Word: rafting
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Squalls forced the spluttering Navy bomber down onto the dark seas. When it sank, the three men scrambled into a rubber life raft, 8 ft. by 4 ft. They had only their clothes, a .45 automatic pistol, a pocketknife, pliers and a length of ½-inch Manila line...
...stern of the Jacob Jones broke off and sank, leaving the center section afloat. Dozens of men were in the water, some of them looking for rafts and calling for help. Seaman Dors left his raft, swam back to the hulk, tried to cut more rafts loose. He failed. When the water reached his ankles he shoved off again, found another raft. The rest of the "Jakie" went down with a mighty explosion that tossed nearby swimmers into the air like popcorn. The sun was high in the sky when a rescue boat found the survivors: Dors and ten other...
...knocked the gooseneck [rail fastening] off the life raft," he said later, "and dropped it to the water. When I hit the water I looked around for the raft. It was gone. I kicked myself away from the ship and swam aft, thinking I'd grab the rudderpost. Instead I hit the propeller. I thought to myself: 'Oh, oh, this is no place for me.' But the propeller was dead. I swam away from the ship. It must have been ten minutes later that I heard someone holler. It was Sparks [the radio operator]. He hollered...
...When the Cities Service Empire went down, torpedoed and burning off Florida, 30 were saved, eleven lost. Said John Walsh, wiper: "I saw our captain on a life raft. He and some of the other men were on it and the current was sucking them into the burning oil around the tanker. I last saw the captain going into a sheet of orange flame. Some of the fellows said he screamed. I didn't hear him. . . . Monroe Reynolds was with me for a while. He was screaming that he was going blind. . . . Gus, the quartermaster, was with...
Suddenly a torpedo ripped into the tanker's hull on the port side. Ten minutes later another direct hit was scored from starboard. In something like 14 minutes Captain Harold Hansen and his men (save two, who slipped from sight) were struggling with lifeboats and life rafts in the chilling, oil-drenched water. A third, final torpedo struck again from port side. The 9,577-ton tanker canted drunkenly but did not entirely sink. The sub, surfaced after the third shot, made no attempt to pick up survivors. A second officer insisted that his raft was fired on "five...