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Lost at Sea: The Men of SS Azalea City In February 1942, a merchant vessel with a Mobile connection disappeared without a trace. text by JOHN SLEDGE • photos courtesy BENJAMIN L. NARINSKY PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION
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ometime during the winter of 1942, a dozen crewmen on board the merchant freighter SS Azalea City assembled for this informal photograph. Most of them kept a straight face, though a few smiled, and the two chaps at lower right engaged in a little tomfoolery — one with his booted leg playfully
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thrown across the shoulder of the other, who appears ready to “cock a snook,” or thumb his nose, a beloved gesture at the time. Mercifully, none of these men knew that within a few short weeks they would be lost at sea, their actual fate only revealed after the conclusion of World War II with American access to German naval records. MB
