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When terrorists attacked the World Trade Center on September 11,
2001, motor vessel Sightseer XII, a New York tour boat, came to the
rescue. The vessel helped ferry thousands of evacuees from lower
Manhattan across the Hudson River to New Jersey. Due to the
Sightseer and the selfless efforts of its captain and crew, the U.S.
Coast Guard recognized the vessel’s owner, Circle Line Sightseeing
Tours, with the 9/11 Medal. However, 9/11 was not the first time
this sturdy vessel had rescued those in peril. Sightseer performed a
number of heroic rescues as the
Coast Guard Cutter Argo during World War II.
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U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Argo returning to port after escort duty.
Originally designed for prohibition law enforcement, this type of
cutter was particularly seaworthy and maneuverable. With the U.S.
entry into World War II, the ship was attached to the Atlantic Fleet
as a convoy escort. (Photo courtesy of the Winslow family)
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In 1933, Argo became the first in its class of 165-foot Coast
Guard cutters put into service for prohibition enforcement. During
the war, the service conscripted the vessel and its sister cutters
to escort merchantmen along the East Coast. The cutter carried a
crew of 75 men and provided a solid platform for radar and sonar
equipment; an armament of 20 millimeter and 3-inch guns; as well as
depth charges and anti-submarine weapons. During the last three
years of the war, Argo’s fate would be closely linked to that of
Charles Eliot Winslow.
 In
late 1942, Winslow became an officer in the U.S. Coast Guard and
served as executive officer on the
Coast Guard weather ship Menemsha. He soon received an
appointment to anti-submarine warfare school and graduated to become
a lieutenant junior grade, senior watch officer and navigation
officer aboard Argo. Winslow rose rapidly through the ship’s officer
ranks and by April the service promoted him to executive officer and
gunnery officer of Argo. After only two months as the executive
officer, the Coast Guard promoted Winslow to command the Argo, a
position he would hold for the remainder of the war.
On the morning of Jan. 6, 1944, convoy NK-588 steamed south out
of New York harbor into a gale with nearly 40-mph winds and wave
heights of nearly 20 feet. The convoy consisted of a tanker; the
Navy patrol
gunboat USS St. Augustine, a converted 300-foot yacht that served as
the convoy’s escort command vessel; and the Coast Guard sister
cutters Argo and
Thetis. That night at 10, the St. Augustine crew encountered a
strange vessel 60 miles southeast of Cape May, New Jersey. Unknown
to the warship’s crew, the unidentified vessel was the American
tanker Camas Meadows, steaming unescorted out of Delaware Bay under
blackout conditions. The master of the tanker had taken ill to his
cabin leaving the third mate to serve as officer-on-deck, or OOD.
The ship had a green crew and no one on the bridge knew how to send
or receive blinker signals.
Farther back in the convoy, Argo had also made radar contact with
the darkened tanker and the cutter’s OOD reported the contact to
Winslow in the captain’s cabin. He ordered the contact’s position
transmitted to St. Augustine by the coded talk-between-ship system,
TBS. The cutter’s radioman sent the message and received
acknowledgment from the lead escort. Meanwhile, Argo’s lookouts made
visual contact with the ship and noted that the St. Augustine had
left its convoy station, steamed toward the mystery vessel and
challenged the ship by blinker and flashing running lights. Out of
caution, Argo’s OOD altered course so the cutter would swing wide
around the stern of the ship crossing ahead, and he presumed that
St. Augustine had executed a similar course change.
The dark silhouettes of the St. Augustine and the tanker appeared
to meet miles in the distance; but unknown to Argo’s bridge watch,
the St. Augustine had actually altered course in front of the
tanker, setting the two vessels on a collision course. Within a few
short minutes, Argo’s OOD observed the bow of the 300-foot St.
Augustine rise out of the water at an odd angle, fall back into the
water, and disappear. Given the state of the stormy seas, he and the
bridge watch thought the escort had ridden up a large wave and
plummeted down the next trough. The men on Argo’s bridge had
actually witnessed the demise of the patrol gunboat as the tanker
rammed into St. Augustine amidships, cut deeply into the escort’s
hull, and pushed the mortally wounded gunboat briefly before
separating with it. St. Augustine quickly flooded and slipped below
the waves, vanishing in less than five minutes.
Miles away from the scene of the disaster, Argo’s
officer-of-the-day, OOD, asked his radarman if he still had
St. Augustine on the screen. The radarman indicated he no
longer had a contact for the patrol gunboat.
Coast Guard Cutter Thetis tried to raise the St.
