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ClFelt Wind PressureWaves were seventy-five and1 eighty feet high, the Narrows Park £sfiilnr mint inuori Un cot/t -\i rW ra bt bisailor continued He said, We didn't find any other damage but we couldn't go on deck because the; wind was so strong”-—more than 110 miles on hour it would blow you; overboard Almost everybody was1 below decks ’Rosley said h« and four other sailors in the torpedo shack could feel pressure on their ears from the strong windAbout twelve minutes after the ti whale boat was tom loose by the waves, the Spence lost power altogether because the fuel was so low it could not be fed to the burners, Rosley recalled We couldn't even send an SOS.' he said.All the time the wind was getting worse and worse and three minutes after the ship lost power It was caught in the trough of the j r waves and about 11:30 a. m it roll-j^ lt;’d over on the port side, Rosley „ stated. Thirty seconds later It wentL, over the rest of the way ” -Trapped in Pit In those thirty seconds Rosley ,, and four other men got out of the L ; torpedo shack, and Rosley said he i _ climbed up on the catwalk to jumpj^ Into the ocean but was trapped In j „ d twenty millimeter gtm pit when!* the ship rolled over, decks down andj* keel on top, before he could leap \ ‘ Finally freeing himself from the L submerged pit, Rosley said he swam ■ to the surface, spotted the floater j.net, eight feet square, and swam;ten yards to reach it. He added jf that he was about the last of twen- a tv men to locate it and can’t quite' ’(figure yet how he did It since he !5 was wearing a uniform and rain * ; coat and had no life jacket ’ After he clambered on to the net c Rosley said the wind and waves | j. washed the net beck to the shipi^ and it kept bumping against the j j. i upturned hull of the vessel for about t five minutes before being washed away from the capsized Spence for ' gooda IVisibility was limited to about j j 100 yards, Rosley said, pointing outi f t hat he did not see the Spence go j _ i down after the net finally washed it t away from it, I' For the next six or eight hours, j. Rosley said, he and the other men J | on the net battled the storm until: it subsided during the night of the!'; eighteenthRolled I p Like C arpet „ ‘‘The wind and waves were so strong we had to hold our hands over our mouths to breathe he{! said Every time a wave broke j on the net it rolled it up like a lt;arpet and would shake us loose. |_ (dragging us deep below the surfacei of the water, and when we came | ; back up It was necessary for us ! to swim back to the netWe worried more about ourselves j than anybody else,” Rosley con -! tlnued, and he added that the number of men on the net kept decreasing as the waves shook them loose and they were unable to swim;! j backi By the time the storm subsided ||only nine out of the twenty men;; who originally clung to the net remained. Three of them were officers and the other six were enlisted men. but two officer* and one enlisted man perished on Icember 19 and dipped through holes tom in the ! netTha men had no food on the two days they were adrift but a gallon iv and a half of fresh water carried *1 in a keg lashed to the net was le rationed out by the senior officer j it We were very thirsty and it wasn't much,” Rosley said Lg : It was blazing hot in the daylight ji- and cold at. night and Rosley said t- he and the other men were badly sunburned He added that he lost »* twenty pounds In the two days but iv now has regained his normal weight j t- of 145 pounds, it, *lght Kmall C aerie rc The net floated until about 4am it on December 20 when the men i clinging to it sighted the silhouette sc of a small aircraft carrierWe ail started to holler, Rosley of said, ‘and the lookout on the car-! P (Continued on Pag* 9 Col. a)
Newspaper Details
Cumberland News
Cumberland, Maryland, US
Wed, Feb 28, 1945
Page 16
Full Page
Clipped by
Deborah S.
USA 12 Nov 2023
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