His Eye is on the Sparrow

by Alec Newell

 

Mayport Presbyterian Church, photo by Newell



Not long after moving to Mayport, I began to notice that if I'd look out the kitchen windows just about sunrise or sunset, there would often be a covey of quail under my grape arbor.  I had mentioned this to an old fisherman in the neighborhood named Stoddard Andreu who, in turn, told me about his recipe for quail purlieu, which had been something of a Mayport legacy from a time when villagers often ate quail, dove, pigeons, and even winter robins, when hard times warranted it. "You get me a mess o' quail Capt'n," Stoddard offered, "an' I'll show you how to make purlieu."

The grape arbor photo by Newell

About that same time, a teenaged Eddie Thompson stopped by the yard and allowed that he not only knew about the quail, but had a wire mesh quail trap that I could borrow if I wanted to use it.  The bargain was struck.  We'd set the trap under the grape arbor, bait it with chicken scratch feed, and if we trapped a mess of quail, we'd contact Stoddard for further instruction.  That was on a Saturday evening, and I had planned to attend services at Presbyterian Church, across the street from my house, the next morning.

I slept late the next morning, but when I got up, noticed that there was a trap full of frantic quail under my grape arbor.  I was ecstatic!  I'd soon be tasting quail purlieu, but in the mean time, I had just enough time to get dressed and make it to church.  The birds would just have to wait until the service was over.

By the time I'd crossed the street, I noticed Miss Blanche Williams, one of the grand dames of the church, regarding the grape arbor with a disapproving scowl, "Mr. Newell, I see you've got some quail trapped over there in your yard.  Are those your quail?"

"Well, good morning Miss Blanche, yes I do.  Aren't they beautiful?"

"Yes they are, Mr. Newell, but are those your quail?"

"Well yes, since those quail are in my trap, I expect that they are my quail."

"I don't think so, those look like Mr. Coopers quail to me."

"Mr. Cooper's quail?"

"Yes, he whistles for them every evening.  He calls them up into his back yard where he feeds them.  I think those are Mr. Cooper's quail in your trap, and he will be very upset if they go missing.  And just what are you planning to do with Mr. Cooper's quail?"

"Well I, ah, my brother-in-law, well, he has these bird dogs he takes hunting, retrievers, and I thought that he might like to borrow these quail for training his dogs, and that we, ah he, could maybe just let them go whenever he, ah we, were done with them."

Miss Blanch never uttered another syllable.  She just turned on her heel and huffed up the steps, and into the church to occupy her usual pew at the far eastern side of the building.

I gave it a few seconds, then eased on into the church to take a seat behind hers on the far west side of the building.  I slunk down in the pew then looked up to the hymn board on the wall behind the alter. The very first hymn on the list for the day's service was number 624.  I opened the hymnal to the corresponding page and there it was, hymn number 624, "His Eye is on the Sparrow," (...and I know He's watching me).

It was probably at that very second, that a great miracle began to take shape right there in the Mayport Presbyterian Church;  for sure as Pharaoh freed Moses and the Israelites from their bondage, within mere minutes of the benediction, those birds were free and on their way, because in Mayport, just as in Ole Egypt, that could only have been accomplished by the hand of Divine Providence.  Ask anyone.

USS Saratoga

Of Gamecocks and Aircraft Carriers:

The USS Saratoga 20 Years Ago

by Alec Newell

USS Saratoga (CV 60)

 

The Decommissioning Ceremony for the USS Saratoga was held on August 20, 1994.  The following article was written earlier that same year.

This week the USS Saratoga will steam into Mayport from her final deployment and be decommissioned later this year.  It will be the end of a career that has spanned the administrations of nine U. S. Presidents, and five decades of distinguished military service.  It will also mark the end if a long affiliation that I have had with the ship since before moving to Mayport Village in 1976.

My house lies directly west of "B" Pier on the Naval Station, in a direct line with the old St. Johns Lighthouse.  From my yard I can throw a stone and hit the abandoned St. Johns Lighthouse or read the hull numbers on the ships in the basin.  From the signal bridge of the Saratoga, you can look through the stationary binoculars called 'big eyes" and see the chickens in my yard flying up to the roost poles in their fly pens; and every evening at sundown, the chickens can hear taps being played as the ships lower their flags during "colors."
 

