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.

 

Cora Crane: Beaches' Celebrity Madam

by

 Alec Newell

 

Cora and Steven Crane

 

Cora Crane is best known for her relationship to Steven Crane, the author of the Red Badge of Courage, The Open Boat, and Maggie, a Girl of the Streets; but Cora Crane's biography, when compared to Steven's, is by far the better story.  A list of her business, political, and social  connections is lurid, layered, and  endlessly complex.  It reads like a plotline from an E.L. Doctorow novel, and includes such Jacksonville notables as Duncan U. Fletcher, Napoleon Bonaparte Broward,  and J.E.T. Bowden, just to name a few.  It is remarkable then, that there are still so many people who have never even  heard of her.

 

Duncan U Fletcher                                       Napoleon Bonaparte Broward                                    J. E. T. Bowden

 



Born Cora Ethyl Eaton Howorth in 1865, to a prominent and cultured Boston family with connections to Henry Greenleaf Whittier,  she slipped her family bonds at an early age, and without a chaperone, she eagerly traded the corseted confines of her proper Boston upbringing for the reputation of a New York party girl.  Divorced at least once, she eloped to England with Sir Donald William Stewart,  where she reinvented herself as Lady Stewart.  In England,  Sir Donald was called away in service to the Queen, to quell a rebellion in Africa.  As an "Empire Widow" with idle time on her hands, Cora soon slipped back into her old ways and was subsequently disowned, but not divorced, by an embarrassed Capt. Stewart.

 

Cora

With her connection to polite Victorian Society in shambles, Cora hitched a ride back across the Atlantic as the companion/guest of one of the Astor's aboard his private yacht;  and whether she jumped ship or was dumped off, she arrived in Jacksonville flush with a mysteriously acquired supply of funding.  With it, she bought and refurbished a bordello in the La Villa District, near what is now the Prime Osborne Convention Center (the old train station).  J.J. Astor IV went on to perish with the Titanic, but Cora (now) Taylor's  Hotel de Dreme soon became the finest establishment of its kind in Jacksonville.  The business in turn, opened doors for her to a new social order where money and political influence ruled, but where her formerly acquired social polish didn't hurt either.





St. James Hotel

 

At the time of Cora's arrival, Jacksonville was a booming cosmopolitan town by every standard of the day.  It had a thriving seaport, it boasted a major railroad hub, and it offered easy inland access to Central Florida  as far south as Lake Sanford, via the St. John's River.  Jacksonville had also acquired a reputation as a major resort town for rich snowbirds seeking respite from cold winters, or by the infirm who sought a mild climate for whatever curative influence it might have on their illnesses.  Jacksonville also had lavish hotel  accommodations for those who were wealthy enough to afford them.  The largest, most luxurious hotel in town,  was the St. James Hotel which sat exactly where St. James (May Cohen's / City Hall) Building sits today.  The City's Mayor at the time was Duncan U. Fletcher, who would become a U.S. Senator, and the town Sheriff,  Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, would go on to become the Governor of Florida.  In a town where everyone seemed to be prospering,  Cora Taylor and her business were doing especially well.

 



The Broward House, Ft. George Island

 

The Spanish American War that was brewing in Cuba was also enriching Jacksonville's economy.  With a growing demand for arms and munitions by Cuban Revolutionaries, there was a lot of money to be made in arms smuggling or "Filibustering," which had already attracted the attention of Sheriff  Broward. The ancestral Broward Home with its widow's walk perched atop the second story  roof, still sits just off Heckscher  Drive,  near the entrance to the Kingsley Plantation,  on Ft. George Island.  On the other side of the road, fronting the St. John's River sat the ship yard of John Joseph Daly.  The shipyard is still there (Daly's/St. John's Boat Yard), just steps from the Old Broward Home. By the mid 1890's John Daly was ready to launch a tugboat that had been commissioned by the Sheriff and two other partners.  That tug would be christened the Three Friends, and by 1896, Sheriff Broward had left his law enforcement job to become an arms smuggler. 

                                             

N. B. Broward's Three Friends

 

In late November of 1896, when Steven Crane checked into the St. James Hotel under the assumed name of Samuel Carleton.   He was on assignment covering the Spanish American War as a correspondent for a Pulitzer New York Newspaper Syndicate, travelling incognito with $700.00 in Spanish gold for expense money in his money belt.  He had just turned 25 and was sitting on top of the world.  His much acclaimed Red Badge of Courage had just appeared in book form less than a year before, and while his ultimate destination was Cuba,  Crane was a "sporting man" riding high, and with a pocket full of money, he would find time enough to squeeze in a little R&R before the next leg of his journey.
 



