American Merchant Mariners' Memorial

Following the Japanese attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on the morning of December 7, 1941, the United States officially entered the Second World War. Soon after, Vice Admiral Karl Dönitz began planning Operation Paukenschlag (also known as Operation Drumbeat or informally as “Second Happy Time” or “American Shooting Season” by German submarine commanders), a German submarine offensive conducted off the east coast of North America and in the Caribbean with the goal of disrupting Allied shipping. Although it never at any one time involved more than a dozen U-boats (from the German U-boot, an abbreviation of Unterseeboot or “undersea boat”), the campaign was a resounding success, in large part because the United States was woefully unprepared to deal with the German submarine threat. From January through April 1942, German submarines sank 216 Allied merchant vessels that carried a total of 1.2 million tons of shipping. By the time the offensive concluded in July 1942, German U-boats had sent about 3 million tons of Allied shipping to the bottom of the sea. 

One of the German U-boats involved in Operation Paukenschlag was U-123, commanded by Reinhard Hardegen. On January 12, 1942, the German submarine scored the first kill of the campaign when it sunk Cyclops, a British freighter. Two months later, on March 22, U-123 encountered the unarmed and unescorted American oil tanker, SS Muskogee, a few hundred miles northeast of Bermuda. After stalking the merchant vessel for a few hours while waiting for an ideal angle, U-123 launched a torpedo, which struck the Muskogee midship, sinking it in about fifteen minutes. The German submarine then surfaced and approached the debris field, where it found a handful of dazed, oil-stained survivors floating on a makeshift raft. Crew members of U-123 briefly interviewed the men, asking questions about the vessel, its cargo, and its destination. Before U-123 left the scene and slipped back beneath the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, a war correspondent aboard the German submarine, Rudolph Meisinger, snapped a picture of the Americans, who were never seen or heard from again. 

In 1976, the American Merchant Mariners’ Memorial, Inc., under the direction of AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland, conceived of a memorial to honor the thousands of American merchant vessels and mariners pressed into military service since the American Revolution. After a lengthy contest to determine the artist and design of the memorial, the organization chose the entry of Parisian-born sculptor Marisol Escobar, known simply as Marisol, in 1988. Her design was inspired by one of the photographs taken by Rudolph Meisinger aboard U-123 of the survivors of the Muskogee sinking in March 1942. Dedicated on October 8, 1991, the memorial consists of four over-life-sized bronze figures and a reinforced concrete lifeboat that sit on a reconstructed stone breakwater. Three of the figures are on a small sinking boat. One of them is on his knees staring into the distance. Another is standing with hands cupped around his mouth seemingly calling for help. The third is reaching over the side of the boat to rescue a fourth who is in the water desperately reaching up for help.

"American Merchant Mariners' Memorial." New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. The City of New York. Web. 4 December 2020 <https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/battery-park/highlights/9745>.

Cressman, Robert J. The Official Chronology of the U.S. Navy in World War II. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2016.

Fink, Leon. Sweatshops at Sea: Merchant Seamen in the World's First Globalized Industry, from 1812 to the Present. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2011.

Gustafson, Andrew. "The Photo That Inspired NYC's Merchant Mariners' Memorial." Turnstile Tours. 25 June 2018. Web. 4 December 2020 <https://turnstiletours.com/the-photo-that-inspired-of-the-merchant-mariners-memorial/>.

Tucker, Spencer C., ed. World War II: The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection. Vol. I, A-D. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2016.