 USS Saratoga commemorative decommissioning ball cap

When a carrier comes in after a long deployment, it is very much like the circus coming to town: balloons, banners, and streamers.  Tugboats toot, bands play, wives, children, and sweethearts, all wave and throw kisses to the sailors that line the flight deck in their dress uniforms.  The mooring lines go over, the brows go up, and for the next two hours it seems that every taxi cab and car in Duval County is pouring out of the Navy base, choking the Mayport Road with traffic.



USS Saratoga's Homecoming after Operation Desert Storm in 1991

 

Days before her arrival, the Mayport Road is festooned with billboard messages, more banners, placards, yellow ribbons and hand- made signs welcoming home crew members of the carrier and the ships from her carrier group entourage.  Television cameras are always on hand to record young sailors embracing parents, kissing wives, or holding infants that were born while they were away at sea.  What the narrow focus of the camera cannot convey is the enormous economic bonanza that impacts a community when a floating city of 5,000 people or more, flush with cash and high spirits, is dumped into a middle sized suburban community of bars, motels, restaurants, and movie theaters.  Local merchants and fast food restaurants have been quietly beefing up their product inventories and personnel schedules for days, to accommodate the financial windfall that a carrier homecoming brings.

Within hours local shipyards are busy setting up work compounds in hangar bays of the ship and a frenzied work pace begins, often 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to meet the stringent demands of rigid deployment schedules.  The temporary shipyard compounds  resemble a miniature industrial complex of office trailers, modular shops, tool rooms, time clocks, water coolers, fax machines, phone lines, and electrical networks that are completely independent of the ship's own power and communication systems.



When you spend hundreds, or even thousands of hours working on a ship over the course of years, that ship begins to take on an almost flesh and blood quality of its own.  Some you like better than others.  Often two ships of the same class, like identical twins, can have radically different personalities.  The steel itself seems to magically hold, or give at critical moments on one ship, while you can expect sheared bolts and cracked welds from the twin.  The Saratoga, though stressed with metal fatigue from age, and cluttered with wire-ways for communications and weapon systems that she was not designed to accommodate, she has always had a good work ethic, and has always shown the game heart of a game cock which has always been her mascot.

 



When she limped back into port after Operation Desert Storm, you could feel the exhaustion and the pride.  The non-skid on her flight deck was worn bare for the length of two football fields, and was red with rust.  Only two of her four original catapults were fully operational, and with several of her boilers shot, her propulsion systems had been taxed to the limit.  In an eight month, history making, extended deployment, she had launched 2,626 long distance combat sorties, and had delivered 4.3 million pounds of ordinance in her mission to liberate Kuwait.  The only air to air "kill" of a Mig jet by a U.S. Navy pilot was in a FA-18, launched from the Saratoga.

I am not an overly sentimental person, but I will probably miss the bustle and activity in the hangar bays, with the noise and exhaust from the forklifts and high-reaches, or the aggravation of countless fire and security drills.  I will miss seeing the insigniae of flight squadrons above the divisional doors and the hand painted mural of a gray gamecock that crows defiantly in Hangar Bay One.  I will think about the heavy, chrome plated gamecocks that top the ceremonial rope stanchions on the forward quarterdeck, and I will wonder what has become of them.

 

Mayport Festival History

by Alec Newell

 

Mayport Village has been hosting outdoor entertainments since the first Mayport and All that Jazz Festival in 1980.   The Jazz Festival of 1981 was easily the largest festival the neighborhood ever participated in.  It was a one-day free concert that featured Dizzy Gillespie, Della Reese, Urbie Green, Art Blakey, and others, who performed on an outdoor stage near the ferry slip.  With an estimated 40,000 celebrants on hand that day, the one-day event had an enormous impact on the Mayport economy.  Singleton's Restaurant reckoned its canned beer sales for that day alone, not in six-packs or cases, but in pallets. 

