Voyage of the Alchiba

The U.S. Navy transport Alchiba is back at sea again, eight months after officially being reported lost. Her log book is an epic of seamanship, brilliant salvage work and heroism.

She was just a routine C-2 cargo ship when the Navy took her over before the war. Three times she ran supplies into the Solomons under the bomb bays of Jap planes. On the fourth trip the Alchiba got it. Loaded with aviation gasoline, ammunition and bombs, she was riding at anchor off Guadal when a sub's torpedo blasted her. Gasoline and ammunition started going up. Her captain, Commander James S. Freeman, decided to try to save her, ordered up anchor and full speed ahead. Listing 18DEG, the Alchiba crunched on to the beach.

Fires leaped 150 ft. in the air. But the crew refused to abandon her. Standing on scorching decks, they tossed explosives overboard. They cursed Jap bombers but blessed their bad aim. For five days they worked 20 and 22-hour shifts before the fire was under control. All but 300 tons of cargo was saved. "Best crew I ever had," said the executive officer. "They were licked at least five times and didn't know it."

As she blazed on the beach, her stores of flour, raisins and rice fermented. "A moonshiner's dream," the exec called it. "We could have made enough liquor to supply the whole station, including the press."

Then on Dec. 7 a second Jap submarine sneaked in to throw two more torpedoes into the Alchiba. They ripped her port side. Her engine room was flooded.

In Washington the Navy announced the end of the Alchiba. But on the beach at Guadalcanal salvage crews pumped her out, patched her bulkheads, got her afloat. At a repair base, Seabees made her seaworthy enough to risk the 5,800-mile trip home. During that three-week voyage the sea sloshed in & out of the two holes in her, one 39 ft. across, the other 47. At a west coast shipyard engineers discovered that her keel was broken in two places.

They called her trip a miracle and set to work to make her fire-blackened hull sound.

Her skipper won the Navy Cross, eight others Silver Stars. The Alchiba herself received a unit citation. Her casualties were only three. One was in the hold where a torpedo exploded.

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