Good morning, Howard;
As I was packing boxes of family memorabilia this morning, I happened to
find the affidavit given by my Uncle regarding the last hours of the SS
Amapala. I have scanned it in and the pages are attached for you to read
at your leisure. I'm sure you will understand more of the nautical terms
than I will. I was in the Army and kept out of the water most of the time
unless you count streams and bogs!
As I mentioned in one of my earlier emails, I know this experience was
probably the worst of my Uncle's life. He didn't speak about it much, but
when he did his eyes would well up with tears.
I'm attempting to find a good distant photo shot of the SS Amapala for
my collection of stuff about my Uncle, and may perhaps frame it with the flag
and affidavit. I have found out quite a bit on the internet about the U507
and its Captain, and that will be part of it, too. I believe I do have a
small picture of the vessel somewhere on one of the computers that I found
online, but it was a scanned postcard. If you find any online, please let
me know.
One last thing. I think you have done a fine job on your web site
describing Liberty Ships, their worth and sometimes demise. To relate a
story that I have only second hand from my Mother, evidently my Father was
supposed to go from the US to Russia with an entire factory of equipment
designed for making electronic resistors for radio and other equipment. I
presume this was part of the Lend-Lease activity that Roosevelt set up to get
around neutrality laws. In any case, the ship was ready to go with its
cargo of factory, and for some reason that I do not know, my Father could not
sail on that particular day, so the ship left without him. My mother said
that the ship never reached whatever port it was going to in Russia,
and had basically disappeared off the face of the earth. The
prevailing wisdom at the time was that it was torpedoed and sank before getting
off a message, or the secrecy at the time prevented full disclosure of exactly
what happened. My Father did not end up going because the factory
equipment wasn't there. He'd even studied some of the Russian language and
alphabet because I have some of his notes somewhere along with his passport of
the time. This might have been too early for it to have been on a
Liberty Ship, but just to show it was risky crossing the Atlantic at
that time.
Please keep in touch.
John..
The sinking of the S.S. Amapala was tyipical
of the fate that awaited many U.S. merchant ships at the very beginninmg of the
war, as unarmed, and incapable of outrunning German submarines they bravely set
forth and faced the perils that lay ahead of them.
The Amapala was a Standard Fruit and
Steamship vessel, with refridgerated holds designed specifically to carry cargos
of bananas from Central America, her home port alternating between New York and
New Orleans, depending upon the company scheduling,