The Setting

High above the cold, wind-driven waves of the Irish Sea, sitting atop rocky vertical cliffs on a southern peninsula with the odd name of the Mull of Oa on the Scottish island of Islay, a forgotten stone monument fashioned in the shape of a lighthouse.  The American Red Cross erected the monument in 1920 to honor the memory of those who died in two separate troopship sinkings – the Tuscania and the Otranto – off the coast of Islay.  Designed by a Glasgow architect as a monumental cairn recognizing the importance of those dead in the cold waters off Islay. Most who see the monument see a lighthouse peering into the dark and icy seas. America intertwined with Islay.

Most visitors to the Inner Hebridean island of Islay today come for the whisky.  The island peats have made the island famous for the smoky elixirs of Ardbeg, Lagavulin, Bowmore, Laphroiag, Bruichladdich and others.  Visit the American monument and normally you have the site to yourself.  And what a magnificent site it is, as vistas go on forever with trees long gone.  Winds whip across the open landscapes. This is not the only place where Islay and America intersect though.

Atlantic Ferry

In the short time the United States fought in the First World War with over two million American soldiers shipped across the “Atlantic Ferry” to Europe. The human cost of the massive effort remained low. The ‘Ferry” lost only three ships with three torpedoed and another sinking during a storm.  Two of those ship incidents occurred here off the coasts of Islay.  Of the men coming across, 46% came on American ships, including German liners interned in 1914 in American ports. The rest were ferried across on British or Commonwealth vessels. 

One of those ships was the 14,324-ton Tuscania, a part of the British Anchor Line, a subsidiary of the Cunard Line.  The ship transformed from a passenger ship into a troopship. The Tuscania carried many Canadian soldiers across the Atlantic before America entered the war.

The Tuscania sets off

The Tuscania with a British crew of 384 men was part of convoy HYX-20 which consisted of three troopships and eight other freighters – Canadian troops on other ships. Travelling east from Halifax on 27 January 1918, HYX-20 was led by British cruiser HMS Cochrane as a leading guardian escort.  The Tuscania was second in line behind the Baltic in the convoy. Early in 1917, General Pershing had come across the Atlantic in the Baltic.  On 4 February, the convoy met eight British destroyers, there to guide through dangerous home waters of the United Kingdom as they headed on the final leg to Liverpool. 

2013 American soldiers, mostly from the 6^th Battalion 20^th Engineers – Companies C, D, E, F and Headquarters – were aboard the Tuscania. Others aboard included three AEF Aero Squadrons – the 100^th, the 158^th and 213^th – and other replacement soldiers. 

The 6^th Battalion 20^th Engineers were forestry troops sent to supply lumber for the American Expeditionary Force.  Timber needs for Allied war efforts on the Western Front had to be found in France and the United Kingdom because ships crossing the Atlantic were already filled with troops and no room was left over for lumber.  750 of the men had experience in logging and sawmill operations. The Pacific Northwest provided 600 of the men with many from out of the Forestry Service. Already in France was the 2^nd Battalion 20^th Engineers. Comprised of Northwesterners and known as the Native Son Battalion.

Sinking of the Tuscania off Islay

The Tuscania suffered a hit by the second of two torpedoes at 5:45 pm on February 5 fired from the German submarine U-77 commanded by Kapitanleutnant Wilhelm Meyer.  The torpedo hit the Tuscania near the boiler room amidships on the starboard side with none of the 39 men stoking the boilers surviving. 

Several lifeboats disappeared in ensuing explosions as the ship started listing to starboard.  Only twelve of the thirty, successfully launched.  Within an hour of the hit, the lifeboats were away all gone. One American officer estimated half of the dead came from problems involved with launching the lifeboats. One lifeboat dropped on top of another, crushing the men in the boat below. A couple other lifeboats tilted awkwardly as they lowered, and all aboard to dump into the sea.  Many men in the sea died smashed between the hulls of the boats and the liner.

With lifeboats all away, the stricken ship still had another 1,350 men aboard. Three destroyers came alongside the sinking ship, removing most of the remaining men just before the ship sank around 10 pm. It was four hours after the initial attack.

