The first shot of World War Two to be fired in the United States was 75 years ago today, on December 19, 1939. On that day, the merchant ship Arauca sailed into Port Everglades, Florida, flying the Nazi flag. Just off the Hillsboro Lighthouse, the British cruiser HMS Orion was pursuing the Auraca and signaled for the Arauca to proceed into international waters. Not surprisingly, the Arauca’s captain did not heed the message. The British ship then fired a shot across her bow from not more than 12 miles away from the U.S. coast. This was a violation of U.S. neutrality, but there’s no record of any protest having been filed. The captain of the Arauca sailed the ship into the U.S. port. The Orion remained in the area for a few days, but when it disappeared, the Auraca‘s crew was seen painting the ship grey, preparing to make a run for it in the next fog.
But the Auraca never left port under its own steam. What the Royal Navy attempted to do was instead accomplished by American lawyers.
The Auraca had been sailing from Veracruz to New Orleans. She was on her maiden voyage, having sailed to Havana prior to the outbreak of hostilities. After the war started, despite the captain’s request to return to Germany, she was sent to Veracruz.
The Auraca was carrying a cargo of sugar, and about a dozen German passengers returning to Germany from Mexico. She was also carrying fuel that was thought to be in excess of her own needs, leading to speculation that she was an auxiliary military vessel tasked with refueling German warships. This was a critical distinction, because if she were deemed to be an auxiliary, she would be allowed in port for only 24 hours. It turned out, however, that this determination was never made, because the U.S. civil courts saw to it that the vessel would never again see service to Germany.
The ship’s presence in Ft. Lauderdale was quite a tourist attraction. In addition to those along the Florida coast who witnessed the shot across the bow, thousands flocked to Ft. Lauderdale to see the Nazi ship sitting at the dock.
The morning after the Auraca‘s arrival, a libel action was brought in the U.S. District Court in Florida. The Imperial Sugar Company of Galveston, Texas, filed the suit against the ship’s owner, the Hamburg-American Line, for damages for breach of contract for an earlier transaction predating the war. Other claimants followed suit, and eventually claims of over $138,000 had been filed, in addition to the Port’s claim for docking fees. To release the ship, the owners would have to post bond of more than $277,000, which never happened. The ship became a permanent fixture in Ft. Lauderdale.
Most of the passengers and crew were forced to remain aboard the ship. The captain and officers were initially allowed into the town of Ft. Lauderdale, and the captain was quite willing to give interviews to the many U.S. reporters who pursued him.
The ship and crew, basically imprisoned aboard the ship, remained until March 20, 1941, when President Roosevelt arrived at Port Everglades for a fishing trip. From aboard his presidential yacht, anchored just yards from the German ship, he was upset when he “caught sight of a Nazi flag fluttering over American soil.” Before the end of the month, 60 ship seizures, including the Arauca, took place under the Espionage Act, on the grounds that the vessels posed a threat to American harbors.
The Justice Department then obtained arrest warrants against the entire crew on the grounds that the crewmen, imprisoned in the ship, had actually overstayed their visas. The Coast Guard arrested the crew and replaced the Swastika with Old Glory. The crew was later transported to the Broward County Jail, then to the Dade County Jail, and finally to Ellis Island. They were still at Ellis Island when the U.S. joined the war, and the men were interned at the Fort Lincoln Internment Camp in North Dakota.
The litigation surrounding the ship dragged on until well after the war was over. The ship was eventually sold, and the proceeds held in trust for the various claimants. A 1949 decision, Suns Insurance Office v. Arauca Fund, 84 F. Supp. 516 (D.C. Fla. 1949), involved the computation of damages for contracts payable in reichsmarks. Since the reichsmarks were “worthless in terms of dollars” at the time of the deicision, that claimant got nothing. The attorneys didn’t fare much better, in what appears to be the final reported decision of the case, United States v. Knauth, 183 F.2d 874 (C.A. 5 1950). In that decision, the Fifth Circuit held that the prevailing attorneys did not have a lien against the vessel, since their cause of action actually arose out of a claim involving a different vessel.
The ship itself was purchased in 1941 from the U.S. Maritime Commission by the South Atlantic Steamship Company of Savannah, Georgia, which towed the ship to Mobile and renamed her the Sting. After such a long period of disuse, the ship was in need of extensive repairs and was eventually handed back to the U.S. Government. In April 1942 the ship, now named the USS Saturn, was in the hands of the U.S. Navy. She suffered numerous mechanical problems, but operated along the East Coast and to Carribean bases such as Trinidad and Guantanamo. She made one transatlantic crossing to England in 1943, and trips later in the war to the Mediterranean, Iceland, and the Carribean. She was decommissioned in 1946, but held in reserve until 1972 when she was sold to a Spanish firm for scrap.
References
Note: In many sources, the name of the ship is incorrectly reported as the Aranca. This appears to have originated in typographical errors in many newspaper accounts in 1939. The ship was intended for trade with South America, and was given the name of the Arauca River of Colombia and Venezuela.
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