 

Dizzie Gillespie and his signature horn

If memory serves, there was an aerial photograph in the Sunday paper, showing cars backed up from the Navy's back gate (Gate 5) past the Little Jetties, to the Sherman Creek Bridge on A-1-A.  Friends of mine, anticipating the large crowds, had decided that my house would be a good place to spent the night, and some pitched tents.  We dug an outdoor barbeque pit and roasted two whole 30 pound kingfish and a couple bags of oysters that Saturday.  We could look down Broad Street, and see the stage.  The free nonstop music lasted for 13 hours, and was compared to Woodstock by a Times-Union staff writer.  I don't know how long my party lasted, but I do remember stepping over several prone houseguests the next morning.  The event was so successful that it was transferred to Metropolitan Park the following year to better accommodate the large turnout.

Later that decade, Sandra Tuttle, Mayport's  Mother Teresa, organized several "reunions," that were planned to coincide with the traditional homecoming of the shrimp fleet in October.  They were held at the boat ramp near the old dock master's house. Younger members of the old village families returned to share old photos, rehear old stories, and catch up on family news over traditional Minorcan dishes and local seafood.

In the mid 1990's a Mayport - Ft. George Island, "New Ferry Seafood Festival" was organized to celebrate having the Jean Ribault  put into service.  The ship had been built by the new construction division of Atlantic Marine on Ft. George Island.  The festival locations straddled both sides of the St. Johns River, with the newly built Jean Ribault providing free transportation back and forth between the two locations.  When funding for the ferry became a political hot potato, several more festivals were organized to "save" the ferry.

In 2012 a French Commemorative Festival was organized to celebrate the 450th anniversary of Jean Ribault's historic landing in Mayport.  Two wooden replicas of 16th Century French sailing vessels and the French Ambassador were on hand to represent the government of France;  and Gaetan Ribault, a direct line descendant of the French Explorer, travelled from France to represent the Ribault Family.

About 15 years ago, a small festival and parade was organized as a fund-raiser for the Mayport Village Civic Association.  According to local tradition, Beanie Andreu, because of his starring role in Mule Skinner Blues, had been tapped to be the Grand Marshall of the parade that year.  Beanie, a retired merchant marine, shrimper, and aspiring celebrity, had been more than happy to oblige.  But Beanie's recent fame had not been without its pitfalls.  After years of sobriety, Beanie had a major slip from the water wagon and woke up the morning of the parade as the guest of the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office lock-up.  Beanie managed to make a last minute arrival in time for the parade in the back of a squad car, chauffeured by two of Jacksonville's finest, with the blue lights flashing.

Missile Mail

The Mayport Experiment: Guided Missiles for Mail delivery?
by
Alec Newell 

 

  

USS Barbero, firing a guided missile at Mayport

I recently stumbled across a little known chapter in local Beaches history when someone forwarded me an e-Bay ad for a postal envelope with a special cancellation mark commemorating the use of a guided missile to deliver mail to Naval Station Mayport.  In the 1959 Cold War era of the Eisenhower Administration, you could buy Air Mail stamps that, for a few extra cents, would guarantee your letter would travel "Via Air" and shave a day or two off its standard delivery time.  But using guided missiles from U.S. warships to deliver mail?  It sounds more like science fiction ripped from the pages of a Buck Rogers comic book than a serious concept in mail delivery.



Ike receiving Missile Mail from the USPS

Among stamp collectors there is a sub group group of who specialize in "covers."  They collect whole envelopes because the dated postmarks on them can often be more valuable than the stamp itself.  In November of 2010, the postal cover and letter pictured  below were offered for sale on e-Bay, with a minimum starting bid of US $2000.





The U.S. Postal Service's first, and only, experiment with "Missile Mail" occurred June 8, 1959, off the Atlantic Coast of North Florida, near Naval Station Mayport.  A special payload of V.I.P. mail, intended mostly for government officials, was loaded aboard a Regulus I missile and put to sea aboard the USS Barbero (SSG-317).  The Barbero was a refitted submarine that had seen combat service during World War II.  The missile was launched at sea, and recovered at what was then called the Mayport Naval Auxiliary Air Station. The mail was then driven to the Post Office in Jacksonville, for sorting and routing.  The official first class postage rate then, was 4 cents for domestic, and 8 cents for foreign deliveries.

