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 VINCENT G. CATHEY 

            Vincent Cathey was an engineer aboard the steam ship, Robert E. Lee, when he died in the line of duty for his country.   The ship was a passenger ship on its way to New Orleans.  Its original destination was Tampa, Florida, but since no pilot could be found they were rerouted to New Orleans. It had a manifest of two hundred and seventy passengers, one hundred and thirty-one crewmembers, six Naval Armed Guards, and forty-seven tons of cargo. PC- 566 escorted it.  On July 30, 1942 about twenty-five miles South-East from the Mississippi River, a torpedo from U- 166, the Kahlman, was spotted at 1630 CWT heading from stern on a parallel coarse with the ship. It made a ninety-degree turn and struck just aft of the engine room.  This disabled the engines, damaged the steering gear, destroyed the radio, and wrecked Number Three hold where water began flowing in and up through B and C decks by means of the ventilation system. The ship began list to port and sank in fifteen minutes.  Six lifeboats and sixteen rafts were jettisoned and later rescued by PC- 566, SC- 519, and the tugboat Underwriter.  There were ten crewmembers and fifteen passengers lost in this tragic incident. In a side note to irony, most of the survivors were previous victims of torpedoed vessels.