Bronze Age Gold from Wales

3/4 port bow view of S.S. CITY OF FLINT at Penarth Head, c.1936.

Built 1920 by American International Shipbuilding Corp, Hog Island, PA as the COLLINGDALE but completed as the CITY OF FLINT and acquired by Moore-McCormack SS Co, New York. On 9 October 1939, she was suspected of carrying contraband and taken as prize by the German navy while en route from New York to the UK in the North Atlantic. On 21 October, she arrived in Tromsø, Norway, for water but the Norwegians ordered the ship to leave and she sailed for Murmansk where she arrived on the 23rd. The German prize crew was interned by the Soviet authorities the next day. On the 27th, the ship was returned to German control and she set course to Germany. The ship's American master was refused communication with the US Embassy in Moscow during this time. On 3 November, the CITY OF FLINT was stopped by a Norwegian minelayer off the Norwegian coast and ordered to go to Haugesund, Norway. She was returned to the Americans at Bergen on 14 November. In 1943, the ship (Master - John B. MacKenzie) sailed from New York to Casablanca with a cargo of Tanks, aircraft, jeeps, drums of gasoline, poison gas and telegraph poles as part of convoy UGS-4. A storm caused her deckload to shift and she straggled from the convoy. She tried to find the other ships, but was hit by a torpedo from German submarine U-575 on 25th January 1943 and sank 300 miles south of the Azores with the loss of 4 lives. On the 28th, a Portuguese destroyer rescued 48 survivors, and on March 12th, HMS QUADRANT rescued another 10 after 46 days on a lifeboat.