Northwestern Connections – America to Islay

Destroyers, trawlers and smaller local fishing boats picked up survivors in lifeboats or bobbing in the cold seas over the next several hours in the darkness.  Three lifeboats ended up on the rocks of the Islay cliffs.  One lifeboat, with sixty men aboard, dashed against the rocky cliffs and only eight survived.  Percy A. Stevens, a former timber worker from Bend, Oregon, had enlisted in the 6^th Battalion. He was one among the drowned.

James Gurnsey and his brother Stephen, both of Glide, Oregon, had also enlisted into the 6^th.  James was sick in the infirmary at the time of the attack. Placed in one of the lifeboats, he died later, as a result of exposure. James was the first University of Oregon graduate to die in the face of enemy action.

There were nine graduates of Oregon Agriculture College – Oregon State University today – aboard. They managed to get off the ship on an early lifeboat surviving the long night.

Roy Muncaster

Private Roy Muncaster was a 26-year-old forest ranger working recently in the Quinault District of the Olympic Forest.  Originally from Colorado where his emigrant English parents had settled, in 1917, he graduated from the University of Washington in forestry. 

Roy and his friend, Sergeant Everett Harpham, worked with others in the first hour after the attack, helping to launch the lifeboats.  Then, sliding down ropes of the last of the boats to launch, they joined twenty other men.  Their boat was but another crashing upon the rocks. Thrown into the sea, Harpham heard Muncaster’s final words as “Cheer up Harp, we’ll get the Kaiser yet!”  Harpham and four others were able to reach a high rock sticking up out of the sea. Locals later plucked them off from the rock. Muncaster’s body was, but one of the 166 from America washing up on the shores of Islay in the next days.

Aftermath of Tragedy

The bodies of those who could be found were gathered into one of four hastily established cemeteries scattered around the Mull of Oa peninsula, . The victims buried in canvas in the absence of wood on the island for caskets.  Several women of Port Ellen sewed a large American flag together in order to cover the bodies of those buried at the nearby cemetery at Kilnaughton just across the bay.  The flag is today part of the collection at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. 5 February 1918 was the largest one day loss of life off Islay for America since the Civil War, but there were other worse days ahead.

Surviving soldiers from the Tuscania gathered together and transferred to Winchester, England with the 6^th Battalion finally reaching France on 24 March. Deploying to southwestern France near the Spanish border, they operated three sawmills until a month before Armistice. The battalion then turned those millworks over to British and German POW workers and shifted north to work three other mills. Working in 10-hour shifts, their mission continued well past 11 November. 

14 May 1919, the battalion gathered together from their different locations in order to sail back west on the Santa Paula, a ship of the Grace Line. Back in New York two weeks later, shortly afterwards, the men were discharged. In another war, 1943, the same Santa Paula would sink at the hands of a Japanese submarine.

Story of the HMS Otranto

The waters of Islay provided more cause for grief for America as yet another troopship sank along the shores later in the year – 6 October.  The Otranto converted from a passenger liner to an armed merchant vessel at the beginning of the war. Early in the war, off Chile, a continent away, Rear Admiral Sir Christopher Craddock gathered together a small fleet in an effort to find possible German ships active in the region. The Otranto, was a part of that fleet.  As a converted passenger liner, the Otranto was four knots slower than the other British warships of this fleet. The slower speed is a major problem during a potential fight when fighting as a part of a fleet battle line because the battle line of a fleet is only as fast as its slowest participant.

The little fleet found the East Asia Squadron of Vice Admiral Maximillian von Spee late in the afternoon of 1 November 1914 off the coast of Chile and the Battle of Coronel ensued.  Taking fire from the German cruisers, the captain of the Otranto took her out of the battle line so as not to be an anchor to the rest of the British ships.  She and the light cruiser Glasgow were the only British survivors of the battle.

Storm Victim

Converted into a troopship in 1918, the Otranto was making her second voyage across the Atlantic.  She collided with another liner, the Kashmir, during a storm with heavy seas.  As a result, the Kashmir rammed the Otranto amidships. The Kashmir survived, limping to Glasgow with her load of troops, but the Otranto lost both power and steering. Drifting at the mercy of the storm, eventually the Otranto smashed onto the rocks of Islay sinking on the exact opposite side of the island from where the Tuscania had gone down. 

