Death for the Magpie

Before she became a minesweeper, the U.S.S. Magpie worked in the California fishing fleet as a dragger or purse seiner, and she was known as the City of San Pedro. In 1936 the Navy bought her and 20 sister boats, gave them each a 3-in. gun, gear to catch something more deadly than tuna, and names from the birds, such as Bunting, Crossbill, Crow, Puffin and Heath Hen. They all had wooden hulls, so thin that a dummy torpedo dropped in practice from a plane once sank one. Still, the Magpie and her sisters, not without casualties, served in World War II, sweeping up enemy mines off Palau, Okinawa, the Philippines and Normandy.

Last week, while clearing the waters off the east Korean shore, the Magpie's wooden hull bumped a floating mine. The explosion sent her to the bottom, with 21 of her crew, including her commander Lieut, (j.g.) Warren Roy Person; only twelve survivors were picked up.

The Magpie was the third U.S. warship hit by floating mines off Korea. The destroyers Brush and Mansfield had suffered eleven dead, three missing, 17 wounded, but managed to limp back to port. In Washington, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Forrest P. Sherman said the mines were Russian-made, "only recently from the warehouse," probably set adrift in Korean rivers. More than 65 have been swept up so far. They are illegal under The Hague Convention of 1907, which forbids unmoored mines. Russia, however, had never signed the convention.

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