Before daylight on February 18, 1942, two American warships were breaking apart against the south coast of Newfoundland. Below ice-glazed cliffs, sailors clung to wreckage while surf rolled through fuel oil and sleet. There was no lifeboat station waiting, no helicopter coming, and no safe harbor within reach.
What came over those cliffs was a different kind of rescue service: miners with axes, fishermen with rope, women carrying blankets, and families willing to empty their cupboards for strangers. By the time the gale was finished, 203 men from USS Truxtun and USS Pollux were dead. But 186 were alive—and the people of St. Lawrence and Lawn had put their own lives between those sailors and the sea.
A Convoy Loses the Coast
Truxtun, a Clemson-class destroyer, and Pollux, a general stores ship, were bound for the U.S. naval base at Argentia with the destroyer USS Wilkes. A North Atlantic storm closed around the formation as it approached Newfoundland. In the darkness, with radio silence maintained and visibility wrecked by snow and spray, all three ships strayed toward a coast that offered almost no forgiveness.
Wilkes struck but backed free. The other two could not. Truxtun, carrying 156 men, grounded in Chambers Cove and began coming apart under repeated blows from the sea. About a mile and a half west, Pollux ran onto the rocks at Lawn Point with 233 aboard. The cliffs surrounding Chambers Cove rose roughly 400 feet, with only narrow strips of beach below. At Lawn Point, sheer walls and small ledges made escape just as cruel.
The ships were close to land in miles and desperately far from safety. Men who entered the water faced freezing surf, floating oil, and jagged rock. Others waited aboard as steel decks tilted and hulls split beneath them.
One Sailor Reaches the Mine
After 8 a.m., a half-frozen Truxtun sailor named Edward Bergeron reached the Iron Springs Mine near St. Lawrence. His news changed the day. The miners shut down operations, gathered ropes, axes, blankets, and food, and set out through the storm for Chambers Cove.
At the waterline, local men pushed into the surf and formed human chains to catch swimmers. On the cliff, rescuers hauled sailors upward over ice and stone. The work demanded the stubborn seamanship that coastal people know well: secure the line, keep your footing, and do the next necessary thing before the cold gets a vote.
The Iron Springs Mine dry house became an emergency ward. St. Lawrence women warmed the survivors, cleaned oil from their skin, found dry clothes, and served hot soup, tea, and coffee. Then families opened their homes. Everything came from the town itself—blankets off beds, food from cupboards, and clothing from closets.
Eight Men Walk Toward a Second Wreck
For hours, St. Lawrence did not know that Pollux had also gone down. When word reached Lawn around midday, eight men left with ropes and axes for a trek of roughly ten miles over hills and through thick woods. They arrived near sundown to find more than a hundred sailors packed onto an icy ledge above the rising water, with others sheltering farther along the coast.
The rescuers lowered a rope from the cliff and began pulling men up. Their hands blistered and bled, but stopping meant leaving sailors where the tide could take them. Reinforcements later arrived from St. Lawrence—including men who had already spent the day at Chambers Cove. By dawn, more than one hundred men had been raised from Lawn Point.
It is the same steady courage that runs through the Pea Island rescue led by Richard Etheridge and the tethered rescue swimmers of Escanaba: not a single dramatic gesture, but hard work repeated until every reachable person is ashore.
The Sailor Whose Life Changed Twice
Among the Truxtun survivors was Lanier Phillips, an 18-year-old Black mess attendant from Georgia. The U.S. Navy was segregated, and Phillips had known racism both at home and in uniform. Some Black sailors feared that white residents ashore might harm them. Phillips chose the water.
After reaching land and climbing the cliff, he was found in failing condition and carried toward the mine. Violet Pike helped warm him, then welcomed him into her family’s home. Phillips later said the respect and care he received in St. Lawrence transformed his sense of what his life could be.
He went on to challenge the Navy’s restrictions, become its first Black sonar technician, build a civilian career in ocean engineering, and march in the civil rights movement. The wreck nearly ended his life. The people who saved him helped change its course.
What the Gale Left Behind
The final toll was 110 dead from Truxtun and 93 from Pollux. Both wreck sites are now treated as war graves. For months, local residents helped recover the dead. After the war, the U.S. Navy returned recovered remains to the United States.
The rescue was not forgotten. In 1954, the United States presented St. Lawrence and Lawn with a hospital in gratitude. Today the wreck sites, Iron Springs Mine, and the surrounding coast form a recognized heritage landscape—an unforgiving stretch of rock that also marks one of the North Atlantic’s clearest lessons.
A sailor survives because a line holds. Sometimes the line is hemp. Sometimes it is a chain of people in freezing water. And sometimes it reaches across borders, uniforms, and generations, pulled hand over hand by people who refuse to let go.