By MADDY VITALE
A new exhibit at the Ocean City Historical Museum will give war buffs a lot to look at, especially when it comes to those interested in shipwrecks off of the Jersey Shore at the hands of German U-boats during World War II.
The exhibit, featuring maps of where there were shipwrecks, make up some of the display, which is in the front of the museum.
“There is a touch of this, and a little flavor of Ocean City, with the centerpiece being the shipwrecks off of the shore,” Karl Wirth, museum coordinator, explained Wednesday.
In total, he said there were 108 shipwrecks off the New Jersey coast during the time of World War I and World War II.
Some of the notable shipwrecks include the Leumel Burrows, which was taken down by a German U-boat on March 14, 1942. Part of it washed up in Wildwood. There were 20 fatalities and 14 survivors.
“We have a picture of the wreck that washed up on the beach in Wildwood,” Wirth said.
R.P. Resor was torpedoed in 1942.
Then there was the R.P. Resor that was 15 miles off Barnegat. R.P. Resor was a tanker ship torpedoed by the German U-boat U-578 on Feb. 28, 1942, and later sank. The tanker had crude oil aboard.
“It was torpedoed and had 105,000 barrels of fuel. The men got off in lifeboats, but all 48 aboard lost their lives because of the fire,” Wirth explained of the vessel.
The ship was on its way from Texas to Massachusetts with fuel oil when it was torpedoed.
The idea for the shipwreck exhibit came about this spring, Wirth pointed out.
John Loeper, president of the museum Board of Trustees made it happen, Wirth noted.
“It was John’s vision for the exhibit,” he said. “I just took his direction.”
As part of the museum’s summer lecture series at the library lecture hall, Dan Cashin will speak about shipwrecks during his talk titled: “The World Wars off the Jersey Shore,” on Thursday, July 14.
Parts of the Leumel Burrows washed up in Wildwood.
Cashin, a former rigger at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, compiled a list of all of the shipping casualties that happened off the coast during the world wars, including commercial and naval ships torpedoed by U-boats.
“One list was of all of the ships,” Wirth said, adding that many of the details came from Cashin’s research of online materials. “He also had an alphabetical listing of all the men aboard the ships.”
The museum exhibit features maps of the areas where the ships sank.
“We thought we should do a map and plot all of these things and do a visual of the ships,” Wirth said.
In the same exhibit, Wirth said the U.S. Life-Saving Station in Ocean City is represented. Loeper is the head of the Life-Saving Station, which has been converted into a museum.
During World War II, the station became a Coast Guard station and served as a beach patrol to search for U-boats, Wirth said.
The beach patrol included dogs, men on horseback and boat patrols along the coast.
“They took ordinary boats and retrofitted them and charged them with patrolling,” he added.
The U.S. Coast Guard patrolled the coastline on horseback and in boats.
The other aspect tying in with this, “Here, people were casting a wary eye about the ocean because of a buzz that we could be invaded. We did have blackouts and rumbles of explosions and see flashes of light," Wirth said.
Wirth added that blackouts were a major part of the lives of those living at the shore during wartime.
“They didn’t want the shoreline to be visible, so people put blackout shades and curtains in their windows and a special blackout lightbulb,” he explained. “Headlights were shaded and streetlights were darkened. It was kind of like life was going on, but there was uneasiness.”
Watchtowers were located in several areas of the resort, including on the roof of the Music Pier, on the beach of North Atlantic Boulevard and other areas in Ocean City.
The Ocean City Historical Museum is located in the Community Center at 1735 Simpson Ave. For more information, visit the museum’s website at https://www.ocnjmuseum.org/ or call 609-399-1801.
Blackouts were common to escape U-boat detection.
