Voyage One
SS David G. Burnett - Page 1
We partially loaded at Houston and went down the ship channel to Galveston on May 11, 1943 and then on to New Orleans to finish off our cargo. They installed torpedo nets at New Orleans. I don't know if the nets did any good; they were a lot of trouble to operate. That was one of the two ships I sailed on that had torpedo nets. I recall that the engine room crew complained that it slowed the ship down.
The Burnett had a cargo of 8000 tons of sulfur, airplane parts, and prefabricated army barracks. Later when the ship got to Hoboken, New Jersey she took on a deck cargo of fourteen army tanks. ( "Port of departure: Houston, Texas. Time and date of departure: 0625, Tuesday, May 11, 1943. . . . Houston, Tx to New Orleans, LA, alone; Pilottown, LA, seventeen ships, about half tankers, escorted by four PC's, one "Catalina" airplane, and one Navy blimp, proceeded to Key West, where convoy split, eight ships, including the Burnett proceeding North with four PC escorts to New York harbor. " - armed guard voyage report of Ensign Edmund Murphy ).
Soon as we settled in (out in the Gulf of Mexico) the Naval Officer in charge of the Armed Guards asked for volunteers from the crew to help man the guns. There were about two dozen Navy sailors but that wasn't enough men to operate all of the guns. There were two 3"/50 caliber deck cannons, one on the bow and one on the stern; and eight 20mm anti-aircraft guns: two on the main deck forward, four on the bridge, and two on the poop deck.
It seemed like a lot of protection to me and made me feel more reassured. Just about everybody volunteered. It was in the crew's interest to help defend the ship. I was put on one of the 20mm guns near the monkey bridge. There were three of us in our gun crew: the Navy gunner, me and another seaman to help bring up ammunition and load the magazines. We had these big asbestos gloves to change out the barrel when it got hot. You changed them every so many magazines or they would over heat and melt down. There was a metal tube attached right at the gun that was filled with water. When you twisted the hot barrel, it easily came right off and you dropped it in this tube to cool down. There were other barrels stored next to the gun.
We had regular gunnery practice. We'd send up balloons and shoot at them or run through the drill of bringing up ammunition and loading magazines or changing barrels. I learned to shoot and I enjoyed it. In case something happened to the Navy gunner we were trained to take over. I got to be a pretty good shot,as good as most of the Navy gunners and better than some that I sailed with.
In fact, I think it was this trip that the naval officer typed a letter on official Navy stationary, like a certificate, that I was proficient on the 20mm and a good marksman. He told me to show this paper to officers on the next ships that I sailed on. Afterwards I was always assigned to a 20mm AA gun by all the Armed Guard officers throughout the war. I carried the paper around with me for quite a while until I lost it. Now I wished that I had kept that letter.
I had been raised around boats and the water so I was used to that part of it. But I had never been out in the ocean like that before. I can't say that I was scared, more like leery. I don't know how to describe it. I was just eighteen and among a bunch of guys that I didn't know and everything was new - different from what I was used to. It was always in the back of your mind that something could happen. The whole year before I went German subs were sinking ships up and down the eastern seaboard and in the Gulf of Mexico. They sank ships right off Galveston and even in the Mississippi River south of New Orleans, so you knew that could happen.
That's only part of it. A lot of things can happen at sea, collisions, storms, accidents. Everybody got worried because you could feel the worry from the officers. The captain and the mates had all been torpedoed before or in convoys that had been attacked. You could feel their tension and that made you stop and think. ( Between the sinking of the freighter, Norlindo, on May 4,1942 and the sinking of the tanker, Touchet,on Dec. 3, 1943, German U-boats attacked over 120 ships in the Gulf of Mexico, sinking 56 ships and damaging 14 more . ) The thing you worried most about was fire. I had a mate tell me that you could kill a man at sea and that wasn't necessarily a death sentence but if you started a fire it was. On a ship if you have a fire there's no place to go.
Up off the Carolinas - Cape Hatteras, it got kind of rough. It always is off Hatteras. I had been raised around water but I'd never seen water like that. I guess that I didn't look well because the Bos'n came up to me and said that we should step out on deck and get some air. We just had a little conversation - some small talk for a while, and then he asked me if I felt any better. I told him that I did. He said for me to go to the galley and eat a piece of dry toast and that I'd be OK. I did and I never got sea sick after that. Yeah, that was pretty rough, but just a little of what was to come.