Post card offered on e-Bay Feb. 2014, for minimum bid US $18.99

 



back side of the post card, note illustration (left)



 





Guided missile with postal payload at Mayport

The 3000 letters had received their historic postmarks before being loaded aboard the Barbero.  The missile was launched from international waters approximately 100 miles off shore, manually guided by the crew from on board the submarine, and followed by a couple of chase planes to the landing strip at Mayport.  It was met by an entourage of military and civilian dignitaries.  Among them was Postmaster General Allen E. Summerfield, who was on hand to personally remove the mail boxes from a compartment originally designed to carry a nuclear warhead.



U.S. Postmaster General Allen E. Summerfield, unloading Missile Mail

The letters were sent out to Heads of State, and Postmasters General all over the world, to generate a Cold War buzz about our ability to launch nuclear capable missiles from submarines, anywhere on the planet.  The letter addressed to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institute remains in the National Postal Museum's collections.  The rest have become valuable prizes for collectors.




Pete's Bar

by Alec Newell 



Pete's package store and cocktail lounge, 1948
 

There are just a handful of landmarks that still remain unchanged since I've lived at the Beach: the St. John's Lighthouse in Mayport, the Casa Marina Hotel in Jacksonville Beach, the American Red Cross Lifesaving Station at the foot of Beach Boulevard and Oceanfront, and of course, everyone's favorite, Pete's Bar at 117 First Street in Neptune Beach.  The liquor license issued to Pete's Bar in 1933 was number one, making Pete's the first legally sanctioned bar and package store to operate in Duval County since the 1920 prohibition laws were imposed by the Volstead Act.  In April of 2013, it was rated as one of the top 10 bars in the state of Florida, by UK's The Guardian; but the writer couldn't resist adding, "It's a dive with a lot of history."  Pete's still looks like the kind of bar that could double as a film location for a 1930's era movie set in Key West.  Nothing there ever changes.



Photo by Newell, 2/2014

It would be impossible to calculate how many Beach couples got either married, or divorced, as the result of a conversation that began with a wink or a smile, over drinks at Pete's.  Everyone at the Beach, it seems, has stories about the place, not all of them are suitable for prime time publication.  This is mine.



Photo by Newell, 2/2014

In the summer of 1966, I was 17 years old, had just graduated from Fletcher High School, and had a summer job as a laborer at the construction site of Place-by-the-Sea, on the old Atlantic Beach Hotel Reservation.  William Morgan was the project's architect, and a young Preston Haskell was the general contractor.  I think I was being paid $1.50 an hour.   I could cash my pay check in Pete's Bar and treat myself to a couple of draft beers to kick-off of the weekend.  On the north side of the building, facing the parking lot of Walt's Neptune Tavern, there was a sign that advertised 15 and 25 cent draft beers, and 35 cent highballs, for well brands.  I believe those prices were still in effect well into the late 1970's.  Pool games are still a quarter.

 

 As former classmates went off to college, or got married and took jobs in other parts of the country, Christmas and Thanksgiving were the two times a year when you could often run into old chums, and catch up on current gossip over a game of pool and a couple of 25 cent draft beers.  Typically they would spend a few nights at home with their parents, then head down to Pete's for the next night or two before heading back to wherever they'd come from.  This may have been the unofficial beginning of what has become Pete's Bar Thanksgiving Bash.  Back then, Pete's was closed only two days a year, Christmas and Easter.
 

Vestiges of Pete's Bar as a package store photo by Newell



For many years Pete's, because of a strictly enforced segregation policy, was listed as an "off limits" bar to all military personnel.  There was also a strictly enforced policy of no open "to-go" drinks beyond the front door, but it was not unusual to see a uniformed Marshall Jimmy Jarboe stroll up the sidewalk and tap on the sliding glass "pass-through" window behind the bar.  There would be a muffled conversation at the window with Walt Windham the bartender.  A few minutes later, something in a plastic cup would be slid out the window.  No money ever exchanged hands.  Business inside the building continued uninterrupted, without so much as a raised eyebrow.  It's how things were.

