USS W. L. Steed (ID-3449)

USS W. L. Steed (ID-3449) was a tanker that served in the United States Navy from 1918 to 1919 and was torpedoed and sunk by a submarine while in commercial service in 1942.

U.S. Navy service, World War I, 1918-1919
SS W. L. Steed was a steel-hulled tanker built in 1918 at Quincy, Massachusetts, by the Fore River Shipbuilding Company, under a United States Shipping Board contract. The U.S. Navy inspected her on 10 August 1918, assigned Identification Number (Id. No.) 3449 to her, and commissioned her for World War I service as USS W. L. Steed at Boston, Massachusetts, on 18 September 1918, Lieutenant Commander John Charlton, USNRF, in command.

Assigned to the Naval Overseas Transportation Service (NOTS), W. L. Steed departed Boston on 28 September 1918 and proceeded to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she took on a cargo of oil. She sailed for New York City on 8 October 1918, whence she headed for Nova Scotia in Canada on 17 October 1918. She departed Sydney, Nova Scotia, on 23 October 1918, bound for Devonport, England, but developed a steering gear casualty en route and put into St. John's, Newfoundland, for repairs on 30 October 1918.

W. L. Steed departed St. John's on 10 November 1918 and was at sea when the armistice ending World War I was signed at Compiègne, France, on the 11 November 1918. She made port at New York on the 13 November 1918 and entered drydock for repairs which lasted through the remainder of November.

W. L. Steed got underway again on 1 December 1918, bound for France, and arrived at Le Havre, France, on 22 December 1918. Discharging her oil cargo in two days, she subsequently departed Le Havre on 26 December 1918, bound for the Gulf of Mexico.

After touching at Bermuda, she arrived at New Orleans, Louisiana, on 18 January 1919, took on another cargo of oil, and left the Mississippi Delta on 4 February 1919, bound again for France. She never completed the voyage, however, for she was damaged en route and put into New York on 18 February 1919.

After inventories of all equipment were taken and repairs were completed, W. L. Steed simultaneously was decommissioned, struck from the Navy List, and returned to the United States Shipping Board on 26 March 1919, once again becoming SS W. L. Steed.

Interwar commercial service, 1919-1941
Acquired by the Pan-American Petroleum and Transport Company in 1922, SS W. L. Steed subsequently was acquired by the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey in 1937. Following some two years of operation with Standard Oil, the ship was in need of repairs and docked at Constable Hook, Bayonne, New Jersey, on 30 June 1939. She remained there through August 1939 and departed Bayonne shortly after the 1 September 1939 outbreak of World War II in Europe with orders to proceed to Mariner's Harbor, Staten Island, New York, for repairs at the Bethlehem Steel Company yard there.

Upon completion of the necessary repairs and alterations, W. L. Steed departed New York on 4 October 1939, bound for Texas. Making port at Aransas Pass, Texas, a short time later, she took on a cargo of 68169 oilbbl of west Texas crude oil, the first of five such cargoes she would carry in 1939. Once the crude was safely aboard, W. L. Steed cast off for New York.

During 1940 and 1941, W. L. Steed performed primarily coastwise duties for Standard Oil of New Jersey, although she occasionally included Havana, Cuba; Aruba, Dutch West Indies; and Cartagena, Colombia, among her ports of call. She made 17 voyages in 1940, carrying bulk oil cargoes of 1053261 oilbbl, and 22 voyages in 1941, carrying bulk oil cargoes of 1396278 oilbbl.

Commercial service and loss (World War II)
W. L. Steed departed Norfolk, Virginia, under the command of her master, Harold G. McVenia, on 14 January 1942. She made port at Cartagena on 21 January 1942 and there loaded a cargo of 65396 oilbbl of oil in two days, departing on 23 January 1942. She subsequently called at Key West, Florida, for U.S. Navy orders before transiting the Florida Strait.

The voyage proceeded uneventfully until early on the afternoon of 30 January 1942, when a lookout spotted what he thought was a small fishing craft on the port bow. Captain McVenia, soon ascertaining the strange ship to be a submarine lying low on the surface, sounded the general alarm and radioed for help. All hands except the "black gang" -- below in the engine spaces -- manned their boat stations, donned life preservers, and stood by for the worst. The submarine soon disappeared, probably because W. L. Steed's radio message brought a U.S. Navy patrol plane out to take a look.

Over the next two days, though, the weather worsened, making protective aircraft operations particularly difficult. W. L. Steed plodded through the Atlantic swells, occasionally shipping heavy seas that damaged her decks. By 2 February 1942, visibility had shrunk to about two nautical miles (4 km), and snow was falling. Shortly after noon, when W. L. Steed was between 80 and 90 nmi off the coast of New Jersey, the GS U-103 (1940) under the command of Werner Winter, already a high scorer in the German U-boat arm with over 30 ships to her credit, poked up her periscope and tracked the plodding tanker. One torpedo soon leapt from the submarine's bow torpedo tubes, sped inexorably toward W. L. Steed, and hit her on her starboard side, forward of the bridge and in number 3 tank. The explosion touched off a fire in the oil drums stored there.

W. L. Steed sent out a hurried SOS and radioed her plight to any ship within hearing. The entire crew of 38 men abandoned ship into the vessel's four lifeboats. U-103 surfaced soon thereafter and closed the burning tanker as she slowly sank by the bow. The Germans soon manned their deck gun and commenced firing, pumping 17 shells into the stern of the tanker to hasten her demise while her crew watched from the nearby boats. After W. L. Steed slipped beneath the chill waves of the North Atlantic, U-103 stood briefly toward the survivors before shaping a course away in a southwesterly direction.

The U-boat's departure left the four boats alone in the frigid waters. They drifted apart and, one by one, the ill-clad sailors began to succumb to the cold. W. L. Steed had been abandoned with such haste that hardly any of the men had had time to enter the boats prepared to face the bitter winter snowstorm and the biting northeasterly winds.

One boat was never found. The British steamer SS Hartlepool rescued two men from the second boat on 4 February 1942, but one later died. The Canadian armed merchant cruiser HMCS Alcantara picked up three men from the third boat on 6 February 1942, including the senior surviving officer, Second Mate Sydney Wayland. On 12 February 1942, the British merchantman Raby Castle came across the fourth and last of W. L. Steed's boats, containing four men, but of whom only one was alive, suffering much from exposure. Brought aboard Raby Castle, that man -- Second Assistant Engineer Elmer E. Maihiot, Jr. -- died on 15 February 1942, and was buried at sea. Thus, only four men out of the 38 aboard W. L. Steed survived her encounter with U-103.

W. L. Steed was the second Standard Oil tanker sunk during World War II.