| Residences | Civilian Occupation |
| Pennsylvania, Delaware | Tube maker for Continental Diamond Fibre |
| Branch | Service Number |
| U.S. Naval Reserve | 6500420 |
| Theater | Ship |
| American | U.S.S. St. Augustine (PG-54) |
Early Life & Family
Harry Wayne Pierce was born in Paoli, Pennsylvania, on December 31, 1919. He was the son of Lewis Ezra Pierce (then working as a laborer, 1886–1954) and Hannah Elsie Pierce (née Mercer, 1890–1957). Based on his headstone and census records, he went by his middle name. Both of his parents were born in Pennsylvania but moved to Delaware as children. Correspondence from his mother to the Public Archives Commission in Delaware dated March 19, 1945, stated that Pierce was born during the 18 months the family lived in Paoli. The fourth of eight children, he was the only one not born in Delaware. He had two older sisters and an older brother, as well as three younger brothers and a younger sister. One of his younger brothers died very young.
Just after Pierce’s birth, in January 1920, he was recorded on the census living with his family on Central Avenue in Paoli. By May 25, 1922, when Pierce’s younger brother, Harold Edgar Pierce (1922–2008) was born, the family had moved to 1233 French Street in Wilmington, Delaware. Harold Pierce later served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, while Pierce’s older brother, Donnell Lewis Pierce (1914–1985), served in the Army Air Forces. The family had moved to Newark, Delaware, by February 14, 1927, when Pierce’s younger brother, Raymond F. Pierce (1927–1929), died of bronchopneumonia.
The Pierce family was recorded on the census in April 1930 living on New London Road in Newark. Wayne’s father was working as a farmer at the time. The Newark Post stated that “Pierce was a graduate of the Newark High School where he was active on the football team and other athletic sports.” On the other hand, in his enlistment application for the U.S. Navy, Pierce stated that the last grade he completed was the 11th, not the 12th, and that he dropped out of Newark High School in 1941.
The Pierce family was recorded on the census again in April 1940 living at 403 New London Road (Road 313). Both father and son were now working at a fibre mill, the elder Pierce as a press operator and his son as a tube maker.
When Pierce registered for the draft on July 1, 1941, his employer was listed as Continental Diamond Fibre. He was described as standing 5 feet, 11 inches tall and weighing 185 lbs., with black hair and blue eyes. He was Protestant according to military paperwork.
Curiously, on his enlistment application, he denied that he was or ever had been married. However, another document in his personnel file indicates that at some point prior, Pierce married a woman named Helen. She filed for divorce in Cecil County, Maryland, which was granted on April 14, 1941.
Military Career
On September 9, 1941, Pierce applied to join the U.S. Naval Reserve at the U.S. Navy Recruiting Station, Wilmington, Delaware. He was accepted there on September 17, enlisting the same day at the Navy Recruiting Station, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He committed to serve for a four-year term, or for the duration of any war or national emergency that occurred during his enlistment. Indeed, President Roosevelt had already declared an unlimited national emergency on May 27 due to wars underway overseas. At enlistment Pierce stood five feet, 11 inches tall and weighed 191 lbs., with brown hair and blue eyes. A physician noted that Pierce had depressed arches in his feet, but he denied experiencing any symptoms.
On September 18, 1941, Apprentice Seaman Pierce reported for boot camp at the Naval Training Station, Newport, Rhode Island. On December 16, he reported for duty at the Naval Training School (Signals), Chicago, Illinois. He began a training course on December 22. Entries in his personnel file are a little unclear but it appears his training classes were held at the Naval Armory, Chicago, Illinois, and at the University of Chicago. He was promoted to seaman 2nd class on January 17, 1942. He completed his training on April 3, 1942, with an overall score of 76 out of 100.