Pool table room, former location of the Rite Spot Restaurant

With its own set of quirky traditions and taboos, there was an unassailable aura of institutional permanence about the place.  It was more like a club  than a bar.  What happened in Pete's, happened in Pete's.  The bartender's word was law.  To be barred from Pete's was usually understood to be for life, and regarded with the same gravity as being excommunicated.  There were tunes on the juke box that had been there since the late 40's or early 50's, and the place was variously referred to as Pete's, Pedro's, Pierre's-by-the-Sea, and Club Ped, by its initiates.

In 1973, when the drinking age in Florida was lowered from 21 to 18,  the Dairy Queen on Third Street was deserted by its regular clientele who moved to Pete's, and took over the Hut.  Pete's Bar and Pete's Hut were two separate Bars then, connected by a narrow passage-way that ran behind the Rite Spot Restaurant, (the room where the pool tables are now).  The youngsters preferred the Hut side, which came to be called "Pre-Pete's" or "a training bar" by the old guard.  The bartender in the Hut was named Marty.  Marty always announced "last call" with his nightly rendition of "Shenandoah"  from a trumpet that he kept behind the bar.  If you heard a trumpet blast before 1:45 a.m., it usually meant there was a fight on the other side, and Marty needed help.

Despite its low profile appearance, Pete's Bar has been the location of many celebrity sightings over the years: Ernest Hemmingway, John Grisham and J.D. Salinger, to name a few.  The Salinger sighting was supposed to have occurred when girlfriend Elaine Joyce was appearing in a production at the Alhambra Dinner Theater.

 Picture of Papa Hemingway (left of the American flag) taken in Pete's

During the 50th Pete's Bar Anniversary Celebration in 1983, I remember talking to a little old white-haired lady with a cane, who remembered coming out to the Beach on Sunday nights, as a young girl, to party at Pete's.  A Jacksonville news crew had set up lights and a camera, expecting to make a live broadcast from the bar for the eleven o'clock news that night.

At about 10:45, a newsman with a microphone and a tie began to address a well fortified crowd, asking them to quiet down so "the folks at home" could hear his broadcast.  His comments were like tossing gasoline onto a bonfire.  A wall of jeering and noise erupted from the celebrants; it continued for the next 30 minutes.  The more he pleaded, the louder they got. The broadcast was scrubbed.

 

Muscadine Wine

Muscadine Wine:  The Spirit of Mayport

by

Alec Newell

Muscadine grape vines have  been part of the Mayport landscape since well before Chief Satouriba's ancestors first hunted deer in the neighborhood.  They are first mentioned in the journal of the French explorer Jean Ribault.  He notes that they are "...the highest and fairest vynes in all the worlde with grapes accordingly, which naturally and without man's helpe and tryming, growe to the tops of oaks and other trees, that be of a wonderful greatness and height."

From1562 sketch by Le Moyne, with grape vines depicted (upper right corner)
 

Ribault landed in Mayport on May first 1562,  and since the local grapes aren't usually ready to pick until some time in early September, I had often wondered how Ribault knew that he was looking at wild grape vines.  But Ribault, being a Frenchman, would have been familiar with the wine producing vines of his native homeland,  and may have recognized them by the shape of their leaves which are mature enough to identify by mid spring.  To brag on the size or quality of fruit would have been a little stretch on his part though.

c. 1585 from sketch by Jacques Le Moyne 

At one time, almost every house in the Village had a muscadine grape arbor in the yard.  The fruit is still used for making grape preserves, but during prohibition the juice was routinely used  for home made wine.  If you talk to the old timers, there seems to have been as many recipes as there were grape vines.  A  glass or two of the genuine article seems to have an amazing ability to sharpen their recollections of the good old days, especially if it is being served with a side of smoked mullet or a hot bowl of gopher stew, seasoned up with a little datil pepper sauce.

