CHEROKEE SINKS OFF DELAWARE COAST 1918.

THE CHEROKEE SINKS OFF THE DELAWARE COAST

FEBRUARY 1918

Caught in an Atlantic storm, loss of her steering mechanism, and confusion about

the ships location, and the fact that her bow rode low in the front due to the addition of a

3” gun and ammunition storage front of the deck cabin, the pounding storm filled the holds

of the vessel with sea water, and down the Cherokee went, beneath the waves.

Twelve of the crew survived and picked up by a British tanker, but the captain and

thirty one sailors were lost.

The Cherokee was an armed tug, outfitted with the 3” gun by the Navy as a look out

for German submarines off the Atlantic coast during World War One. She had been the

Edgar F. Luckenbach, a merchant vessel purchased by the Navy and converted to the use

of the military.

The Cherokee's captain , Lt. Edward Newell, hailed from the seafaring town of

Gloucester, Massachusetts, well versed in the ways of the water and ships sailing the oceans, known as “ a boy born with a love for and with less fear of the water”

Newell was given his first command in 1917 of the steam tug Cherokee, a ship he

thought was and reported as, “being unfit to even go up and down the Delaware River”

however, he took command and went to sea.

In February 1918, while cruising southward off the New Jersey coast, is when the weather turned sour and Newell knew he was faced with an impossible situation. He could have headed to the Delaware Bay and found safety behind the Breakwater, but he was

determined to remain on duty off the Delaware and Maryland coast but came confused

about the Cherokee' s position, thinking he was past the Delawre and Maryland line, searching for the Fenwick Island Lightship that he thought was to his south, when he was just off Bethany Beach, to the north. When the ships holds became filled with water he sent distress messages, reporting the wrong position to which rescue vessels were dispatched.

Abstract: New York Times, May 8 1918. Michael Morgan, Sussex Journal, Delaware Coast

Press, by Harrison H. 06/21/18