Dear Sir, I am the Director of Research for the
WFI Research Group
and have a strange tale that your page may be able to help with.
For the past two years I have been attempting to identify the remains
of an unknown US Navy enlisted man buried in the island cemetery in Newport RI. The sorry part about the case is that there is a family out there somewhere that may be under the impression that he is a deserter while in fact he is an accident victim. If you would be interested in adding a memorial page to your site concerning the events surrounding this individual, let me know. There is an outside chance that someone may recognize him.
Sincerely, Ted Darcy
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Ted Darcy PO Box 231 Fall River, MA 02724 508-675-5956 wreck1@cntn.net
Unknown Sailor
1) Background:
The USS Gherardi (DD-637) was commissioned on 15 September 1942 at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. After trial runs and shakedown training out of Casco Bay, ME the ship travelled to the Naval Operating Base, Newport RI, where it was moored to the pier at the Torpedo Station Annex, Coddington Cove on the night of 1-2 December 1942. Shortly after midnight, on 2 December 1942, two motor whaleboats assigned to the ship departed Government Landing in Newport to return sailors on liberty to the ship. The four mile trip should have taken thirty minutes. The second boat made it safely back to the ship, while the first swamped and capsized enroute. Of the seventeen men aboard the capsized whaleboat, only two survived the icy waters of Narragansett Bay. Those aboard were;
NAME RATE Serial# Home Of Record
Carter,Emory C. Jr. MM1c 2618494 Hollywood, CA
Dinkheller,Melvin R. CEM 3250141 San Diego, CA
Fishwick,Ralph B. EM1c 3367960 Cuba, MO
Harkins,Donnie S. WT1c 1707867 Grand Rapids, MI
Harris,Lester F. F1c 6280516 Dunlap, KS
Hinson,Lee J.* S2c 5658282 Oakboro, NC
Huffstetler,Jacob C. S2c 6568311 Kings Mountain, NC
Kelly,James B. Jr.* F2c 5561573 Jacksonville, FL
Lukaszewicz,Edward W. M2c 6663348 Easthampton, MA
Jacobs,James A. F3c 5561631 Arlington, GA
Johnson,Raymond S. S1c 2917476 Fort Wayne, IN
Joyner,Cecil C. S1c 5561577 Jacksonville, FL
Martin,Donald E. S2c 6267047 Selma, IN
Martin,Wilbur E. F1c 6601820 Cody, WY
Sasser,Cody R. S2c 6369415 Barbour, AL
Shaul,Jack M. S2c 6267137 New Lisbon, IN
Wallace,Ward B. MM1c 2581725 Paden City, WV
*-Survivor. When dawn broke on the morning of 3 December, the bodies of five of the victims were found along the southeastern shore of Conanicut Island about two miles north of Jamestown, RI. The remains were those of Donald Martin, Sasser, Lukaszewicz, Wallace and Huffstetler.
Over the next eight months, eight additional bodies were recovered. They were Carter, Dunkheller, Fishwick, Harkins, Harris, Jacobs and Wilbur Martin. This left only the bodies of Johnson, Joyner and Shaul unaccounted for.
At 2:15pm on 10 August 1943 a body was recovered from the waters of Narragansett Bay The body was removed to the Dunphy Funeral Parlor where it was determined by a Navy Medical Officers, Lt.(jg)David B. Weisman USNR Medical Corps and Lt.(jg) Alden K. Boyd, USNR Medical Corps, to be that of an unidentified Navy enlisted man. No autopsy was performed but the physical characteristics of the corpse were recorded. The body was interred in the Navy plot at the Island Cemetery in Newport in an unmarked grave.
It is the thirteenth and final body that was recovered that this report deals with.
2) Discovery
In early November, 1995, while conducting a survey of the British and Canadian aviators that are buried in the Navy Plot at the Island Cemetery, I came across an unmarked grave. A check of the cemetery office records revealed that the grave contained the remains of an unknown Navy enlisted man. Virginia Sampson, President of the Island Cemetery, gracefully provided what little information she had from the Cemetery records. They did show the date of interment, funeral director, place of death and gave the name as Unknown Navy Enlisted Man.
