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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

Sometime 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 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

THE CREW The Azalea City was a 22-year-old steel-hulled vessel of 5,000 tons owned by Mobile’s Waterman On February 16, 1942, she carrying a cargo of linseed master was George Robert and the crew included two mates, cadets, ordinary and able seamen, engineers, oilers, wipers, mess men American, including a man from north Alabama, Norwegian, one Italian, one German and one

UNARMED The United States had declared war on Nazi Germany just two months earlier, but the Azalea City’s master was innocent of unarmed, unescorted and in alone in that, and German U-boat captains gleefully exploited their advantage among the lumbering when they sank dozens of the allies adopt seaside blackouts, convoys, destroyer escorts and torpedo planes in order to improve

UNDER ATTACK When the Azalea City failed winter, she was declared lost with all hands, cause German records revealed in heavy seas 125 miles east-southeast of Ocean stalked the freighter, but his Azalea City’s crew even knew crossed the merchantman’s wake, came about and loosed another shot from torpedo slammed into the de grace, causing the Azalea City

MISSING AT SEA The ship’s roster lists every man on board, but who exactly posed for this image them have been Thomas a wiper; or 44-year-old the bosun? Alas, we cannot captured by the camera, poker-faced, smiling or they disappeared beneath

Top Crewmen of the SS Azalea City pose alongside their vessel. The tall man in the middle is Benjamin L. Narinsky, who captured the image on the opposite page. Narinsky’s final trip on the Azalea City was the voyage before its fatal journey. Above The SS Azalea City in port, 1939.