Muscadine grape arbor, Mayport, Florida, 2013  photo by Newell

Wine from the local grapes can actually be quite good.  In April of 1979, the Florida Times Union-Journal sponsored a home-made wine making contest and the first place winner was a 1976 vintage bottle of Mayport Muscadine produced from scratch by one of the locals.  The paper sent a reporter and a photographer out to his house to get an interview and the recipe.  If memory serves, they probably should have sent along a designated driver too, but that's  another story.

Times Union-Journal article, April 21, 1979

The Recipe

Muscadine grapes

 

1)  Pick only the ripest grapes in late August or early September, use no culls.

2)  Let picked grapes stand 24 to 48 hours, then crush the skins.

3)  Using a hydrometer, determine the sugar content of the juice and add sugar until the hydrometer reads 12% potential alcohol or between 22%  and 24% sugar content on the Brix Balling Scale.  (If you do not have a hydrometer add about 21 oz. of sugar per gallon of juice and cross your fingers.)

4)  Add a package of wine yeast.  (If you use bakers' yeast your wine will smell and taste like bread.)

5)  Let the whole crushed grapes stand in a clean, covered, plastic garbage can from 7 to 10 days.  (The longer they stand the redder your wine will be.)

6)   Press the grapes and discard the stems, seeds, hulls, and skins.  Strain the juice through a funnel into a  sterile glass jug, affix a fermentation lock, bubbler or rubber balloon to the neck, and store it in a cool dark place.  (If you are not using a balloon,  hot paraffin can be used to seal the neck.)  Air space in the sealed jug should be kept to a minimum.

7)  To eliminate sediment,  the wine should be "racked" or siphoned into a clean jug at least once and allowed to settle again.  (Once in October, and again in February, if you can wait that long.)  Replace fermentation locks and reseal the necks after each racking.  When the wine is perfectly clear it's time to bottle.  Use sterile bottles and corks.  If you are a beer brewer, you can use your bottle capper with sterile beer bottles for smaller portions..  An additional hot paraffin seal helps to keep air from reentering your bottles and spoiling it.  Store your wine in a cool dark place.

*This recipe is tailored to the local muscadine grape which has about a 5% sugar content at harvest.

SS Gulf America

JW: Wreck Site of the SS Gulf America

by

Alec Newell

 

The wreck of the SS Gulf America, or what is left of it, lies beneath 65 feet of water 12 miles south and east of the Mayport Jetties.  The ship has been there since April 16, 1942, six days after it was first torpedoed by a German U-boat during the Second World War.  The ship's resting place is well known to the area's local off-shore fishermen.  It is marked "JW" on their charts, but many of the people who fish there don't know that "JW" is an abbreviation for "Jacksonville (Beach) Wreck," and even fewer of them know the history behind the name.

 

 On April 10th of 1942,  an estimated 75,000 to 85,000 combined Filipino and American soldiers had just surrendered to the Japanese on the Island of Luzon and were beginning a weeklong forced march to P.O.W. camps to their north.  That hellish ordeal  would come to be known as the "Bataan Death March."  On that same day, twelve time zones ahead, and half a world away from Bataan, it was 10:00 p.m. in Jacksonville Beach.  It had been four months since the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, but tourists and sailors were cruising the Beaches' Boardwalk and bars as if the country was still not at war.   If local Civil Defense officials had any black-out plans for North Florida's coastline, those plans had not been implemented.  It was a beautiful moonlit Friday night with only a light westerly breeze stirring the air, and  Jacksonville Beach was just twenty minutes from having World War II explode at its own front door.

 



Jacksonville Beach Boardwalk circa 1942

That same night, Oscar Anderson, Master of the Gulf Oil Corporation's newest  8,081 ton tanker SS Gulf America had just decided to abandon the classic zigzag maneuvering normally used by merchant vessels to thwart torpedo attacks from enemy submarines during war times.   The ship was making her maiden voyage from Port Arthur, Texas to New York laden with 101,500 barrels of furnace oil.  She was traveling unescorted along Florida's Atlantic Coast making about 12 knots.  What Captain Anderson did not know, was that since passing St. Augustine, he had been followed by German U-Boat 123 which had been patrolling Florida's East Coast, looking for prey.