Steven Crane circa 1896

 Cora Taylor had always considered herself to be a woman of highly refined taste, with a keen appreciation for fine literature and interesting men, especially if they had money.  Like two polarized magnets in the dark, the inevitable occurred, and within days they were an item. Sometime in December, Crane was cleared for passage to Cienfuegos Cuba as an "able seaman" aboard the Commodore  which was laden with 15 tons of ammunition and supplies destined for Cuban rebels.  The ship was scheduled to depart New Year's Eve of 1896; and with so little time left to them before Crane's ship sailed, the couple was busy burning their candle at both ends.

 

Commodore

Steven Crane's foray into filibustering was a fiasco from almost the moment the Commodore left its berth.  They ran aground twice before clearing the mouth of the river and the hull was probably badly damaged in the dislodging process.  The ill fated vessel began shipping water, and on the morning of Jan. 2, sank in the frigid waters off the Florida Coast near Daytona.  Crane and three crewmen took refuge in a 10 ft. dingy and endured a 30 hr. ordeal hoping to be rescued at sea.  They eventually decided to try to swim for shore.  Crane washed up on the beach more dead than alive, losing his money belt in the process.  Among the vessels dispatched to locate and rescue the Commodore's  survivors had been the Three Friends.   Cora was advised of the mishap by wire and chartered a special train to bring Steven back to Jacksonville where she could nurse him back to health.  The misadventure would become the basis for his short story, The Open Boat; and while Crane enjoyed Cora's ministrations at the Hotel de Dream, from this point on, his health would never be the same.

Crane landed another war correspondent's assignment, this time to cover the Greco-Turkish War.  Cora accompanied him abroad, functioning as a war correspondent in her own rite.   Cora was still technically married to Sir Donald Stewart,  so the couple was never really married, but at this point Cora begins to present herself as Cora Crane.  Following the war, the couple decamped to England where they rented Brede Place, a dilapidated 16th English Manor, and took up a bohemian lifestyle, hosting lavish entertainments for an entourage of friends and hangers on.  Among the most notable members of their inner circle are Joseph Conrad, H.G. Wells, Henry James, and Ford Maddox Ford.  Already wracked with poor health, partying may have been the final nail in Steven Crane's coffin.  In June of 1900 at the age of 28, he succumbs to Tuberculosis, and leaves his entire estate to Cora.

Brede Place, Sussex England

When Cora rolls back into town in 1903, much of Jacksonville is still in ruins from the Great Fire of 1901 which burned 146 city blocks, including the St. James Hotel.  In an ironic twist of good fortune for Cora, the old Ward (now Houston) Street Bordello District, which lay a few scant blocks from the fire's starting point, had "miraculously" escaped destruction.  Never one to allow good fortune to lie fallow, she secured funding, and began construction, at the S.W. Corner of Ward (Houston) and Davis Street, on what would become the Crown Jewell of La Villa's red light district. "The Court" was a two story red brick "palatial sporting house" with 17 bedrooms, parlors, a ball room, kitchens, dining rooms, souvenir picture booklets and postcards for vacationing guests.  It was the flagship of Cora's burgeoning empire which had grown to include a financial interest in several other bars, and brothels throughout the area.

Room # 17 at the Court 

On June 1, 1905 Cora married Hammond P. McNeill, the handsome nephew of Anna McNeill Whistler, (artist James Whistler's mother), the niece of Zephaniah Kingsley.  As a railroad conductor, he had been a regular customer at The Court, but Cora had also made him the manager of the Annex, one of her down town bars.  It was an uncharacteristic lapse in her otherwise impeccable business acumen.  Hammond was 25 years younger than Cora and an alcoholic with a jealous, violent temper.  In the past, Cora's romantic escapades had always played the handmaid to her personal ambition and financial considerations.  From this point on her fortunes would begin to slip.

In August of 1905 she extended her empire to the shores of Pablo Beach when she built a two story wood frame surfside "resort" near the corner of what is now 9th Ave North, and First Street in Jacksonville Beach.  It had wide screened porches and a relaxed atmosphere.  She called the place the Palmetto Lodge.  Two years into her acrimonious marriage, Cora's intemperate husband had taken an interest in one of the girls at Palmetto Lodge, and was at the same time, constantly accusing Cora of marital infidelities.

