The Lincoln went down at 9:30 a.m., twisting as she sank. “Pull away from the ship! Away NOW!” - the shout went from boat to boat. The bow rose and the stern began to disappear. As he did, the ship lurched hard to the left. Altman stayed on the quarterdeck until all the others hit the water. One by one, sailors, wearing lifejackets over rainproof Mackintosh coats, jumped ship. Waves washed the main deck with whitewater. Since damage reports came from all quarters, Foote ordered his crew to abandon ship.Īs lifeboats lowered, and rafts flopped downward, the Lincoln listed ten degrees to port. Izac relayed information to Captain Percy Foote. Steam sprayed from ruptured safety valves. The ocean bullied into three gaping holes on the ship’s port side. “Holds five and six flooded,” Izac heard at his station. ![]() He was unharmed, but a geyser of near-freezing water drenched him to the bone. A lifeboat, suspended over the side by davits, spun into the air and crashed ten feet in front of Izac. The torpedo hit the hull like a volcanic eruption. As he did, a blue-white wake ghosted toward him. Izac raced aft to his battle station on C deck. As he went down to the mess for breakfast, the forward half of the Lincoln rocked as if dynamited. Though past the danger zone, they still ran a zigzag pattern at night with the lights off.Īt 8:00 a.m., Izac, an assistant gunnery officer, was coming off his watch. Many were “green” sailors, writes Izac, “who eight months before had never seen a man-of-war.” The Lincoln was part of a four-ship convoy. Said to be the Navy’s most useful transport, the ship had six masts, making it easily identifiable, since only two steamers in the world had that many.įor this return voyage - its fifth round trip - the ship had a crew of 685. A ten-year-old ocean liner converted to a man-of-war, the Lincoln could carry 5000 troops and 8000 tons of cargo to Europe. It was sailing home from France and supposedly beyond the danger zone for German U-boats. On May 31, 1918, the young lieutenant was on the USS President Lincoln. Medal of Honor and the Croce di Guerra of Italy for valor in World War I. Izac wrote for the Union and later became a Democratic congressman from San Diego (1937–1947). Worse still, the only United States Navy Officer captured by the Germans during the war.” “It was only natural that…the Lincoln would finally be torpedoed….But never once had the thought of being taken prisoner entered my mind. “I rather expected to be wounded or killed or even drowned,” writes Navy lieutenant Edouard Izac.
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