 

German Submarine of the same class as U 123



 

At 10:10 p.m., 28 year old U-boat commander Reinhart Hardegen ordered his submarine brought up to periscope depth and turned a-port to face west.  As he looked through the eyepiece of his periscope Hardegen could scarcely believe his own good luck.  Both ships were less than five miles from shore and the Jacksonville Beach Boardwalk was lit up like a Christmas tree.  He could see the headlights of cars driving along the beach,  lights from the roller coaster, the Jacksonville Beach Pier, and neon-lit bar signs. The SS Gulf America was passing between him and the brightly lit coastline, offering a perfectly silhouetted target steaming north in an absolutely straight line.  At 10:20 p.m., Hardegan gave the order to fire a torpedo.

Reinhart Hardegan Capt. U 123
 

Meanwhile,  ten-year old Jan Swanson (McCracken) was watching a movie inside the Beaches Theater at 3rd Ave N. and First Street when the impact from an explosion shook the building.  She and her friends ran out of the theater, crossed First Street, and raced to the boardwalk to investigate the commotion.  All of the usual activity on the Boardwalk had stopped.  Everyone's attention was focused seaward.  The SS Gulf America had taken a torpedo hit to the starboard side and was hemorrhaging tons of bunker-C oil and diesel fuel into the Atlantic Ocean.  Moments later,  the submarine surfaced, circled around between the mortally wounded tanker and the beach, and began shelling the tanker with her deck guns.  The tracer rounds were clearly visible to the people on the boardwalk. 

Gunner's Mate Robert E. Lee Watson was sleeping in the aft cabin on the starboard side of SS Gulf America when the torpedo struck.   His wallet with $100.00 in cash and his  U.S. Navy dog tags were in a top dresser drawer against the aft bulkhead.   Watson was part of a seven man U.S. Navy gun crew assigned to compliment the tanker's regular 41 Merchant Marines.  Lee Watson's job was to operate the ship's deck guns if the tanker ever came under attack.  By the time Watson had reached the weather decks any thoughts about his wallet, deck guns, or even a life boat, evaporated in the heat of oil flames.  He went over the side and for next six hours he endured fear, fatigue, petrochemical burns, and hypothermia, before being rescued by a commandeered yacht.

As crewmen from the tanker began to lower lifeboats and jump into the oil soaked Atlantic, a ball of fire erupted engulfing the tanker in flames, and setting the Atlantic Ocean around it ablaze.  Now the submarine's low profile was silhouetted in the glow of the burning tanker and the westerly breeze was the only thing keeping the flames from singeing the submarine's gun crew.

Lifeguard Corpsman Townsend Hawkes was on the boardwalk about 100 yards from the American Red Cross Volunteer Lifesaving Station at the foot of Beach Blvd. when a fireball erupted, lighting up the Eastern sky.  The Lifesaving Corps kept two planked wooden lifeboats at the station and the lifeguards drilled frequently on launch and recovery procedures for beach rescues.  The boats were usually crewed by four oarsmen and a coxswain, to give boat commands and steer the craft.  Hawkes sprinted to the Lifesaving Station and with the help of another volunteer, the two young men pushed through the surf and began to pull off toward the glowing  horizon.

Jacksonville Beach Lifesaving Station circa 1942 with rescue boats on the beach

Carpenter's Mate Howard Grisham, a Reserve sailor attached to Mayport Naval Station was on liberty that night having a drink in a Jacksonville Beach bar when the torpedo exploded.  The bar emptied immediately and like everyone else, Howard rushed to the boardwalk to take in the spectacle.  When he saw what was happening he knew immediately that all liberty would be cancelled.  He ran back into the empty bar, poured himself another drink, wrote out an I.O.U. to the bartender, then rushed back to Mayport to report for duty.

Naval Station Mayport seemed to be no better prepared for war than the civilian population at the Beach had been.  Mayport's war fleet consisted of a few fishing boats and private yachts that had been "refitted" to wartime service by Reserve Carpenter's Mate Grisham himself.  He had mounted wooden guns to their decks to create the illusion of martial readiness.  In at least one instance, a real machine gun had been mounted to the deck of a shrimp boat, but when the machine gun was fired, the recoil had pulled up the deck planks to which the gun had been bolted.  The base "armory" was nothing more than a glorified gun locker whose total collection of small arms could be carried away by one sailor.

