DOB/DOD: January 29, 1906 (Connecticut) – January 19, 1942; 35 years old
MARITAL STATUS: Unmarried
LOCAL ADDRESS: 17 Franklin Street, Norwalk
MILITARY SERVICE: None, but he is on the WWII plaque in Norwalk
FAMILY: Born to Arthur Sr. (1886-1966) and Martha Buchta Tyrrell (1885-1983). Three sisters, Jessie F. Tyrrell Osborn (1907-1982), Elynor Tyrrell Bennett (1917-1995), and Vera Tyrrell Haynes (1912-1999).
CIRCUMSTANCES: Arthur Tyrrell volunteered to help build a Navy yard in Bermuda. In transit to Bermuda, his ship, the RMS Lady Hawkins, was sunk by the German submarine U-66 in the North Atlantic, killing 251 of the 322 people aboard, including Arthur Tyrrell.
RMS Lady Hawkins was a steam turbine ocean liner. She was one of a class of five sister ships popularly known as “Lady Boats” that Cammell Laird of Birkenhead, England built in 1928 and 1929 for the Canadian National Steamship Company (CNS or CN). The five vessels were Royal Mail Ships that CN operated from Halifax, Nova Scotia and the Caribbean via Bermuda.
CN introduced the liners, which became known as “Lady Boats” for mail, freight, and passenger traffic between Canada, Bermuda, and the Caribbean. The company wanted to develop Canadian exports, including lumber, and imports to Canada, including fruit, sugar, and molasses. Each Lady-liner had refrigerated holds for perishable cargo such as fruit, and capacity for 100,000 bunches of bananas. Their hulls were painted white, which then was a relatively new fashion among shipping companies, and confined largely to passenger ships serving tropical or sub-tropical destinations.
On the morning of 19 January 1942, the ship was sailing unescorted about 150 nautical miles (280 km) off Cape Hatteras, taking a zigzag course to make her more difficult to hit, when at 0743 hrs, U-66, commanded by Korvettenkapitän Robert-Richard Zapp, hit her with two stern-launched torpedoes. The liner sank in about 30 minutes.
Three of her six lifeboats were damaged, but the other three were launched. One was commanded by her Chief Officer. It had a capacity for 63 people but managed to embark 76 survivors. Its occupants could hear more people in the water, but could neither see them in the dark nor take them aboard the overcrowded boat if they had found them.
The boat had no radio transmitter and very limited rations of drinking water, ship’s biscuit, and condensed milk. It shipped water and needed constant baling, but it had a mast, sail, and oars, and Chief Officer Percy Kelly set a course west toward the USA’s Atlantic coast sea lanes and land. The boat was at sea for five days, during which time five of its occupants died. Then the survivors sighted the Agwilines vessel Coamo and signaled her with a flashlight. Coamo’s Master misread the flashes as an enemy submarine preparing to attack, and was going to continue without stopping. It was only when the survivors shone the light on the boat’s sail that he correctly understood their signal. Coamo rescued the boat’s 71 surviving occupants, landing them at San Juan, Puerto Rico, on 28 January.
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Honor Norwalk CT veterans 