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Built 1942
Tonnage 4,384 / 7,181 tons
Cargo: Water Ballast
Route: Capetown - Bahia, Brazil - Paramaribo, Dutch Guiana
Sunk 9 MAR 43 by U-510 on pos 07º40"N 52º07"W
11 Dead
47 Survivors
Between 06.04 and 06.11 hours on 9 Mar, 1943, U-510 fired torpedoes during a second attack at the convoy BT-6 about
The explosion blew a large section out of the side and bottom of the ship and disabled the steering gear, knocked down the radio antenna and damaged the propeller shaft. Five armed guards and six crewmen sleeping on the tarpaulin cover of the #5 hatch died. The survivors among the eight officers, 34 crewmen and 16 armed guards (the ship was armed with one 5in, one 3in, four .50cal and two .30cal guns) calmly abandoned ship in four lifeboats after the engines were secured.
After daybreak two of the boats returned to the vessel and reboarded her, while the occupants in the other boats were picked up by the American submarine chaser USS PC-592, which later came to the ship, whose bow lay out of the water. On 12 March, the remaining survivors on board were ordered by the commander of the submarine chaser to abandon ship, but the James Smith did not sink and the master, three crewmen and the armed guard officer again reboarded her. They stayed with the ship as the British rescue tug HMS Zwarte Zee (W 163) towed her to
The vessel was later towed to
By James Smith (American Steam merchant) - Ships hit by German U-boats during WWII - uboat.net