One hundred years ago, 33 American submariners were lost off the coast of Rhode Island. To this day, there is no memorial or monument that bears their names. Now is the time to change that.
On September 25th, 1925, the crew of the S-51 was on a routine run out of New London, Connecticut when a collision off Block Island sent the submarine to the bottom.
Of the 36 men aboard, only three survived.
But that was not the end of the S-51's story. To bring her crew home, to give them a proper burial, the S-51 herself would have to be raised. At the time, a salvage this complex was considered impossible.
On July 5th, 1926, against the odds, they lifted the S-51 from the bottom and brought her and her crew home.
Twenty-six of her crew were brought up and laid to rest. Seven were never found.
The raising was the work of a small group of divers who refused to leave her on the bottom. A hundred years later, the S-51's final chapter falls to people who refuse to let them be forgotten.
To fund and place a small memorial near the Rhode Island or Connecticut coast: a bronze plaque, set in stone or wood, naming every man lost aboard the S-51. A permanent place to come and remember. Not just for the families of her crew, their grandchildren and now great-grandchildren, but for anyone who wants to learn what happened, to mourn these men, and to make sure they're never lost to history.
Example
S-4 Memorial · Provincetown, MA
But before we can fund it, we need to raise awareness. So today, we're not asking for money, only your support. Every signup makes a real difference in how far this goes: the more people standing behind it, the more we can make this memorial a reality.
The three who survived that night: Dewey Kile, Michael Lira, and Alfred Geier.
Meet some of the crew.
Dobson was a career submarine officer, and his years in the Navy had landed him in New York with a wife and a two-year-old son at home. The S-51 was his second command, and he had been her captain just three weeks at the time of the collision. He was never recovered.
Four days after the Navy raised the S-51 from the bottom, his widow wrote to the admiral who led the salvage:
It was said they were the only twins in the Navy. “Always they've had the wanderlust,” (their mother) said. “They enlisted when they were only 16. Their father objected, but they pleaded so he finally gave his consent. We used to live at Brooklyn, N.Y., and the boys played around the shipyards. Then they said they wanted to go to sea sometime.” The last letter from the boys told of the purchase of a motorcycle from another sailor. “And it went twelve miles in thirteen minutes,” they wrote.
Henry was a radioman aboard the S-51, a twenty-four-year-old from Ardmore, Oklahoma, one of nine kids. He'd joined the Navy at seventeen, and his sister kept a scrapbook full of him smiling and messing around with his friends. He'd been aboard the S-51 exactly one month when she went down.
He left behind a daughter, Lavinia, who never forgot the tragedy. In 2020, Crawford's granddaughter, Tara, launched s51memorial.org. For a hundred years, the S-51's families carried the memory of these men so they wouldn't be forgotten.
Now it's our turn to carry them into the future.
Whether you're family, a submariner, a Rhode Islander, or simply someone who believes these men shouldn't be forgotten, your support is what turns this into a reality.
With your support, our next step is to secure a location, and then begin raising what it takes to build it.