The Last Sinking

Two days later, on May 7, 1945, the final German surrender occurred and the European portion of the Second World War would end.  The prior day, May 4, Admiral Karl Doenitz, former commander of the German navy, and now, after his appointment by Hitler just before the Fuhrer's suicide on April 30, head of government for the crumbling Third Reich, wired his U-boat fleet instructing them to cease all attacks on Allied shipping as of 8am on May 5 and return to home port.

On this day in 1945 a German U-boat would sink an American ship a few miles off Point Judith, Rhode Island, the last sunk by the Germans during the war, and the last lost by the Allies in the Atlantic.

At 540pm on May 5, the SS Black Point passed about three miles from the Coast Guard Station at the Point Judith Lighthouse on the Rhode Island coast.  The 5,353 ton collier was carrying 7,759 tons of coal from Newport News, Virginia, leaving on May 2, to Weymouth, Massachusetts.  The Black Point carried Captain Charles Prior and 45 men under his command, including seven officers, 33 crewmen, and five armed guards (Black Point was armed with a 6-pounder and two .30 caliber guns).

The Black Point left its protective convoy escort after passing New York Harbor and was not zig zagging while traveling in presumably friendly waters with its crew looking forward to docking in a few hours.

As he was about to enter the sighting into the Station logbook, Boatswain's Mate Joe Burbine heard an explosion and saw the Black Point had stopped.  The last 50 feet of the 396 foot ship had disappeared and four of the crew were already dead.  A half hour later the Black Point rolled over and sank.  Twelve of the 46 man crew went down with the ship.  The survivors, including Captain Prior, were picked up by the Norwegian ship Scandanavia and the Yugoslav ship Karmen.


The Black Point

In an interview in 2000, one of the survivors, purser Luke Pelletier, described what happened as he stood up from dinner to head aft:

Just as Pelletier and the second engineer stood up, the torpedo struck the engine room and knocked them both back down.

"I ran out to the catwalk aft, and there was no ship left there," he said.

The blast tossed one of the Armed Guard off the stern.

"He landed on the catwalk bleeding", Luke Pelletier said.  "We hauled his ass back.  Then they tried to launch the lifeboats, and it didn't go well."  . . . "One of them went straight down".

Pelletier got aboard a raft mounted on tracks so it could slide straight into the water.  But it stuck, its tracks corroded. "The raft wouldn't budge.  The boatswain finally got it loose.  There were 17 of us in the raft, including the captain."

At 720pm a Coast Guard frigate and two Navy destroyer escorts arrived in the area and began searching for a submarine.  Seven other ships joined the search in the next few hours.  At 1143pm, two of the American vessels made sonar contact at a depth of 100 feet.  Dropping depth charges brought oil, wood, and life jackets to the surface.  Early the next morning an oil slick was identified and more depth charges dropped.  At 1045am, the U-boat was declared sunk, its entire crew of 56 perishing.

A diver was dispatched and found the wreck, which had large holes in the bow and bodies visible inside.  The vessel was identified as the U-853.  The U-boat was helmed by 24 year old Captain Helmut Fromsdorf.  No one knows whether he received Donitz's order, or why he risked attacking in such shallow water near the coast and did not try to flee the area after sinking Black Point.  At the time of his attack, a half-dozen other U-boats were motoring towards American ports to surrender after receiving Donitz's message.

Fromsdorf had served on the U-853 since June 1943, initially as 1st Watch Officer.  He took command of the boat in September 1944 after commander Helmut Sommer was killed when two American aircraft caught the boat on the surface and strafed it.

U-853 began its final cruise in North American waters when it arrived off Nova Scotia on April 20 after leaving Stavenger, Norway on February 24.  On April 23, the USS Eagle, a naval patrol craft, was snapped in half by an explosion and sank, with only 14 of its 63 man crew surviving.  It is believed the U-853 was responsible for the sinking.  Because the U-853 log book has never been recovered the boat's movements between April 23 and May 5 remain unknown.

The Black Point was constructed in 1918 and was originally named Fairmont.  After briefly being used by the Navy in WW1 it was transferred back to its owner and renamed Nebraskan.  In 1927 it was sold to CH Sprague & Son in Boston and renamed Black Point.

The wrecks of both vessels remain off Point Judith.

SS Black Point Casualties

William Antilley  Abiline, Texas

Geo. P. Balser  Queens Village, NY

Leo H. Beck  St. Louis, MO

Milton Matthews  St. Louis, MO

Laurel F. Clark  Brinkman, Oklahoma

Cleo Hand  Hazelhurst, GA

Robert L. Korb  Newport News, VA

Ansey L. Morgan  Virginia

Marvin A. Mertinek  Warda, Texas

Richard C. Shepson  So. Boundbrook, NJ

Reino Lindstrom Finland

Naval Armed Guard

Lonnie Whitson Lloyd

Served on: SS Mormacdale SS Expositor HMCS Trillum USS Pontiac SS Joseph P Bradley SS Eugene Hale SS Black Point