There was another brash young railroad man named Harry Parker who was also paying court to several of the girls at Palmetto Lodge, the most recent of which had been Mable Wright.  Hammond McNeill and Harry Parker did not get along and the two hotheads had exchanged threats on several occasions.  To make matters worse, the 19 yr. old Parker engaged in flirtatious behavior with Cora, who at 43,  was old enough to be Parker's mother.  In his most recent fit of rage Hammond McNeill had offered to kill both Parker and Cora if he ever saw them together again.  He had also just purchased a gun.

On the morning of May 31, 1907 a party of four set out from the Palmetto Lodge in a carriage, travelling north along the beach to Mayport, where the ladies had planned to have a picnic.  The party included Cora Crane and her personal maid Hattie Mason, Mable Wright who worked at Palmetto Lodge, and Owen Wingate their driver.  The party stopped off at the Continental Hotel* so that Cora and Mable could send a couple of wires.  Mable's wire was an invitation to meet Harry Parker in Mayport, Cora's wire to her husband, Hammond McNeill, was a taunt, "I HOPE YOUR TEARS WILL KEEP MY GRAVE WATERED."
 

 

*The Continental Hotel, built by Henry Flagler, was an elegant, sprawling yellow and white wood frame Victorian behemoth, located on the Ocean Front, between 8th and 10th St. in what is now Atlantic Beach.  It had a high volume artesian well, an electric generator, its own train depot, and a nine hole golf course.


When the party reached Mayport , they spent an hour and a half in the back room of Floyd's Saloon where the town marshal (Andrew Floyd?) and Cora Crane bought several rounds of drinks before setting out for the beach near East Mayport for their picnic.  Harry Parker met the party somewhere between Floyd's Saloon and the beach.  The party had just opened their picnic basket when McNeill rolled up shouting accusations and brandishing a pistol. He fired four times.  Parker hit the ground with the second shot.  About thirty minutes later he died with his head cradled in Cora McNeill's lap.

 

Floyd's Saloon, Mayport Florida

Less than two months later, another event occurred which must have seemed like the unmistakable hand of divine retribution, when lightning struck the Palmetto Lodge, causing substantial damage to the building and injuring two of the girls.  Hammond McNeill's father, who had never approved of his son's marriage, sent Cora and her maid packing off to England so they could not testify the trial.  Part of the bargain was that Cora would never again use the family name.  Every advantage that McNeill influence and money could muster, was brought to bear at the murder trial to get Hammond acquitted.  The prosecuting and defense attorneys were brothers, and the  defense case  was based on the unwritten code that a man had a God given right to defend his honor when a wife's infidelity was at issue.  Cora became a convenient scape goat in the court of public opinion and Hammond walked.  In one final twist of irony, Hammond McNeill was eventually shot to death in his Pablo Beach home by his second wife after he had threatened her with a pistol.

 

After the trial was over, Cora quietly returned to Jacksonville from England, as Steven Crane's widow again, writing articles for Harper's Weekly and The Smart Set.  On Valentine's Eve in 1908, the hatchet wielding reformer Carrie Nation, with journalists in tow, raided the Ward Street Bordello District and hacked up a few bars.  Cora Crane and Carrie Nation faced off in the street where Mrs. Nation denounced Cora's business at The Court as a "demonocracy."  Some time later J.E.T. Bowden, a Jacksonville Mayoral Candidate, ran on and won the election on a "pro prostitution platform," arguing that the profession provided a valuable safety valve to a community inundated by so many unattached sailors and railroad workers.

 

Carrie Nation

In 1910 Jacksonville's first entirely paved road to the Beach was completed.  It  ran along the route of what is now Atlantic Boulevard.  For the first time ever, Jacksonville residents had an easy access to its beaches that did not involve a water route or the railroad.  The Sunday of Sept 4th that year, fell in the middle of Labor Day Weekend. The weather was beautiful and the 46 year old Cora Crane was relaxing on the porch of her Palmetto Lodge, watching the bathers and noticing the unusual number of motor cars on the beach, when she saw a female motorist whose car was stuck in the sand.  Cora walked down to the beach and helped push the woman's vehicle free.  She left the beach feeling dizzy from her exertions, and went inside to lie down.   She died of a cerebral hemorrhage a short time later.

 

As per the instructions in her will, she was laid to rest in Evergreen Cemetery off North Main Street in Jacksonville.  It is perhaps a fitting final tribute to the woman who loved fiction and had a such a prolific gift for self invention, that the only factually accurate information on her modest headstone is her first name, middle initial, and the date of her death.