Perils of the Sea

The Navy Department announced last week the loss of three destroyers in a recent typhoon. From the western Pacific, TIME Correspondent Robert Sherrod had filed this delayed dispatch under date of Dec. 29:

The fast carrier task force of Admiral Halsey's Third Fleet had retired to refuel. There had been reports of an approaching typhoon; however, most of the Fleet's aerologists had charted it considerably farther east. Then the storm began to veer erratically toward the task force. We could see that we were in for a typhoon of savage ferocity.

The wind rose to 54 knots at 11 a.m., and there were gusts of 75 knots. The smaller ships were already catching hell--how much hell we could not tell, for sheets of spray often cut visibility to ten yards, and we could get only an occasional peek at the smaller ships across a dip in the mountainous waves. It was in the first climax of the storm just before noon, that three brave ships capsized and died:

P: The 2,100-ton Spence, once one of the famed "Little Beavers" squadron (TIME, July 17); 24 survivors from more than 300 officers and enlisted men;

P: The 1,395-ton Hull, veteran of Guadalcanal, Wake, the Marshalls and Marianas; 54 saved from about 250;

P: 1,395-ton Monaghan, blooded at Pearl Harbor, veteran of the Aleutians and Marianas; only six survived from 250.

Against the Elements. How 84 men, or any men, lived in those waters is difficult to say. Most hung grimly to life rafts, watching their comrades washed off and under, powerless to save them.

Said Seaman Doil Carpenter, of Pasadena (a Monaghan man): "I was at No. 3 gun, aft, when she went down. . . . The suction pulled me under, and I was out cold when I came back up, but a cook pulled me aboard a raft. He died the night before they picked us up, from drinking salt water. Every time a wave would hit the raft, some more men would be missing.

"Our water got salt in it. Besides the cook there was a kid from Texas--he was only 18--who died from salt water. They would foam at the mouth, a kind of cream-colored foam, and their tongues would curl, and swell up in their mouths and their lips turn inside out. A gunner's mate died from injuries. Four others died of thirst: they just went out of their heads--they didn't drink salt water."

Double Jeopardy. Sharks played around most of the rafts constantly, yet three men who had no raft, and were kept afloat only by life jackets, never saw a shark. These three, from the Spence, found themselves drifting separately and tied themselves together around a life ring. All had suffered strange hallucinations: the sight of land, a Jap girl bringing water, rescue by a Russian submarine, relieving the gun watch.

Nicholas Nagurney, a fireman, of the Hull, aboard another raft, had the strangest delusions and a unique experience. "Glenn Wilkerson told me to see how deep the water was. Then a shark bit me. I don't remember feeling it when he bit me, but he was about eight feet long."

The shark had bitten a thin slab off the top of the right forearm. On the under side were teeth marks, half an inch deep. Back on the raft, Nagurney had his arm bandaged, but he was not finished. A lieutenant (j.g.) had become delirious and had taken a swag of sea water. Nagurney pounced on him, rammed his finger down the officer's throat to make him vomit. The lieutenant bit Nagurney's finger. Nagurney's summation: "I guess I'm the only guy that's ever been bit by a shark and an officer the same day."

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