the Florence Luckenbach. Shortly before midnight the weather cleared and the Luckenbach became distinct on the port bow. The Alcedo’s captain then wrote his night orders and went to bed in the emergency cabin.
His sleep was broken at 1:45 a.m. of the fifth, by a seaman calling outside the door, “Submarine, captain!” Reaching the upper bridge, Conn was told by Lieutenant Paul, the watch officer, that he had seen a submarine on the surface about 3,000 yards off the port bow, and that a torpedo was approaching.
The yacht answered a hard right rudder too slowly and almost at the instant her captain looked over the port wing of the bridge, the torpedo struck under the chain plates. The explosion sent the foremast overside, wrecked the radio antenna, and the forecastle was very soon awash, rendering the ship’s forward guns useless.
Lieutenant Commander Conn ordered the navigator, Lieutenant H. R. Leonard, to have dories and life rafts cut away, and then went down to the main deck where a moment’s inspection convinced him the Alcedo was sinking rapidly, the bulwarks amidships being almost level with the water.
Conn ordered his men to jump overside and swim to the rafts and dories floating clear. This order was generally carried out, but before he himself could jump clear, the yacht listed heavily to port, plunged by the head, and sank. Conn was carried down by the suction but experienced no difficulty in getting clear, and when he reached the surface, he swam a few yards to a Carley float to which three men were clinging.
Climbing on board the raft, the four saw Chief Boatswain’s Mate John P- Doyle, U. S. Naval Reserve, and one other man in the whaleboat. Paddling the raft to this boat, Conn and his men bailed it out, hastened to take men from floating wreckage, and soon filled the whaleboat to more than her capacity.
They then picked up two overturned dories nested together, but these had their sterns broken and were useless. A few minutes later another nest of dories was overhauled and these were separated, righted, and found to be seaworthy. Some men shifted from the whaleboat to these dories and began picking up others from the water.
At this time, about an hour after the ship had gone down, a German submarine broke surface and approached some of the dories. Then it stopped while three men on top her conning tower could be seen silently watching the boats. After about 30 minutes the U-boat turned away and was observed to submerge.
At 4:30 a.m., with no survivors left in the water, Conn gathered his boats together and started for Penmarch light, the loom of which was dimly visible to the Northeast. With frequent shifts at the oars the little flotilla of shipwrecked Americans rowed until 5:15 that afternoon when, with the lighthouse less than 3 miles distant, they were picked up by a French torpedo boat and taken into Brest.
The party, comprising 3 officers and 40 men, arrived at that port at 11:00p.m., and those needing medical attention were sent ashore to a hospital, while the rest were taken on board the U.S.S. Panther, where Lieutenant Commander Conn learned that Lieutenant Leonard, Lieutenant H. A. Peterson, U. S. Naval Reserve, and Passed Assistant Surgeon Paul O. M. Andreae, U. S. Naval Reserve, and 25 men from the Alcedo had landed at Penmarch Point.
A subsequent check of muster rolls revealed that Lieutenant Melvin and 20 enlisted men, mostly naval reservists, were lost. Melvin had stood the eight to twelve watch, and was in his room forward on the starboard side near the point of the explosion. Since he was not seen after the torpedo struck, it is believed he was killed or drowned in his room. Several others among the missing were in their berths in the compartment near the point where the torpedo struck and probably died in the blast.
The few who escaped from the compartment said it was wrecked, the companionway had gone adrift, and that they had escaped through a hole in the deck.
Conn reported his ship sunk about 75 miles west of the north end of Belle Ile. The torpedo struck at 1:46 a.m., by Lieutenant Paul’s watch, which stopped at 1:54 a.m., indicating that the yacht remained afloat only about 8 minutes.
His report further says that:
While practically the entire crew were green recruits when the ship was commissioned three months previously, and all the officers were reserves with the exception of the commanding officer, there was at no time any indication of excitement, fear or panic.
In my tour about the decks, each officer and man was at his station. It is to this fact more than to any other that I attribute the saving of so many men, as all boats and life rafts were gotten off the Alcedo prior to her sinking, or else had been cut adrift so that they floated clear when the ship sank.
The entire crew, officers and men, as far as I could observe, while on the ship, afterward in the water, and in the boats, carried themselves in such a manner as to live up to the best traditions of the Service.
Conn’s report specifically cites the conduct of several enlisted men. There was Chief Boatswain’s Mate Doyle, who singlehanded lowered the whaleboat to the rail and, as the ship had sunk so low that the boat was water-borne, he and Lucius A. Patton, an officers’ cook, were able to get in and pull clear.
Coxswain Patrick J. Quinn found Ensign William F. Harrison, U. S. Naval Reserve, sitting on the deck over the wrecked compartment in a dazed condition, after being struck on the head by flying debris. Quinn picked up Harrison, led him to the rail, and lashed him to a life raft. The coxswain then cut the raft adrift and pushed it overboard, the act undoubtedly saving the officer’s life, for the latter declared afterward that he had no recollection of events from the time he left his room until he found himself in a dory.
William J. Bellatty, yeoman first class, was asleep in the after part of the ship. He tucked the ship’s copy of the muster roll and the captain’s diary inside his blouse before going overboard. Near the ship he found Richard W. Rudolph, pharmacist’s mate third class, struggling in the water. Grabbing the latter, Bellatty swam with him to a drifting air tank and supported him until both were taken into a dory.
Clarence M. Keiser and Daniel J. Coleman, both seamen second class, voluntarily left overcrowded dories to seek other places, while George A. Collier, fireman second class:
On watch in the engine-room under instruction as machinist’s mate, stopped the main engine when the explosion took place, and then raised the safety valve by the hand gear, despite the fact that by this time he was standing in water up to his knees in the engine-room.
It was of such stuff as this that the Alcedo’s men were made.