A Tanker Alone Off Cape Hatteras
A captain of a tanker loads his cargo at a Gulf of Mexico port to carry it north toward the refineries and ports of the Northeast. His route takes him off North Carolina, past , a bottleneck where the currents push ships close to the shore and the seabed rises sharply. For weeks, a rumour has spread among the crews: up there, ships are vanishing.
Since January 1942, the German submarines committed to Operation have been operating almost unopposed along the U.S. East Coast. The American navy has organised neither convoys nor systematic escorts for coastal traffic, and the seaboard towns remain lit at night: their lights silhouette the ships, offering the U-boats perfect targets. Tankers, slow and laden with fuel, are among the most sought-after prey, and has become one of the deadliest points along the entire coast.
The captain must decide on his route: sail alone by night, gambling on his speed to cross the danger zone before dawn; hug the coast as closely as possible despite the shallows, to reduce the submarines' angle of attack; or stay in port and wait for an escorted convoy system to be put in place.
Off Cape Hatteras, February 1942, an American tanker captain: how to cross a coast where U-boats are sinking ships one by one?
With no convoys or escorts, and under pressure from the shipping companies and wartime schedules, the vast majority of tankers kept sailing alone along the East Coast in early 1942. A blackout was not imposed on the coastal towns for several weeks, and ships stayed silhouetted against their lights. The result was carnage: between January and June 1942, the U-boats sank hundreds of ships in the American zone — roughly 455 vessels, including many irreplaceable tankers, for nearly a million tons lost in the months of May and June alone. Only with the April "bucket brigade," then the establishment of an interlocking coastal convoy system from May 1942, did losses fall sharply and the East Coast cease to be an open hunting ground.
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