KINGS

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HENRY J. BOGARDUS

              Cadet Henry Bogardus, Jr. was an engineer cadet aboard the tanker William King, when he tragically lost his life in during World War II.  The William King was caring eighteen thousand barrels (bbl.) of fuel oil, with a weight of 7176 Gross Tons.  She had a compliment of forty-two merchant crewmembers and twenty-five Naval Armed Guards. The William King was in route alone from Buhrein to a US port via Capetown, in ballest. U- 198, the Hartman, torpedoed it.  The torpedo was spotted at 1140 GCT, with the ship about two hundred miles from Durban, South Africa.  The torpedo struck the Number Three hold exploding the port boiler, and causing the fuel oil to catch fire, which in turn sent smoke and flames moving through the ventilation system.  Three Crewmembers were lost in the engine room by the first torpedo blast, and one crewmember was blown of the bridge and never found. The torpedo also destroyed two port lifeboats, caused the radio to go dead, and blew the steering wheel off.  At 1210 GCT, and second torpedo struck amidships on the starboard side sending flames shooting over a hundred feet in the air, and finally sinking the ship, stern first.  The ship had been abandoned by the time second torpedo hit.  Number one and three life boats were used, the Master of the Ship, Owen Harvey Reed, and the Naval Armed Crew were the last to leave.  The submarine surfaced at 1210 GCT and ordered the boats alongside.  To speed up the process and to convince the crews to not leave two machine gun bursts were fired wide of the life boats.  The Master of the vessel was taken prisoner and the survivors were questioned.  The Germans mainly wanted to know the nationality of the gun crew and if any of them were British.  The HMS Northern Chief  picked up the survivors in Life Boat Number Three in thirty-six hours, and the HMS Relentless picked Life Boat Number One up six days later. They were brought to Durbon on June 10 and 12, 1942.  Two officers and four merchantmen were killed in this incident.

            On a side note the U-198 was sunk August 12,1944 off of the Seychelles Islands, in the Indian Ocean, by the HMS Findhorn (K-301) and the HMS Godauri (U-52).  There were no survivors.