All BUT ONE

The S.S. Western Front

Everyone begged to know what happened.  Are they all safe?  “All but one,” was always the reply.

The SS Western Front was once a cargo ship of the U.S. Navy.  Orginally named the USS Martha Washington, then the Nikkosan Maru, then the USS Indiana,  the ship carried loads of supplies to France during World War I.  When the war ended, the ship was put into merchant service duty.

The Atlantic was relatively calm.  No longer did lookouts have to stare along the horizons looking for German U-Boats which prowled the North Atlantic shipping lanes to England for their prey.  

The voyage went well. That is until the SS Western Front began to approach Bishop Rock, a small rocky island off the far southwestern coast of Great Britain in the Scilly Islands.  The ancient lighthouse on Bishop Rock was for decades a sign of land ahead and the end of a long journey across the Atlantic Ocean at a point called “Land’s End.”  It shall be noted that Bishop Rock has been determined to be the smallest island in the world which has a building on it. 

The Western Front, based out of Seattle, Washington,  left the Jacksonsville harbor on June 23, 1921 bound for London, England and Hamburg, Germany.  It had arrived in Jacksonville on the tenth of June after carrying cargo from Savannah to Brunswick, Georgia.  The ship was carrying a large amount of naval stores, turpentine, and rosin from South Georgia.

The crew was manned by quite a few mariners and crewmen from North Florida and South Georgia.  One of those crewmen was H. Ullie Peacock of Dublin, Georgia.

Ullie, a former employee of the Standard Oil Company in Dublin,  was a member of the prominent Peacock family of Dublin, although at the time he had been living in Macon until his entrance into the merchant service.  While in his early twenties, Ullie was a drummer in the the Dublin Band.  The band was known all over the state, representing Georgia at several of the national reunions of the United Confederate Veterans.  

As the Western Front neared the end of her voyage, about eight to ten miles south of Bishop’s Rock, a fire erupted in her hold.  The highly flammable naval stores ignited a unstoppable inferno.  Sheer panic and chaos ensued.

Nearby was the British ship Earl, which answered the distress call from the Western Front.  The Earl pulled along the side of engulfed Western Front, owned by Strahan & Company.  Meanwhile, the crew was abandoning ship.  

“Where is Mr.  Peacock,” they asked?  No one knew.  What they did know was that the crippled vessel was burning like a torch and they needed to evacuate immediately.  Hardly a soul was looking for him on their way to safety.   The country’s newspapers hailed the rescue of the crew, except “all but one.”  

That one, H.U. Peacock,  was never found.  It was assumed that he was near the hold and was incinerated by the rapidly spreading flames. 

A cablegram was sent to Peacock’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. C.T.  (O.F.) Peacock and Mr. and Mrs. William Lucian Joiner stating simply that the ship was a total loss and the search for survivors was still ongoing for Peacock, who was listed as missing.  Mr. Joiner, his stepfather, was one of the leading businessmen of Dublin. Peacock’s mother was the former Mary Elizabeth “Mollie” Donaldson.

The parents and step parents held out hope that their son Ullie would be found safe and sound.  Hope soon vanished.   The ship owners and the crew were grateful that all of the men were rescued, all but one.   

Peacock, who was thirty-one years of age and married,  survived the “War to End All Wars,” but in the end it was a fire which took his all too short life a century ago this summer.