Wreck of USCGC Escanaba (WPG-77)

 Second World War 1939-1945, military, shipwreck, United States Coast Guard, cutter (ship)

USCGC Escanaba was the third member of the 165ft A Class of Cutters built for the US Coast Guard, laid down at the Dafoe Shipyard in Bay City, MI in late 1931 and commissioned into USCG service in November 1932. Assigned to USCG Station Grand Haven, the Escanaba and her crew began a decade of service on the US Great Lakes, providing icebreaking services during the long winters and law enforcement and rescue services during the summer months.

Pulled from her peacetime duties in 1941 by the outbreak of the Second World War, the Escanaba and her crew reported to Boston where they were assigned to the highly dangerous duty of escorting merchant ship convoys, a task made doubly dangerous by the presence of hundreds of German U-Boats and the notoriously foul North Atlantic weather. Despite the hazardous nature of her assignments, the Escanaba and her crew made several safe crossings of the North Atlantic as an escort and on Patrols, performing several high-profile rescues of torpedoed crewmen and carrying out two separate attacks on German U-Boats.

Ordered to Narsarssuak, Greenland in June 1943 to join Westbound Convoy GS-24, the Escanaba joined four other US Coast Guard Cutters as the escorts for the US Army Transport Fairfax and stood out for St. John’s, Newfoundland on June 10th. Slowed considerably by a large fog-shrouded ice field off the coast of Greenland, the ships of the convoy made painfully slow progress, and by the early morning of June 13th were only 250 miles out from their origin, waiting for sunrise to aid their navigation through the large field of icebergs. Operating to on the North side of the formation as a screen for patrolling German U-Boats, the Escanaba and her crew were preparing for another day of escort duty when at 0510hrs the ship was rocked by a tremendous explosion in her aft midship.

With no warning of being under attack, dazed crew aboard the Escanaba had little time to react to the explosion that had torn out a large portion of their ship’s hull, and those below decks had little chance of escape as the Cutter took an immediate heavy and increasing list. Less than three minutes after the initial blast, the Escanaba rolled onto her side and sank at this location, taking the majority of her crew with her to the bottom and spilling an unknown number of men into the 38 degree water, where scores would succumb to their injuries or hypothermia before the arrival of the USCGC Raritan (WYT-93) at 0530. Despite the quick reaction of her fellow escorts to her situation, only two of Escanaba's 105-man crew were recovered alive.

Formal inquests and interviews with her surviving crew shed little light onto what exactly caused the explosion that led to the loss of Escanaba, though many feel that one of several German U-Boats operating in the area may have torpedoed the Cutter or released a free-floating mine which struck the ship.

www.uscg.mil/history/webcutters/Escanaba_1932.asp