ARCO tanker sunk Mar 13,1942 builder Sun Ship Chester, Pa hull #236 33.52.350N x 77.29.010W sunk by U-159 submarine 11641 tons 142,000 barrels of oil 528'x70'x39' 49 crew 23 died

Tanker

Underwater pictures and diagram of wreckage

JOHN D. GILL

*** John D.Gill    95FSW The Gill was a massive oil-tanker, in fact, she was the largest ship sunk by German Submarines off of the Carolina coast.   Built in 1941, she was 528 feet long, and 70 feet wide. She was northbound for Philadelphia, PA with a load of fuel oil from Texas on March 12, 1942 (the Gill's second voyage ever).  As she rounded Frying Pan Shoals, the U-158 slammed a torpedo into her amidships on the starboard side.  Oil spilled out of the ship and water spilled in.  One of the crew members, in his attempt to escape the sinking hulk,  threw a life ring (with a self-igniting carbide light) overboard, and this apparently ignited the escaping fuel oil.  The ocean was then ablaze with the fuel oil, and the Gill was sinking.  23 men died in the subsequent blaze and sinking.  The fire was reportedly visible from Wrightsville Beach (approx. 25 miles away).   The fire also spelled the end for the self-igniting carbide lights. Great heroism was found on the sea that night, and even drew the attention of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who awarded one of the crew members from the John D. Gill with a merchant marine award. The fact that the German subs were ripping us to pieces in waters so close to land was a national embarrassment. We were ill prepared in 1942 to deal with the U-Boat threat, and the fact that the Germans sank so many ships early in 1942 has seemed to elude many history books. Divers that visit the Gill, should be honored to know and understand her history. You can feel and see the desperation and heroics that took place on her decks as you swim over her. I feel this sensation particularly on the bow section, where lifeboat davits still are deployed over the side, and the twisted, melted steel beams speak of the ferocity of the fire that engulfed her. 

      The Gill came to rest in approx. 90-100 ft. of water.  Her superstructure is gone (blasted by the CG because of the threat to navigation). The Gill is also lovingly known by her former bouy designation WR-4. The bouy is now gone, but the nickname remains. The Gill's keel plates remain together (the ship is in one contiguous piece), however, the midships portion is pretty much completely silted in. When you are diving in the midship portion,bulkeads run just under the sand perpindicular to the keel.  Both the bow and the stern are relatively intact, and if you back off from the wreck enough, you can generally picture where you are at. The first time I ever descended on the Gill (bow)1991, it looked like the empire state building laying on it's side at the bottom of the ocean, this wreck is enormous.  The last couple of years 1996-1999, have been particularly tough on the Gill .  Wilmington has been struck by several hurricanes(Bertha, Fran, Bonnie, Dennis, Emily, and Floyd).  Each time I go back to the Gill , something else is gone. In October 2002 I re-visited the bow of the John D. Gill for the first time in a long time. The bow has now completely collapsed outwards. The port anchor now lies partially buried in the sand on the port side of the bow. The starboard anchor is within the collapsed wreckage. The Windlass lies on the starboard side seafloor near the tip of the bow. There are several swimthroughs on the bow section, and there are still 2-3 places where one can penetrate the former oil holds....but you should be cautious, as the wreck is severely deteriorating. The once enormous wreck is fast becoming completely flattened. Massive deterioration has taken place in the last couple years. The sea life is still out there though! The wreck can be penetrated, especially the oil holds, however,once again, great caution should be used when penetrating the wreck in it's massively deteriorated state.  The visibility is generally incredible on the Gill .  Wildlife of all kinds flourish

25 miles off the Cape Fear coast. The torpedo from the German sub hit the tanker John D. Gill amidships, tearing the heavy metal plates of the hull like flower petals. A geyser of Texas crude erupted from the gash, forced out by pressure from the million gallons behind it. Within a minute, the slick had coated the sea. An instant later, the oil erupted in an inferno and 58 men began a desperate scramble for their lives. Only 26 of them made it, 52 years ago March 12. Eleven were brought into Southport to recuperate at Dosher Memorial Hospital. Of the 16 bodies also brought ashore, one, Catalino Tingzon, was buried in the town's Northwood Cemetery. At 11 a.m. March 12, the Southport Historical Society will dedicate a monument to Tingzon and all the men of the Gill. The gray granite stone will sit in Riverfront Park, overlooking the horizon where the tanker burned and sank.