About a half hour after the collision with the Otranto aimlessly drifting, the destroyer Mounsey came alongside. In the heavy seas, she rescued 300 Americans, 266 of the Otranto’s crew and 30 French fishermen. The fishermen saved by the Otranto following an earlier accident off Newfoundland during the same convoy run.  The Mounsey suffered heavy damage during the rescue as a result of rubbing against the Otranto in the heavy seas. Overloaded, she managed to make it to nearby Belfast safely. 

Another tragedy for America off Islay

489 men were left aboard the Otranto after the Mounsey left.  Only 21 of these men were able to swim safely to shore, 17 were Americans, before the ship finally broke apart three hours following the collision.  Wreckage and bodies washed ashore in vast amounts with 470 men dying:  96 from the Otranto crew, 358 American soldiers and 6 French fishermen.

The dead were buried in a mass gravesite above the beach at Machir Bay. The ruins of the 19^th century Kilchoman parish church with a much older 14^th or 15^th century Celtic cross standing nearby. 

Repatriation

The cemetery at Kilchoman today holds 75 bodies – 73 off the Otranto – with 43 bodies of unknown sailors as a large empty ground stands today in the cemetery where American soldiers once lain.

British custom keeps soldiers and sailors buried near the scenes of their deaths, but American authorities allowed the repatriation of the dead to loved ones in the United States, if their families so desired.  Other American remains from Islay were transported to the American Battle Monument Commission’s cemeteries in England at Brookwood. 

The cemetery at Brookwood is the only American cemetery from World War One in Britain. There is a much larger cemetery at Cambridge for World War Two.  The 468 buried are surrounded by a much larger Brookwood Military Cemetery. Here over 5,000 men lie from the two wars including a large Canadian section.  Most of the dead of America in that cemetery come from the two Islay tragedies – here is the grave of Percy Stevens.  563 names are inscribed on the chapel walls. These names remember the bodies never recovered which are again, mostly from the two Ileach incidents.

Roy Muncaster stays behind

Roy Muncaster’s parents, back in America, requested his remains stay where he was first buried in the little cemetery across the bay from Port Ellen on Islay.  The cemetery, Kilnaughton CWGC, is maintained by the Commonwealth Wargrave Commission – CWGC.  There were another 84 Americans buried here, but today, only Roy, four Tuscania crewmen and one unidentified man rest in peace at Kilnaughton along with five others buried from World War Two.  A centennial remembrance those buried at Kilnaughton with a local piper intoned over the American’s grave.

WASHINGTON STATE MONUMENT

A memorial back in Roy’s adopted state of Washington stands, in order to remember the young man.  Rising high above Rustler Creek immediately north of the Quinault River valley deep in the Olympics, Muncaster Mountain, rises to 5,910 feet high – a little over 1801 meters. The mountain is right around the corner from the Enchanted Valley, certainly an appropriate realm for the spirit of a young forester to return to.

Postscript

Survivors of the Tuscania gathered together several times after the war. At one gathering in Chicago in 1933, Wilhelm Meyer of Saarbrucken, Germany attended as a guest.  He was the captain of the U-77 which sunk the Tuscania.  At the meeting, Meyer presented the submarine’s logbook to the Survivors Association a memory of their meeting in 1918.

Everett Harpham returned to Islay in 1955. After spending time contemplating the lonely monument on the cliffs above the moors of the Mull of Oa, he then saw his name already in the registry of the White Hart Hotel, one of two hotels in Port Ellen which took in survivors. The hotel is still there today, though under a different name.

America Remembered on Islay

In 1920, the American Red Cross erected this 429-foot – 131-meter-tall monument in honor of the America and her dead from the two ship disasters off of Islay. Just off the cliffs in the waters between here at Northern Ireland was where the Tuscania went down.

Inscribed on the monument are the words of the old Confederate Theodore O’Hara.   O’Hara wrote the elegy – “Bivouac of the Dead” – in memory of his fellow Kentuckians who fell in the Battle of Buena Vista in 1847 of the Mexican American War. Those words are found at every American veterans’ cemetery today, however no credit is given to O’Hara for their writing. In the first place, the words being there at all might seem a bit incongruous. Especially seeing which side O’Hara found himself on a few years after delivering the poem.

“On fame’s eternal camping ground
Their silent tents are spread,
      While Glory keeps with solemn round  
  The bivouac of the dead.”

Theodore o’Hara

This article was written originally for the Western Front Association – Pacific Coast Branch newsletter.