Three hundred sixty-seven feet long and 5,680 tons heavy, the Dorchester was launched as a luxury passenger ship in 1926 by the Merchant and Miners Transportation Company of Baltimore. Advertised as the equal of the finest hotels, it could provide 300 passengers with the best of creature comforts and entertainment, including a casino, as it cruised the American east coast from Florida to New York.
By March 1942, German U-boats were destroying Allied ships in the north Atlantic, and our government was caught unprepared. The Dorchester, along with countless other vessels of a myriad of designs, purposes, conditions and ages was called into service. As a crowded troop carrier, the USAT Dorchester ferried servicemen, merchant seamen and civilian workers to their duties in the arctic — and strategic — wilderness of Greenland.
Their precious human cargo a favorite target of the stealthy U-boats, troop carriers were typically protected by a convoy. The evening of Feb. 2, 1943, the Greenland-bound USAT Dorchester with 902 aboard left Newfoundland with two other ships, escorted by three Coast Guard Cutters. At 12:55 a.m. the following morning, some 100 miles from its destination, the USAT Dorchester was struck amid ship by a torpedo fired deftly from U-223. Twenty-seven minutes later, the Dorchester slid beneath the Atlantic, taking many of its passengers with it.
Eventually 231 survivors were plucked from the icy waters, their survival seen as miracle after miracle. Of those miracles recounted through the years, many are known to be the result of the selfless heroism of four clergymen now often referred to as “The Four Chaplains.”
By God’s providence, the four were assigned to the USAT Dorchester on its last cruise: Lt. George L. Fox, a Methodist minister; Lt. Alexander D. Goode, a rabbi; Lt. John P. Washington, a Catholic priest; and Lt. Clark V. Poling, a Dutch Reformed minister. The four had already formed a bond during a hurried chaplains’ school at Harvard and were pleased to be together on the Dorchester. With uncommon charism and talent, they formed a dynamic team that gave comfort and courage to frightened young men more than aware of the dangers lurking in the Atlantic in early 1943.
When the torpedo hit early on Feb. 3, they sprang into action, guiding the men through the darkness to deck and lifeboats, encouraging them calmly and at times firmly to follow orders and abandon ship. Topside, they distributed lifejackets to men who had none, and when the lifejackets ran out, the chaplains removed their own and gave them away. “It was the finest thing I have seen or hope to see this side of heaven,” said survivor John Ladd. Testimony from others recounts that as the ship sank, the chaplains were arm-in-arm, braced against the slanting deck; through the darkness they could be heard praying, each in his own tradition.
My sister, Sister Marian, a Dominican of the Congregation of St. Cecilia in Nashville, tells me that Father John Washington was the nephew of Sister Ann Washington of their community. The older sisters remember him bounding up the front steps when he visited and playing the piano to entertain them. Sister Margaret Mary recalls that her blood sister, Sister Joseph Marie, was sent with Sister Ann to be with Father Washington’s mother when word came that he was lost at sea.
All four chaplains were posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and Purple Heart in 1944. The Special Medal for Heroism was authorized by Congress and posthumously awarded by the President in 1961 — the only time the award has ever been given. In 1998 a resolution sailed unanimously through the House and Senate to designate Feb. 3 as Four Chaplains Day.
The Four Chaplains are memorialized across the country in numerous ways, including stained glass windows at the Pentagon, the Washington National Cathedral, and St. Stephen Church in Kearny, N.J., where Father Washington served as assistant pastor. The lobby of a public school named for Rabbi Goode in York, Pa., features a mural with the likenesses of the chaplains and an inscription from the prophet Malachi in Hebrew, Latin and English:
Have we not all one Father?
Hath not one God created us?
Why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother,
by profaning the covenant of our fathers? (2:10)
I recommend reading “No Greater Glory — The Four Immortal Chaplains and the Sinking of the Dorchester in World War II” by Dan Kurzman. Faith and Values Media has also produced an inspiring documentary about the chaplains.
As we mark Four Chaplains Day this Feb. 3, let’s pray that people of faith around the world will unite as the chaplains did to bring peace and comfort to all in danger and fear.
Do you have an intention for Bishop Sartain’s prayer? If so, send it to him at Bishop Sartain’s Prayer List, Diocese of Little Rock, 2500 North Tyler St., P.O. Box 7239, Little Rock, AR 72217.
’Four Chaplains’ offer lessons in heroism