On March 11, 1942, the Gill put into Charleston after planes spotted a submarine tailing it. At 12:45 p.m. the next day, having been given the all clear, it continued on its way to the Atlantic Refining Company's refinery in Philadelphia. About 10 that night, Herbert Gardner, 22, one of the wipers, was in the mess, having a cup of coffee and wondering aloud what he'd do if the Gill was torpedoed. At 10:10 p.m., he got his answer. "When it hit, it was like it picked the chair up and moved it out from under me," Mr. Gardner said. "We knew what had happened."

Newspaper reports of the day said the men stayed at their post for more than 15 minutes after the rest of the crew had abandoned ship. "We really wanted to at least get one shot off," Mr. Potts said, "But the sub could have come 'up outside the fire and we wouldn't have seen it anyway. The fire was too bright." But they stayed, squinting through the heat and flames into the darkness, swinging the barrel of the big gun back and forth. Finally, with the flames inching closer, the surface of the ammunition box began to bubble. "When the paint started blistering on that-- ready box, Hutchins, our officer, said, 'Let's get the hell out of here,' "Mr. Ready said. Their life raft in flames, the men jumped over the railing. "We jumped right into the fire," Mr. Ready said. "We didn't have any choice," Mr. Potts didn't jump; he dove. "I used to dive off railroad bridges . . . and I wasn't thinking about the Navy telling me to jump feet first. I said the heck with the Navy and did what I thought best." Had he jumped, he would have broken both legs on the hull of the capsized No. 4 lifeboat, which was tethered to the stern of the tanker below him. As it was, his toes clipped the lifeboat gunwales as he dove past. Mr. Gardner had rushed to that same lifeboat, minutes earlier. But as he and several others tried to lower it, the boat suddenly dropped away beneath them, spilling two men into the water. Mr. Gardner and another crewman managed to grab a line and were left dangling. Below them, the ship's massive screws were still churning. Mr. Gardner watched as the two men dumped from the lifeboat were pulled into the blades. Desperately, he and the other man tried to get a better grip on the line and each other. But the other man was too weak to climb any further and Mr. Gardner couldn't hold him. Suddenly, he was alone, tethered to the hull of the burning ship. "That's bothered me all my life," he said. When the screws stopped, he dropped into the water, next to the capsized lifeboat. One of the Filipino mess boys -- Mr. Gardner thinks it was Tingzon -- was sitting in the half-sunk lifeboat, soaked and frightened. "He was scared so bad, he didn't know what to do," Mr. Gardner said. "I remember him saying, 'No. No. no.' ' Unable to help Tingzon and fearing for his own life, Mr. Gardner started to swim. Even wearing a cork life preserver, he managed to dive beneath the flames. "When you're scared, you can do anything," he said. There was no way to tell where the sea was on fire and where it wasn't. "Every time I'd come up, I'd come up on fire," he said. "My head and my hands would be on fire." Finally, he came up clear of the oil and swam away from the ship. Mr. Potts had also gotten clear of the oil, amazingly, without getting burned. Beyond them in the dark, men were climbing aboard a lone life raft. When the ship was hit, Edwin F. Cheney Jr., the ship's 24-year-old quartermaster, had managed to drop the raft at the edge of the burning oil and push it beyond the fire by swimming under water. Once clear of the ship, he started calling to survivors and hauling aboard those too weak to make it. "He helped us get aboard and he was pretty badly burned himself," Mr. Ready said. "His ears and his arms were burned." Most of the men had third-degree burns on their heads and arms. Mr. Garnder would later vomit for nearly two hours because his stomach was so full of seawater and oil. During the night, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Potts pulled the Filipino cook, Benny, from the water. "He was burned so bad he was freezing to death," Mr. Potts said. So he gave the cook his life preserver, an act that would cost him dearly later. The men quickly realized the heat from the fire was drawing them back toward the tanker, where they'd burn to death or get sucked down with the ship. Just as quickly, they discovered the oars were useless; there were no oarlocks. So, bent double, their hands gripping the boards at the bottom of the raft, the men took turns being human oarlocks. It worked. Slowly, the raft pulled free of the heat. Even though he'd had a life preserver as a buffer, Cheney's abdomen was black where the oars had pressed against him. Mr. Potts, who'd given up his life preserver, was injured internally. For the rest of the night, the men clung to the raft, watching their ship die by inches. The fire was so bright, the smoke so thick, people watched it from shore the next day. "It kept burning and burning and blowing up and blowing up... until it finally just literally blew itself to pieces," Mr. Ready said. They watched the ammunition explode, including a round left in the gun that had been intended for the Germans. At 7:05 a.m., the survivors were picked up by a Coast Guard cutter from the Southport Station, USCGC-186. At 9 a.m., theJohn D. Gill sank. The survivors came ashore in Southport, a small fishing village where the most exciting thing to date had been when two convicts kidnapped a young couple and tried to escape through the Green Swamp in 1937. Josephine Hickman, 80, was a volunteer Red Cross nurse at Dosher Memorial Hospital when the survivors were brought in. "We didn't think even half of them hardly could live," she said. "They were so burned, almost to a crisp, and covered with oil. Some of them were burned so bad that... the bandages were all over their heads. Only their mouths were open. You just fed them in between the bandages." The hospital staff worked 20 hours straight tending to the men. There were only five trained nurses. The rest, like Mrs. Hickman, were Red Cross volunteers. "We'd barely gotten our training when this tanker was torpedoed offshore and here we were faced with this terrible tragedy," she said. "But we managed to save every one of them." As the 11 survivors were being treated, the USCGC Agassiz and USCGC-4342 brought in 16 bodies. Joseph S. Laughlin, who was 15 and whose father was manager of the hospital, helped carry the dead. "They were burned so bad their flesh would come off in your hands," he said. Among the dead was Tingzon, the young mess boy Mr. Gardner bad last seen sitting in the capsized lifeboat. When efforts to find Mr. Tingzon's family in the Phillipines failed, the people of Southport buried him in Northwood cemetery. According to the Morning Star April 12, 1942, the grave was covered with flowers. In addition to the 11 who escaped with Mr. Cheney, 15 others escaped in a lifeboat and survived the sinking, including Capt. Allen D. Tucker. A few weeks after the sinking, President Franklin D. Roosevelt awarded Mr. Cheney the war's first Merchant Marine Distinguished Service Medal for his heroism. The submarine that sank the Gill, U-158, was sunk west of Bermuda on June 30, 1942. There were no survivors.

