It was one of those eyeball-rolling moments I frequently experience when doing any sort of Internet research concerning Catalina Island. You know what I’m talking about: those moments that are triggered by well-meaning, but factually incorrect articles about the Island that one comes across on blogs, travel sites and other such venues written by visitors who try to absorb our thousands of years of history in a single afternoon.
It was one of those eyeball-rolling moments I frequently experience when doing any sort of Internet research concerning Catalina Island. You know what I’m talking about: those moments that are triggered by well-meaning, but factually incorrect articles about the Island that one comes across on blogs, travel sites and other such venues written by visitors who try to absorb our thousands of years of history in a single afternoon.
I’m referring to the articles that mistake the Holly Hill House for the Wrigley Mansion or insist that the St. Catherine Hotel burned to the ground in 1966 (she was intentionally demolished) or that make statements like “gambling is no longer allowed in the Casino” (it never was). So, the other day as I was doing some research on local maritime history, I Googled me up the phrase “S.S. Santa Catalina.”
Oh brother, I thought. Here’s another hack writing job, this time involving our beloved S.S. Catalina. No Virginia, there is no “Santa.”
But this time, the joke was on me. As it turns out, there was indeed not only one S.S. Santa Catalina, but at least two, both of which had remarkable histories.
And as if the real life escapades of these two ships weren’t enough, yet a third “S.S. Santa Catalina” has made it into a series of science fiction and alternate history books titled “The Destroyermen” by writer Taylor Anderson.
(In book No. 9 of the series, “Deadly Shores” (Roc Books, 2014), a fictional S.S. Santa Catalina has the misfortune of getting sucked into “the Squall,” an inter-dimensional portal that links our earth with an earth in an alternate universe. I love it!)
The first of our two real life S.S. Santa Catalina’s was built at the shipyards of William Cramp and Sons in Philadelphia in 1913. Purchased four years later by the U.S. Navy, the ship sat out World War I at Inverness, Scotland.
During World War II, the vessel mostly served as a tender and repair ship, bouncing around the Pacific from Borneo (where she was the day Pearl Harbor was attacked) to the Aleutians.
At about the time that the first S.S. Santa Catalina was traipsing about the Pacific, the second one was being launched down the ways of the Federal Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company in Kearny, New Jersey.
This was in 1942 at the peak of hostilities around the globe.
This second S.S. Santa Catalina was born into a violent world and she was immediately put to good use transporting war materiel around the world for the Allies.
She had traveled the perilous oceans of the world for nearly a year (a long life for a ship by World War II standards), when she met her fate.
April of 1943 saw the S.S. Santa Catalina in the Atlantic south of Bermuda on a voyage from Philadelphia to Basra, Iraq, with lend-lease supplies bound for Russia.
As fate would have it, a young German U-boat commander by the name of Hans-Ludwig Witt just happened to be in the same area with his vessel, U-129. Only days before this, Kapitan Witt and his crew had been chased off by the U.S.S. Swanson near Cape Hatteras as they stalked a New York to Guantanamo convoy.
Chastened by his encounter with the Swanson and spoiling for a fight, Witt and his crew turned east, where on the night of April 27 they chanced upon the Santa Catalina travelling all by her lonesome.
Aboard the Santa Catalina, Capt. Olaf Berg and his crew had been running a traditional “zig-zag” pattern designed to frustrate any potential attackers. Capt. Berg was responsible for not only a cargo of steel, gasoline, tires and even tanks and small arms, but 95 living souls, including 57 officers and crew, 28 U.S. Navy Armed Guards and 10 passengers.
Despite Capt. Berg’s best efforts, the Nazi U-boat succeeded in sending a torpedo through the ship’s forward-most cargo hold.
A second torpedo that hit roughly the same spot blew both sides of the ship out and ignited the gasoline.
Incredibly, all 95 people aboard the Santa Catalina survived and were rescued by the Swedish merchant ship Venezia. The Venezia, however, wasn’t long for this world either and on June 21, 1943, she was sunk by a single torpedo fired by U-boat U-513 southeast of Rio de Janeiro.
Unlike the second incarnation of the S.S. Santa Catalina, the first version—the one launched in 1913—enjoyed a long life. According to a book titled “The Wilmington Shipyard,” by Ralph L. Scott (The History Press, 2007) the first S.S. Santa Catalina to be built and the last to survive was scrapped by Grace Lines, Inc., in 1968.
And unlike many of his maritime victims, Korvettenkapitan Hans-Ludwig Witt, who torpedoed and sank the second S.S. Santa Catalina, lived a long life. He died in Hamburg, West Germany, on Feb. 13, 1980, at the age of 70.
