Shipwreck Rescue Creates Lasting Friendships

A LIFE HONOURED: Lanier Phillips , survivor of a WWII U.S. naval disaster, being honoured for his lifetime achievements at the commissioning of the USS Truxtun April 25, 2009 in Charleston, South Carolina. With him are U.S. Navy Commander Timothy Weber and Newfoundland Mayor Wayde Rowsell. (MARY SILVER/THE EPOCH TIMES)

CHARLESTON, S.C.—A U.S. battleship whose predecessor met a heroic rescue when it wrecked off the Canadian Atlantic coast during WWII was commissioned Saturday in a ceremony at the Naval Weapons Station in Charleston, South Carolina.

The ceremony was for the USS Truxtun (DDG 103), the Navy’s newest guided-missile destroyer, named after Commodore Thomas Truxtun (1755-1822) who was undefeated in naval battles against the British and the French.

Among the attendees were descendants of the crew of the Truxtun (DD-229) and Pollux (AKS-2), both of which ran aground due to a navigational error along the rugged shoreline on the southeastern coast of Newfoundland and Labrador’s Burin Peninsula on February 18, 1942.

The ships grounded close to shore, but severe blizzard conditions made escape and rescue near impossible, and 203 sailors perished. Those who managed to reach the shore by swimming or life raft were faced with sheer, ice-covered cliffs rising as high as 300 feet.

One sailor cut handholds in the ice with a knife and scaled the cliffs. He roused the residents of the nearby towns of Lawn and St. Lawrence, who gave assistance by tying a rope around the sailors one at a time and hauling them up the cliffs.

They took the survivors into their homes in St. Lawrence. The women washed the sailors, who were covered in heavy crude oil leaked from the ship’s tanks, and provided them with clothing, meals, and shelter until the U.S. Navy was able to transport them to the U.S. Naval Base in Argentia, Newfoundland.

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