The next step was to obtain a copy of the death certificate. This was done on 17 November 1995 when I visited the Newport Town Hall. I was helped by an assistant in the Town Clerks office, (name withheld), who also provided me with an interesting story. She stated that after the war, the office had received several letters concerning the unknown. My request to view this correspondence was denied. On a later followup visit, I was assisted by Evelyn Smith, the Town Clerk, who searched high and low to find the "correspondence" with negative results. Ms. Smith then queried the clerk that had helped me but she denied the story. (In hindsight this would prove interesting. If the "correspondence" did exist and I had been allowed to view it, many months of research and the expenditure of thousands of dollars could probably have been avoided.)
This was followed by submitting an application for a government headstone. The headstone was furnished by the Department of Veteran Affairs and was installed in August 1996. Although the marker was furnished by the government at no expense, foundation fees ($100) were not covered by the Department.
After applying to various veteran organizations for financial assistance to cover the installation expenses, all with negative results, I wrote to the Commanding Officer of Newport Naval Base, Capt. Ronald C. Vogel for his assistance in this matter. I was informed by telephone by Mrs. Aggie Goodson, Capt Vogel's secretary, that there was no funding available to cover the expense of headstone installation.
On her own initiative, Mrs. Goodson relayed to Robert Stevens, V.F.W. Post 4487 Commander, Middletown, RI, the financial dilemma I was faced with. Commander Stevens quickly won approval from the Board of Directors at the Post to provide the funding for the foundation fees.
Because of the apathetic attitude displayed by Captain Vogel, I became determined to identify the unknown remains because I now felt the next of kin had been subjected to the same attitude 54 years ago.
3) Research
The beginnings of the process involved correspondence with various agencies including The National Archives, Regional Archives, Naval War College, Navy Historical Center, National Personnel Records Center, Total Army Personnel Command, Federal Bureau of Investigation and visits to Newport Historical Society and Newport Police Department, all of which proved negative.
These initial requests were for any information pertaining to the case but there was little to go on. I was beginning to find out just how difficult it is to find information on someone that doesn't have a name.
By November 1996, I decided to write to The Assistant Chief of Naval Personnel to discuss this case and others that had already been completed. A polite return letter from one of the staff members in his office directed me to the Memorial Affairs Branch which could only confirm that they knew about the unknown.
As a last resort, I contacted the Chaplains Review Board in Virginia. One of the senior members of the Board (name withheld) responded and offered assistance. We both agreed that the remains could be those of a deserter that was never recovered. We discussed various options and the way we would proceed. The two areas of research that he would handle would be the Naval Investigative Service (NIS) and the Judge Advocate Generals (JAG) office. I in turn would go to the National Archives at College Park and review the FBI Deserter files which had recently been declassified. A review of the FBI files and several areas by Dianne Cantin and myself all proved fruitless.
After several weeks, communication with the Chaplain slowed down. When I was finally able to contact him, he relayed that the NIS files did not go back that far and the the JAG held nothing about the case. After several months of no further contact, I decided to check on these two items for myself.
The chaplain's statement about the NIS files proved to be accurate, but a letter to the JAG office was responed to by Captain G.C. Paad in November 1997, who also provided a complete manuscript of the Manual of the Judge Advocate General final investigative report concerning the recovered unidentified body. This report showed that the only sailors known to be lost in Narragansett Bay as of August 1943 were three missing crewmen from the USS Gherardi.
An Internet search of Veteran Organizations during December 1997 revealed that the USS Gherardi had an active organization. I contacted Richard L. Herr, President of the organization, and explained the situation to him. He happily provided me with copies of the original Investigation, which contained a detailed account of the incident.
It was at this point that I felt reasonably sure that the unknown buried in Newport was one of the three missing sailors from the USS Gherardi whaleboat.
Now that the names of the missing men were available things became alot easier. First was a review of the American Battle Monument Commission Register which showed the names of Shaul and Joyner as missing. Johnson's name was absent which can only be accounted for by the fact that his body was found after August 1943 or there is an administrative error somewhere in the reporting system.
The next was to obtain the Individual Deceased Personnel Files from the Army. They contained little information but were provided. Of interest is that the Army had declared both sets of remains Non-recoverable while in fact the Navy had already recovered one of them.