SS Gulf America after being torpedoed by German Submarine U 123

When Carpenter's Mate Grisham checked in with the OOD (duty officer) at the Navy base, he was immediately attached to the crew of a modified civilian Chris Craft that was sent out to look for the submarine and rescue any survivors they might encounter.  When they reached the SS Gulf America, the hulk was still burning but U-boat 123 had long since departed.  After being at sea for more than seven hours, Grisham's crew had managed to find only one corpse, no survivors, and no submarine.  The ill prepared rescue team was suffering from exposure, cramping, and fatigue

As other boats scoured the area some survivors were recovered, but for many, rescue efforts had come too late.  Townsend Hawkes and his fellow oarsman had been blown 20 miles out to sea, past the wreck.  Instead of rescuing survivors, they were lucky to be rescued themselves, by a Coast Guard vessel.  For all their well-intentioned heroic efforts, the only citation they received was a stern reprimand from the Coast Guard.  Ironically, Townsend Hawkes joined the Coast Guard shortly after the incident, and spent his wartime enlistment rendering similar service to others.

As the patrol boats trickled back to Mayport some members of the rescue crews as well as the tankermen were in need of medical treatment.  Carpenter's Mate Howard Grisham was returned to a makeshift infirmary suffering from severe leg cramps.  He and everyone else who required emergency medical assistance received treatment from the closest thing Mayport had to a doctor, Pharmacist's Mate Frank Grisham, Howard Grisham's older brother.

 

Ed Smith, who for decades owned and operated Ed Smith's Lumber and Hardware store across the street from Pete's Bar in Neptune Beach, wrote THEM GOOD OLD DAYS at the Beaches and Mayport, 1974.  In it, Ed relates his own story of being awakened by an explosion and counting about 17 tracer rounds being fired into the tanker by the German sub that night, then tells of the heroic rescue and recovery efforts launched by the Navy, Coast Guard, and volunteer lifeguard Townsend Hawkes.  Coincidently, the Grisham brothers were also acquainted with Hawkes, who opened a real estate brokerage at the Beach shortly after the war ended.  Since 1985 the Jacksonville Beach Lifesaving Corps has sponsored  the Townsend Hawkes Annual (two mile) Swim, named in his honor.

Michael Gannon Ph.D., Professor Emeritus at the University of Florida, published his best selling novel Operation Drumbeat in 1990.  In it Professor Gannon explains the German submarine operation from a geopolitical perspective.  Captain Reinhart Hardegen was brought back from Germany to accompany Dr. Gannon on a promotional book signing tour.  On July 18, 1990, there was a "reunion" between Capt. Hardegen and former Gunner's Mate Robert E. Lee Watson, who had been aboard the SS Gulf America, the night she had been torpedoed.  That meeting, with pictures and other important first-hand historical information, is detailed in Charlie Hamaker's book, Cane Pole Wisdom Volume I, 2008.

Of the 48 men aboard the SS Gulf America that night, 19 of them perished in the incident.  In addition to rescue and recovery efforts for personnel, boat crews from Mayport managed to salvage a deck gun from the forward end of the tanker just before it sunk.  Florida's  Governor, Spessard Holland ordered the state's coastline darkened, but bunker-C oil, floating debris, and dead bodies continued to wash ashore for days.  World War II had come to the Beach.

Mrs. McCracken's 1962-1963 Fletcher Yearbook Picture

Twenty years after the event, Jan Swanson McCracken, a history teacher at Fletcher Junior-Senior High School, would recall her memories of that night for the students in one of her 9th grade U.S. History classes.  A Fletcher graduate herself and a lifelong Beaches resident, she worked for more than 40 years for the Duval County School Board before ending her career as the Vice Principal of Mayport Middle School.  

If you are lucky enough to own an autographed copy of any of these books, or better yet, if you have an autographed copy that has also been signed by "Reinhart Hardegen Capt. U 123," you have a bona fide piece of Beaches' History in your hands.  Hang on to it.