At 05.05 hours on 13 Mar, 1942, the unescorted John D. Gill (Master Allen D. Tucker) was torpedoed by U-158 about 25 miles east of Cape Fear, North Carolina. The vessel on her second voyage had stopped zigzagging for about 20 minutes off Frying Pan Shoals, flashed the running lights and then continued on a zigzag course at 15 knots. One torpedo struck on the starboard side amidships under the mainmast in the #7 tank. The tanker seemed to lift out of the water and move sideways, but the explosion did not ignite the cargo. The oil was ignited when a seaman tossed a life ring with a self-igniting carbide light overboard. The ship and sea was turned in a blazing inferno, forcing the eight officers and 34 crewmen to abandon ship within eight minutes, followed by the seven armed guards (the ship was armed with one 5in, two .50cal and two .30cal guns) seven minutes later. While lowering one of the after boats, the lines became fouled and the occupants were spilled into the sea. At least two of them were killed by the still turning prop. The survivors left the ship in only one of the four lifeboats and one of the six rafts. After abandonement, the tanker was rocked by a series of explosions as one tank after another ignited and exploded. The burned out vessel sank after nine hours.
Eight crew members and three armed guards were picked up by the US Coast Guard patrol boat #4405 , transferred to the US Coast Guard cutter USS Agassiz (WPG 126) and landed at Southport, North Carolina. 15 survivors in the lifeboat were picked up by the Robert H. Colley and taken to Charleston, South Carolina. Six officers, 13 crewmen and four armed guards were lost and many of the survivors were badly burned. 

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