The Mathews Men: Seven Brothers and the War Against Hitler's U-Boats

摘要

Winston Churchill referred to the Battle of the Atlantic as "The only thing that ever really frightened [him] during the war." For six years, from the sinking of SS Athenia on 3 September 1939 to the loss of SS Black Point on 5 May 1945, civilian merchantmen faced off against Nazi U-boats, and in the United States no community better represented this struggle than that of rural Mathews County, Virginia. The US merchant marine faced its greatest struggle during the Second World War, yet this was not the first time its men sailed into danger. From the inception of the United States, the merchant marine was on the front line, from the cargo ships and mariners that formed the first naval squadron in 1775, to attacks by French and British ships during the Napoleonic wars, to facing pirates along the shores of North Africa and the Caribbean, to the initial test against German U-boats in the First World War, American merchant ships and the crews who manned them faced danger throughout their history.