The next step was to obtain physical descriptions of the missing men for comparison to the physical description provided by Drs. Weisman and Boyd at the time the body was recovered. The results were obtained from the National Personnel Records Center during January 1998. They were;
NAME HEIGHT WEIGHT EYES HAIR COLOR COMPLEXION
Shaul 5'5 1/2" 111 Blue Brown White Ruddy
Johnson 5'6" 129 Brown Lt Brown " "
Joyner 5'9" 125 1/2 Blue Lt Brown " "
Doctor Boyd's description of the body recovered is verbatium from his testimony and the Board of Investigation.
"I was ordered by the Executive Officer to go to Dunphy's to attempt and identification of a body fished out of the bay. On arrival at Dunphy's I viewed a torso without arms, thorax or head, which was clad in a leather jumper, a dark blue or black jumper, navy style trousers, low shoes, black socks and galoshes. Also white underwear, shorts, of which little remained. We proceeded to remove his clothing, in the course of which $1.51 in coins was found in the pocket of the leather jacket or jumper. A number of letters on the lower inside rear edge of the jumper which had the appearance of a W, another letter which was undefined and then M O O R E, but due to the wetness and indefinite outlines of the letters I would be unwilling to state that these are definitely the letters on his trousers. A Navy clothing label was found on the upper right side of the trousers and in one of the pockets a celuloid comb. No dog tag or identification card or papers were found. The remains consisted of those below the level of the belt, approximately the lumbar vertebrae. The skin of the anterior abdominal wall was essentially intact and the skin of the inner surface of the thighs and legs was intact also. Save for numerous deep transverse fissures elsewhere the skin was macerated or entirely missing. I would say the genital organs were those of a male. No scars or tattooes or other marks of identification were found on the skin. The appendix was also present."
From the doctor's description there is little doubt that the body had been dressed for winter weather at the time of his demise. It should be pointed out that without fingerprints, dental work, identifying scars or tattoos or papers of any kind a positive identification could not be made.
Doctor Weisman's testimony stated that he estimated the height of the body during life to be "5 feet 10 or 11".
After two days of testimony, the Board of Investigation submitted the following report;
FINDING OF FACTS
1. That the body was taken from the waters of Narragansett Bay at about 2:15 p.m. on August 10, 1943.
2. That the body was in a greatly decomposed condition, both arms, thorax and head missing.
3. That the body was clothed in regulation naval clothing, consisting of undress blue jumper, trousers equipped with naval buttons, blue denim coveralls, slicker, overshoes and leather jacket.
4. That at the time this body was recovered, the bodies of three naval personnel lost in the waters of Narragansett Bay on or about December 2, 1942 remained unrecovered.
The Board also offered the following opinions;
1. The board, from a view of the body and from the evidence before it, is of the opinion that the body is that of an enlisted person in the naval service.
2. The board, from a view of the body and from the evidence before it, is unable to determine the identity of the body.
Based on the height estimate alone there would be little doubt that the remains in the unknown grave are those of Cecil C. Joyner, Seaman 1st Class, but is insufficient for a positive ID. Only DNA testing can confirm the fact, but to accomplish the testing you need a DNA sample to match it against. This can be furnished by the next of kin.
Newspaper accounts at the time of the accident showed Joyner's home town to be Jacksonville, FL. A fax provided by the National Personnel Records Center showed he was married at the time of his death, with the next of kin listed as Elizabeth Katherine Barnes Joyner. Information on possible children or brothers and sisters has not yet been received, although it has been requested.
Various attempts to contact surviving family members have thus far proved negative. However, the search will continue.
NOTES:
1) Ship's History-USS Gherardi (DD-637)
2) Record of Proceedings-Court of Inquiry dtd 3 December 1942
3) Newport Daily News-Clippings covering the event
4) Board of Investigation Proceedings dtd 11 Aug 1943
5) State of Rhode Island Death Certificate
6) State of Rhode Island Public Health Department Death Listing
7) Application for Veteran Headstone
8) Ltr to Admiral Marsh-Asst. Chief of Naval Personnel
9) Ltr from Admiral Marsh's Office
10) Individual Deceased Personnel Files-Joyner and Shaul
11) Ltr to Captain Vogel-Commanding Officer NETTC Newport
12) Ltr from Bureau of Naval Personnel- Physical descriptions
13) FAX from National Personnel Record Center
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