THE USS TRUXTON before February 18, 1942
In the snowy predawn of February 18, 1942, a convoy of three American ships zigzagged up the North Atlantic toward Newfoundland. The destroyers Truxton and Wilkes with the supply ship Pollux were under radio silence to protect their position from the threat of German U-boats.
A storm was raging, visibility was zero, and the currents had turned wildly unpredictable. With only unreliable soundings to guide them across the jagged ocean floor, all three vessels ran aground on the sheer rock coast of Newfoundland. Attempts to carry lifelines ashore were thwarted by heavy surf, cold, oil slicks, and floating wreckage. A few sailors, however, overcame the odds and managed to reach the coast where the communities of Lawn and St. Lawrence effected a super-human rescue operation.
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THE USS TRUXTON on February 19, 1942
The USS Wilkes, the flagship, was refloated within three hours, but the Pollux and the Truxton were hard aground and were subsequently battered to pieces. Two hundred and three young American sailors died in the heroic struggle for survival. One hundred and eighty-five survived. In large part they owe their lives to eight men of Lawn and almost the entire community of St. Lawrence, Newfoundland, who worked desperately to effect the rescue. It was one of the worst disasters in United States naval history..
At this time the US Navy was segregated. Of the 46 survivors from the USS Truxton, one was black. When Lanier Phillips was rescued by residents of St. Lawrence they treated him the same as they treated the white survivors. This experience galvanised the Navy Mess Attendant to fight racial discrimination within the US Navy. He later became the Navy's first black sonar technician
Outside the Navy he continued his struggle. 1965 found him a civil rights marcher in Selma, Alabama.
Listen to the documentary
For a full account of the wrecking of the Truxton and Pollux read
STANDING INTO DANGER by Cassie Brown (Flanker Press 1988)
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