Augustine by voice radio with no success, so Argo’s OOD
tried to contact the vessel by their talk-between-ship
system. The darkened tanker came to a stop and turned on all
of its running lights, an act prohibited during wartime in
U-boat infested waters. By this time, Argo’s OOD feared the
worst, called Winslow for assistance and ordered Argo’s crew
to general quarters.
Winslow swung into action as soon as he stepped on the bridge. He
ordered a course change straight for the unidentified vessel
brightly illuminated in the heavy seas dead ahead. He also ordered
the signalman to communicate with the vessel by blinker to find out
what had happened. After repeated queries, the tanker blinked back
“survivors to the left of you.” After several more unanswered
signals, the tanker responded that it had rammed the escort and was
taking on water.
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U.S. Coast Guard Lt. j.g. Charles Eliot Winslow at sea aboard Coast
Guard Cutter Argo. Notice the forward 20mm cannon barrel located
under his arm. (Photo courtesy of the Winslow Family)
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After pounding through heavy seas for nearly 20 minutes,
Argo arrived at the scene of the disaster. The cutter’s crew
began sighting groups of survivors on life rafts and
individuals floating in the frigid water waving the red
lights attached to their life jackets. Winslow ordered
Argo’s searchlights activated and began navigating through
the wreckage to collect survivors. Winslow focused initial
efforts on saving those in life rafts and grouped together
in the water before the storm scattered them across the
wind-swept seas. Later, Argo located individual survivors
and, after that, threw lines over bodies to see if they
showed signs of life. If the bodies failed to react, Argo
moved on to search for survivors riding the heavy seas.
Argo remained on scene throughout the next day as Winslow and the
crew searched for more survivors. For his role in the St. Augustine
episode, Winslow received commendations from
Coast Guard Commandant Russell Waesche and
Navy Secretary James Forrestal. According to his Navy
Commendation, Winslow maneuvered “his ship through heavy winds and
debris-littered seas” with “outstanding tactical skill.” Argo had
rescued 23 of St. Augustine’s survivors, while Thetis accounted for
another seven. In addition, the search-and-rescue effort located 76
bodies out of the patrol gunboat’s total losses of 106 crewmembers.
Four of Winslow’s crewmembers received the Navy and Marine Corps
Medal for saving victims of the St. Augustine.
Winslow demonstrated his ship-handling skills a second time
during October’s 1944
Cuba-Florida Hurricane. The Category 4 hurricane whirled up from
the Equator in mid-October and churned off the Georgia coast by
October 19. It caught the Mexican tanker Juan Casiano 90 miles due
east of Savannah, severing the vessel into two parts and sending
them to the bottom. Only 21 of the ship’s 50 crewmembers found their
way to a battered lifeboat. They did their best to cling to the boat
as physical exhaustion and the storm’s fury peeled the victims away
one by one.
Argo arrived on scene a day after the sinking and, at 8 pm, the
cutter’s crew sighted flares illuminating the darkness over the
swamped lifeboat. While the cutter was located some distance from
the boat, Winslow skillfully maneuvered the 165-foot cutter through
the heavy seas to the survivors. Argo took on board 11 men suffering
from shock and exposure. The rest of the original 21 survivors had
perished in the hurricane over the course of the previous day.
Winslow commenced a box search in the heavy seas to check for the
others with no success. In the commendation for the Juan Casiano
rescue, Commandant Russell Waesche cited Winslow for his
“outstanding ability and devotion to duty.” Between the St.
Augustine and Juan Casiano rescues, Winslow, his crew and Argo had
saved 34 desperate mariners and given them a second chance at life.
Winslow and Argo went their separate ways after the war. The
Coast Guard experienced a dramatic decrease in personnel levels,
forcing the service to retire cutters such as Argo. At first, the
service mothballed the cutter at
Coast
Guard Station Cape May; however, by 1948, the service had
decommissioned the cutter and sold it in 1955. By 1959, New York
City’s Circle Line Sightseeing Tours purchased Argo and the vessel
began a second fruitful career as the Sightseer XII.
Winslow had found within himself a natural, almost instinctive,
pre-disposition for command at sea. Yet, after the war ended, he was
ready to go home. In a letter to his command, he wrote, “If the Argo
. . . is scheduled to fight the wintry blasts alone all winter, my
answer is ‘Get me off.’ One winter upside down was enough for me. It
took me three weeks to regain the full use of my feet!” Having
served the entire war on the high seas, Charles Eliot Winslow moved
to Southport, Maine, near his family home. There he established a
successful tugboat business and summer cruise line in the Boothbay
area and he named his tourboat the Argo.
By William H. Thiesen, Atlantic Area Historian, USCG
Provided
through
Coast
Guard
Copyright 2017
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