The SS Winona was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 steam merchant vessel. She was built at the end of the First World War, surviving to see action during the Second World War. She had an eventful wartime career, sailing as part of a number of convoys and surviving being torpedo

Torpedo

The modern torpedo is a self-propelled missile weapon with an explosive warhead, launched above or below the water surface, propelled underwater towards a target, and designed to detonate either on contact with it or in proximity to it.The term torpedo was originally employed for...

ed by a U-boat

U-boat

U-boat is the anglicized version of the German word U-Boot , itself an abbreviation of Unterseeboot , and refers to military submarines operated by Germany, particularly in World War I and World War II...

 on one occasion.

Early career

The Winona was built in 1918 by the Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company

Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company

The Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company was a United States shipyard, active from 1917 to 1949. During World War II, it built ships as part of the U.S. Government's Emergency Shipbuilding Program. Operated by a subsidiary of the United States Steel Corporation, the shipyard was located at...

, Kearny, New Jersey

Kearny, New Jersey

Kearny is a town in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. It was named after Civil War general Philip Kearny. As of the United States 2010 Census, the town population was 40,684. The town is a suburb of the nearby city of Newark....

 and launched as The Lambs. She was one of 30 ships built by the Federal Shipbuilding Co., Kearny, New Jersey, according to U.S. Emergency Fleet Corporation design #1037. She was renamed Exporter in 1928, and by 1937 she had been renamed Winona and was sailing with the Weyerhaeuser Steamship Co, Tacoma, Washington

Tacoma, Washington

Tacoma is a mid-sized urban port city and the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. The city is on Washington's Puget Sound, southwest of Seattle, northeast of the state capital, Olympia, and northwest of Mount Rainier National Park. The population was 198,397, according to...

. She was homeported in the city of Everett

Everett, Washington

Everett is the county seat of and the largest city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. Named for Everett Colby, son of founder Charles L. Colby, it lies north of Seattle. The city had a total population of 103,019 at the 2010 census, making it the 6th largest in the state and...

.

Wartime career

On the outbreak of war, Winona continued to make voyages, joining a number of transatlantic convoys. She was to have been part of the ill-fated convoy SC-7

Convoy SC-7

SC-7 was the code name for a large Allied World War II convoy of 35 merchant ships and six escorts which sailed eastbound from Sydney, Nova Scotia for Liverpool and other United Kingdom ports on 5 October 1940. While crossing the Atlantic, the convoy was intercepted by one of the German Navy's...

, but suffered engine trouble shortly after leaving port and turned back. She therefore avoided the devastation of the convoy by a "wolfpack" attack. Later in the war she was sailing along the east coast of America, usually carrying coal and making voyages between cities like New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, and ports around the Caribbean

Caribbean

The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

. The extension of German U-boat activities into American waters at this stage in the war as part of Operation Drumbeat (also known as the Second Happy Time

Second happy time

The Second Happy Time , also known among German submarine commanders as the "American shooting season" was the informal name for a phase in the Second Battle of the Atlantic during which Axis submarines attacked merchant shipping along the east coast of North America...

) meant that Winona continued to sail in convoys.

She was part of convoy TRIN-19 in October 1942, and was sailing from Norfolk, Virginia

Norfolk, Virginia

Norfolk is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. With a population of 242,803 as of the 2010 Census, it is Virginia's second-largest city behind neighboring Virginia Beach....

 bound for Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...

 via Port of Spain

Port of Spain

Port of Spain, also written as Port-of-Spain, is the capital of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago and the country's third-largest municipality, after San Fernando and Chaguanas. The city has a municipal population of 49,031 , a metropolitan population of 128,026 and a transient daily population...

, Trinidad

Trinidad

Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands and numerous landforms which make up the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. It is the southernmost island in the Caribbean and lies just off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. With an area of it is also the fifth largest in...

. She was carrying a cargo of 8,000 tons of coal and was under the command of her master, John Beale Rynbergen. The convoy was sighted and attacked on 16 October by Georg Lassen

Georg Lassen

Lieutenant Commander Georg Lassen is a former German U-boat captain who served with the Kriegsmarine during World War II. He was a Watchkeeping Officer on at the outbreak of the war and later the skipper of the and winner of the Iron Cross. He sank 26 ships for a total of during 4 patrols,...

's . At 21:20 hours he fired torpedoes at the starboard side of the convoy as it passed 50 miles east-northeast of Trinidad. One torpedo hit the SS Castle Harbour, blowing off her bow and causing her to sink in 20 seconds. 30 seconds later another torpedo hit the nearby Winona on the starboard side in the #2 hold. The impact and subsequent explosion blew the hatch covers off and opened a hole 68 by. The #2 hold immediately flooded, whilst leaks began in the #1 and #3 holds. The master secured the important confidential documents, stopped the engines and attempted to evade the other ships in the convoy. She suffered a slight collision when her bow grazed the stern of the Norwegian

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 merchant Austvangen. The crew remained on board, and after damage control measures stopped the flooding, were able to bring the Winona into Port of Spain the following day. There had been no casualties amongst her complement of 56.

The Winona underwent temporary repairs in Port of Spain, departing on 3 February 1943 in convoy TAG-40. She arrived in Mobile

Mobile, Alabama

Mobile is the third most populous city in the Southern US state of Alabama and is the county seat of Mobile County. It is located on the Mobile River and the central Gulf Coast of the United States. The population within the city limits was 195,111 during the 2010 census. It is the largest...

 on 15 February where she underwent more extensive repairs before returning to service on 14 April. She was in convoy HX 300

Convoy HX 300

Convoy HX-300 was the 300th of the numbered series of World War II HX convoys of merchant ships from Halifax to Liverpool. These HX convoys had been established shortly after declaration of war; and the first sailed on 16 September 1939...

 (the largest trade convoy of the war) before being transferred to the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

in 1945 and renamed Akademik Pavlov. She was scrapped in the Soviet Union in 1974.