Vanishing Colliers
5 DECEMBER 1940
VANISHING COLLIERS
The steam engine revolutionized naval architecture by freeing sea travel from slavery to the wind. But steam engines require a source of heat to make steam, and for decades around the turn of the 20th century that heat was generated by burning coal. The job of supplying coal to the far-flung ships of the US Navy fell to a special flotilla of cargo ships, the colliers. We had 24 such colliers in commission at the outbreak of WWI. All bore the names of Greek and Roman mythological figures associated with the sea. Twelve of these colliers were general cargo ships simply employed to carry coal, and twelve were purpose-built, having specific coal handling and coal safety equipment. USS PROTEUS (AC-9) and NEREUS (AC-10) were sisters in this latter group, both commissioned into service in 1913. With the US entry into World War I in 1917, both carried coal and supplies to US Navy ships in European waters. Then, as part of post-WWI downsizing, NEREUS and PROTEUS were decommissioned in 1922 and 1924 respectively. Both lay quietly in reserve in the James River ghost fleet.
It was during WWI that another of the Navy’s purpose-built colliers, USS CYCLOPS, touched at Barbados on a return voyage from Rio de Janeiro, where she had coaled British warships to the thanks of our State Department. Upon departing Barbados, CYCLOPS was lost without a trace in what would later become the infamous “Bermuda Triangle.”
In the 1920s, our Navy began the conversion from coal to more efficient oil-burning boilers. We found we no longer needed the once-busy colliers by the late 1930s. On this date, both NEREUS and PROTEUS were struck from the Naval Vessels Register and sold to Saguenay Terminals, Ltd., a Canadian shipping firm based in Ottawa. Saguenay retained their US names and converted these ships to carry bauxite (aluminum ore). Proteus departed St. Thomas in the Caribbean on 23 November 1941 fully loaded, followed just over two weeks later by the similarly laden Nereus. Neither ship was ever seen again.
Their course would have taken them through the same area in which CYCLOPS had been lost three decades earlier. Contemporary presumptions held that both had fallen to sabotage or to German U-boats then active in the Atlantic. However, records captured after the war indicate no U-boat attacks were made in this area at this time. Such news might engender Bermuda Triangle fanaticism however the most plausible theory suggests that nearly twenty years in mothballs allowed acid corrosion from coal dust to weaken the colliers’ frames. This predisposed the freighters to catastrophic hull collapse in rough seas.
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 12 DEC 24
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
Department of the Navy. “World War I Era Colliers–Organized by Type.” Naval Historical Center on-line. AT: http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/onlinelibrary/photos/usnshtp/ac/w1ac-1.htm, retrieved 21 April 2012.
Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 2 “C-F”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, p. 226.
Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 5 “N-Q”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1979, pp. 45, 394.
Grover, David H. “Strange Mystery of the Vanished Sister Ships.” Sea Classics, Vol 39 (11), November 2006, pp. 18-24, 46-47.
Naval Museum of Manitoba. “Canadian WWII Merchant Ship Losses.” AT: http://www.naval-museum.mb.ca/merch/mership.htm, retrieved 21 April 2012.
