75 years later, namesake remembers Truxtun and Pollux disaster

In the early morning of February 18, 1942, Abe Pike was just coming off his overnight shift at the Iron Springs fluorspar mine in St.Lawrence on the Burin Peninsula when a terrified stranger came knocking.

The young man was an American sailor who had managed to scale the nearby 200-foot cliff and bring word the USS Truxtun and USS Pollux had foundered in bad weather. Hundreds of men were struggling in the oil-covered freezing water and would surely die without help.

Abe Pike and his fellow miners dropped everything and hurried to the rescue.

"Of course, all the work ceased at the mine and the miners headed to the site," said Abe's son, Ed Pike. "Dad was just finishing a graveyard shift. He had worked 12 to eight, and he left the mine and spent the whole day at Chambers Cove helping with the rescue effort."

Everyone in the area responded.

"The women went to Iron Springs and set up a cleaning station for the men," said Pike. "They were taken into the homes in St.Lawrence. Every bit of men's clothing in the community went to Iron Springs. Men who worked all day to rescue the Americans came home and there was nothing dry to put on because all their clothes went to the survivors. All the soap and bedclothes and towels too. Everything."

The destroyer USS Truxtun had been escorting the general supply ship USS Pollux from Maine to Argentia when both ships were caught in a gale and ran ashore in Chambers Cove, between the communities of Lawn and St.Lawrence. The Truxtun broke up almost immediately with 110 lost. Ninety-three more were lost from the Pollux.

Rescuers save nearly 200 sailors

Despite the harrowing sea conditions and howling winds, the rescuers from the two nearby towns did manage to save 186 men who would have perished, including 20-year-old Eddie Perry from Massachusetts. Abe Pike bodily hauled the young man up the cliff to safety.

"He joined the navy after the attack on Pearl Harbour, as many young men did then. I think this was his first big trip on the ship," recounted Ed Pike. "He wasn't a big man, which was good because when Dad and those arrived at the cliffs to rescue them, they had nothing. They only had ropes and axes. They lit a fire at the top of the cliff, and the men were lowered down a 200-foot cliff. Eddie Perry was strapped to dad's back and brought out of the cove."

Ed Pike's mother kept a journal and recorded the events of Feb. 18.

"Abe didn't get back until four that afternoon, oil soaked and worn out," she wrote. "He got out of the truck and came up to the house with Eddie Perry on his back. Eddie was wearing a suit of combination underwear and was wrapped in an old blanket. He was just a boy, half frozen. He had only been on the ship for 10 days."

"Grandpa had the stove lit in the little room with a big tub of hot water. I could see that he was cold and frightened. We gave him a heated brick and a hot cup of tea and he started to warm up. I said to him "Are you alright?" He smiled and said "I'll be alright now." I told him, "We will take care of you.""

Perry stayed only one night in the Pike home before a rescue ship came from the American Naval base in Argentia to pick up survivors. Even so, they never forgot each other.

Two years after the rescue, the Pikes welcomed a son and they named him Ed, after the young man whose life Abe had saved.

Ed and Eddie meet at last

Years later, Ed Pike and Eddie Perry finally met.

"The name 'Eddie Perry' to a child, when he was rescued by your dad, it was magical," said Pike. "When he came to St.Lawrence in 1988 for a reunion of the rescuers and survivors, I was invited back to MC the event at the high school. It was very emotional."

Pike remembers Perry as a very funny, lively man who was always grateful for what the people of St. Lawrence did for him.

Abe Pike, the hardworking miner who pulled Perry from the freezing Atlantic wasn't as lucky.

"St. Lawrence miners died young. Dad died back in 1956 at the age of 44," said Ed Pike. "That was pretty well typical of the fate of a St. Lawrence miner. There was radon gas and silica dust. They were slowly dying every day they worked in that place. None of them lived to be old men."

Still, 75 years after the Truxtun and Pollux went down, there are families who owe their very existence to men like Abe Pike, who were willing to risk their own lives to save others.