Coast Guard cutter Escanaba goes off to war in 1942

Early in 1942, the U.S. Navy assigned Coast Guard ice breakers to serve on the “Greenland Patrol” in the North Atlantic Ocean.

“These vessels found themselves operating “in arguably the worst sea and weather conditions of World War II,” reported Coast Guard historian Dr. William H. Thiesen (shown below).

The cutter Escanaba – the pride and joy of Michigan’s Coast Guard Station Grand Haven – was one of those ships.

 

“Initially, the Escanaba was tasked with breaking ice in the waters off the coast of Greenland,” Dr. Thiesen said. “A few months later, she was transferred to convoy duty, steaming between U.S. and Canadian ports, and on to Greenland.”

“In spite of huge ocean waves, heavy icing and lurking German U-boats, the Escanaba and other cutters like her performed well.”

“While lacking the size, firepower and speed of a true destroyer, the Escanaba and her crew truly excelled by rescuing hundreds from Allied transports sunk by U-boats,” he noted.

Credited with two dramatic rescues, the Escanaba saved 155 men, retrieving them from freezing waters.

On June 15, 1942, Germany’s U-87 discovered a convoy about 25 miles northeast of Cape Cod, Mass., enroute to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. U-87’s torpedoes blasted into the Cherokee (shown below), a passenger steamer carrying 169 men.

 

The crew of the Escanaba managed to rescue 22 from the sinking ship, thanks largely to daring lifesaving exploits engineered by Lt. Robert H. Prause Jr., the Escanaba’s chief executive officer.

Lt. Prause, a native of Norfolk, Va., and a 1939 graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., specialized in “technical studies.” The “Cherokee experience” motivated him to “develop a system using tethered rescue swimmers outfitted in rubberized suits that insulated the swimmers from the cold.”

Labeled as “the Escanaba retriever method of rescue,” Lt. Prause’s system worked like this: “Harnessed swimmers attached to lines were sent over the side. The retrievers swam out, tied other lines about the victims or rafts, and crews on the ship reeled in ‘their catch.’”

The first true test came with the U.S. Army Transport Dorchester, which carried 904 passengers and crew. On Feb. 3, 1943, the ship suffered a direct torpedo hit from U-233 and sank in just 20 minutes, sending hundreds of people into the icy waters.

By the time Escanaba arrived on the scene, the Dorchester had vanished beneath the frigid sea. The transport’s life preservers were equipped with blinking red lights to help rescuers locate victims at night. Red lights dotted the water’s surface for miles.

 

Lt. Prause’s swimmers donned their exposure suits while deck crews prepared to retrieve survivors. By the end of the eight-hour operation, the Escanaba had saved 133 lives. Lt. Prause’s tethered rescue swimmer system had worked.

While on a convoy mission bound from Greenland back to Newfoundland, on June 13, 1943, the Escanaba mysteriously exploded and sank within minutes. The Coast Guard said: “The most probable explanation is that the loss was caused by a mine, torpedo or internal explosion of the magazine and depth charges.”

From the crew of 105, three men were rescued from the icy waters, including Lt. Prause. Two survived, but Lt. Prause did not. He was given full military honors and buried at sea.

The City of Grand Haven, Mich., was hit hard emotionally by the loss of “its” cutter, the Escanaba.

Citizens pledged to honor the ill-fated ship and its men by purchasing more than $1 million in war bonds to build a new cutter – the Escanaba II.

Within just a few weeks, the good people of Grand Haven raised a whopping $1,218,000 to replace their beloved ship that was a casualty of World War II.

(That is the equivalent of slightly more than $22,163,094 in 2024 dollars.)

Former Grand Haven Mayor Marge Boon called the local fundraising campaign “one of the most extraordinary civic achievements of World War II.”

On Aug. 4, 1943, about six weeks after the loss of the Escanaba, a memorial service at the cutter’s former berth at Coast Guard Station Grand Haven was attended by 20,000 people, which spoke to the community’s feeling of loss.

Coast Guard officials were so impressed by the outpouring that a cutter currently under construction at a shipyard in Los Angeles, Calif., was renamed Escanaba II.

 

That vessel (shown above) was christened after the war on March 20, 1946, and was originally homeported at Alameda, Calif. The Escanaba II, however, served most of her time at New Bedford, Mass., before being decommissioned in 1973. 

She was replaced by Escanaba III, built in Middletown, R.I. 

 

The commissioning ceremony for Escanaba III (shown above) occurred Aug. 28, 1987, at Grand Haven. The ship’s motto, “The Spirit Lives On,” is a tribute to the original Escanaba.

 

The Escanaba III, homeported in Portsmouth, Va., continues today as an active member of the Coast Guard fleet. 

Each year on June 13, its crew pauses to honor the sacrifice of the first Escanaba through a memorial service on the anniversary of her sinking.

For many years, Raymond Francis O’Malley of Chicago, Ill., one of the two Escanaba I survivors, was “a fixture” at Grand Haven’s Coast Guard Festival, participating regularly in the annual memorial service conducted within Escanaba Memorial Park. The site is marked by the original wooden mast of Escanaba I as well as one of the vessel’s life rafts.

 

Following his Coast Guard service, O’Malley spent 30 years as a member of the Chicago Police Department, retiring as a lieutenant. O’Malley died in 2007 at age 86.

The other survivor was Melvin Arthur Baldwin of Todd County, Minn. After his discharge from the Coast Guard, Baldwin enlisted in the Air Force and saw duty in the Korean War. He died in 1964 at age 42.

While the primary focus of the Coast Guard Festival in Grand Haven is to honor those who sacrificed their lives in the service of their country, there’s also an emphasis of family friendly activities.

One popular spectator event is the waterball tournament, in which teams of Coast Guardsmen and Grand Haven area fire/rescue department personnel duel it out to see who is best at moving a suspended keg-like object along a rope to the other side of the court.

Journalist Avery Jennings said: “Teams use fire hoses to compete in the watery tug-of-war game.”

Grand Haven Township firefighter Marc Santigo said spraying a water hose to move an object is a game of both skill and luck. “It depends on if you’ve got the sun in your face, if you have the wind at your back and if the keg bounces around up there in a way that benefits your team.”

“I’m nudging close to an 11 on a scale of one to 10 for how soaked I am,” Santigo said. “I have small ponds in my boots.”

Kids also enjoy the cardboard boat race that occurs on the Grand River: