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 Author  Topic: Final Death of a German E Boat......
Don Millman

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message     View Profile of Don Millman   Send Email To Don Millman Posted on: Feb 4, 2011 - 2:25pm
A little of topic, but interesting

From the Pamlico News Wednesday Feb. 2, 2011:

1968 The Oriental:The Fishing Vessel
A Coast Guard helicopter safety airlifted Elmo Lupton and his crew, Leo Gibbs and James Lee Whitney, from the doomed vessel.

The Way It Was
By Jim Ragan

At 82 feet long, she stood out among the others, and she had the namesake to confirm her stature and importance. Unlike the other, smaller fishing boats in the harbor, the “Oriental” ventured well beyond the confines of North Carolina’s inland waters. She was a traveling lady who spent much of her time away from home.
During the shrimp season, she would work the Pamlico Sound and off the coast of North Carolina, but at other times she’d head north to fish in the Atlantic Ocean from Virginia northward to the New England coast.
It was a special occasion when she, and the bigger boats that later joined her, returned home from up north. Sometimes she’d return with 800 to 900 boxes of fish, and it would take two days to unload her. I remember one time when my father came home with lobsters he had gotten down at the dock. (After eating the lobsters, we decided that hard crabs were better.)
The Oriental had an interesting background. It was a German military boat that was seized by the US Government during World War II. In 1949,Garland Fulcher acquired the boat, but discovered that it could not be used as a fishing vessel because of its foreign registry.
According to Bill Mason in “The Life and Times of Bill Mason,” Garland got Congressman Graham A. Barden to introduce a bill so the Oriental could be used for commercial fishing. A law was passed by congress just for that one boat.
I had always heard that the Oriental had been a German submarine chaser, but, according to Chris Fulcher, that was not so. When Garland bought her, she had a luxurious interior. The furnishings were so plush that Garland actually put some of them in his own house. In spite of her fancy interior, my wife’s cousin says she had been an E Boat, a fast attack boat armed with two torpedo tubes, a 40mm cannon and a 20mm cannon.
In any event, she was built for speed. She was constructed with an aluminum frame and fuel tanks and was powered by two Mercedes diesel engines that would propel her across the water at an amazing speed of 35 knots. Garland did not need all that power, and for fuel economy, he replaced those engines with a single D-13 Caterpillar 240 hp diesel. The pilot house which was originally midship was replaced and moved aft.
Walter Stowe was the first captain of the Oriental. His brother, Dallas Stowe, later became captain of the Gracie F, a boat Garland had built for him. Most people credit Earl Holton and Garland Fulcher with introducing the larger fishing vessels to North Carolina waters.
In 1966, Garland sold the Oriental to Elmo Lupton, the Gracie F to Kenneth Land and the Chris F, the largest of the three boats, to Walter Stowe.
In 1968, the Oriental, accompanied by another fishing vessel, left port heading north to fish. After steering in heavy seas for several hours, Captain Elmo Lupton went to sleep in his bunk just behind the wheel house with instructions to one of the crew members to follow the lights of the lead boat.
In stormy weather with poor visibility, the helmsman unknowingly lost sight of the lights of the lead boat and steered toward a beach cottage light instead. Before he realized his error, he had run the Oriental into the shallows on the beach. Hard aground, she floundered in the surf as the crew called for help.
A Coast Guard helicopter safely airlifted Elmo Lupton and his crew, Leo Gibbs and James Lee Whitney, from the doomed vessel. Thankfully, no lives were lost.
To characterize the mishap as a sinking is inaccurate, it was stuck in the sand, and the pounding waves smashed it to pieces. In a bygone era, earlier residents of the outer banks were accused of using lanterns to deceive and entice unwary mariners onto the shoals so they could profit from the shipwrecks. Although the cottage light was not intended for that purpose here, the end result was the same.
Ironically, the steamship Oriental sank just south of Oregon Inlet and the fishing vessel Oriental sank, a few miles away, just north of Oregon Inlet.




Don Millman
Oriental, NC

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TED WALTHER

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message     View Profile of TED WALTHER   Send Email To TED WALTHER Posted on: Feb 5, 2011 - 1:08pm
Don;
Well, now we know what happened to that boat, I wonder if this is the one tested in Norfolk Va in 1946-48 That Chip has told me about, S-218(which was bought by Rod Pickard of 845 Biscayne Boulevard Miami, Florida who took possession of S-218 on July 12, 1948 at 1400 hours.),
or S-225(which was sold and removed from naval custody on September 1, 1948) .
Thanks Don.
Take care,
TED


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alross2

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message     View Profile of alross2   Send Email To alross2 Posted on: Feb 5, 2011 - 1:25pm
It would be interesting to see a photo of the boat. The description does not correspond to that of an S-boot, which was typically around 106' long, was powered by three diesels, and had its superstructure forward.

Al Ross


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TED WALTHER

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message     View Profile of TED WALTHER   Send Email To TED WALTHER Posted on: Feb 5, 2011 - 1:38pm
Damn Al I missed that key piece of info, i guess I was sucked in by the E-boat wrapper!!LOL
Take care,
TED


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TGConnelly

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message   Posted on: Feb 5, 2011 - 2:36pm
Schnelboote were, according to my research, depending on the class were 111 to 115 feet.


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