Entering New York Harbor (Photo courtesy of Capt. Tom Ellsworth Copyright © 2003-2004 - All rights reserved. Do not reproduce. If anyone wants copies, please email Tom at tbells@cox.net.)

Mooremack Rescue

("The Mooremack News," October 1948)

(Courtesy of Vincent Fiorenza)

We at Mooremack have good reason to be proud of the Mormacoak and her crew. According to a report from the U. S. Embassy in Athens, Greece, the Mormacoak saved the lives of four Greek seamen, survivors of the coastal vessel, Costasa, which sank in a storm off the Peloponnese peninsula on September 25.  Of the 19 persons aboard, including three women and two children passengers, the four seamen were believed to be the only survivors.

Captain Philip M. Slavin, master of the Mormacoak, related that he had delivered five thousand tons of AMAG wheat at Corfu and was en route to Salonika to discharge four thousand tons more when his ship encountered the four surviving sailors almost four miles off Cape Malea.  At six o’clock Sunday morning (September 26) the deck officer on the Mormacoak sighted a man in the water.  A line was thrown and the man pulled aboard. Circling about, they found two others clinging to wreckage.

Meanwhile, the British ship Llancollen picked up a fourth man.  Since the Llancollen was bound for England, it transferred the man to the Mormacoak.  The survivors were taken to Salonika where they were hospitalized, suffering from exposure and extreme exhaustion.

Captain Slavin told the United States Information Service that the survivors described the Costasa as a motor ship carrying a heavy cargo.  In a heavy sea it was lifted by a surge wave, then slid into the trough of the wave and "just kept going down."  That was at 8:30 Saturday night.  It was ten hours later when the first of the four survivors was picked up by the Mormacoak.  The second and third were rescued an hour later and then the fourth was transferred from the Llancollen.  The Mormacoak spent over five hours circling the area and searching for other survivors, but nothing was seen but wreckage.

At Salonika, the Mormacoak’s crew purchased clothes from ship’s stores for the four survivors before they were transported by ambulance to the hospital.

We are sure that everyone joins us in congratulating Captain Slavin and his men on a job well done.