On April 5, 1942, Seaman 2nd Class Pierce reported to the Submarine Chaser Pool, Receiving Station, South Brooklyn, New York. Later that month, on April 25, Pierce was hospitalized at the U.S. Naval Hospital, Brooklyn, New York, for an unspecified illness in the line of duty. He was discharged from the hospital on May 23, and transferred back to the Submarine Chaser Pool, Receiving Station, South Brooklyn, New York.
On June 2, 1942, Seaman 2nd Class Pierce reported to the Receiving Ship, New York, New York, also for duty in the Submarine Chaser Pool. On June 6, he was dispatched to the Submarine Chaser Training Center, Miami, Florida, reporting there the following day. On July 17, he was promoted to signalman 3rd class. Upon completed his training the following day, he was dispatched to the Receiving Station, Boston, Massachusetts, to crew a new patrol craft, U.S.S. PC-617. He officially joined the crew of the vessel on August 28, 1942, the same day she was commissioned.
Pierce spent his career crewing a series of small vessels operating in coastal waters along the Eastern Seaboard. Most of his service occurred during the backdrop of the Battle of the Atlantic. Pierce and his shipmates were among the thousands of largely unheralded sailors who helped turn the tide against German U-boats.
On January 11, 1943, Pierce was reduced back to seaman 1st class because he
“Proved not qualified for rating” and on January 16, he transferred off the vessel to Tompkinsville Section Base on Long Island, New York. On February 10, he was transferred to the Receiving Station Casco Bay in Portland, Maine, reporting there the following day.
Seaman 1st Class Pierce joined the crew of a minesweeper, U.S.S. YMS-7, on April 2, 1943. He must have completed his retraining at sea, because he was promoted back to signalman 3rd class on June 1.
Pierce married Maxine R. Lewis (1907–1970) on June 14, 1943, in Portland, Maine, and became stepfather to her six children.
On November 30, 1943, Signalman 3rd Class Pierce was ordered to Receiving Station New York for transfer to the U.S.S. St. Augustine (PG-54). The following day, he departed YMS-7 at the Naval Operating Base, Argentia, Newfoundland. He arrived at the Receiving Station, New York, on December 3.
Pierce joined the St. Augustine’s crew on December 7, 1943. A gunboat affectionately known to her crew as Augie, his new vessel was commanded by a World War I veteran and reservist, Lieutenant Parker Crosby Hatch (1896–1944).
According to the Naval History and Heritage Command summary of the vessel, St. Augustine had originally been the yacht Viking,
completed in 1929 for George F. Baker at Newport News, Va., by Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co.; she was later sold to Norman B. Woolworth who renamed her Noparo. The Navy purchased the vessel on 5 December 1940 at New London, Conn.; and she underwent conversion to a gunboat at the Bethlehem Steel Corp. yard, Boston, Mass. Designated as PG-54, she was renamed St. Augustine on 9 January 1941; and commissioned on 16 January 1941[.]
St. Augustine was 272 feet, 2 inches in length, displaced 1,720 tons, and could reach a top speed of 14 knots. From Tompkinsville, the gunboat escorted convoys between New York City and Key West, Florida.
Tragedy off Cape May
According to a report in the War Diaries of Commander Eastern Sea Frontier, St. Augustine was the lead escort in Convoy NG-588, which departed New York City on the morning of January 6, 1944. Bound for Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the convoy initially consisted only of the tanker Tydol Gas and three escorts, St. Augustine and two U.S Coast Guard patrol boats, U.S.C.G.C. Argo and Thetis. Two additional ships were scheduled to join off the Virginia coast. Seas were fairly heavy, rated force seven on the Beaufort scale. According to the report, “an inexperienced junior officer relieved the skipper” at 2000 hours. About 60 nautical miles southeast of Cape May, New Jersey, “At 2220 that night, the radarman reported that he had picked up an object on the radar screen at 35,000 yards,” which the crew determined was a vessel approaching at high speed.
Around 2300 hours, St. Augustine notified the Coast Guard cutters that she was going to investigate the contact, which according to the report she subsequently identified as “a large tanker moving on a course which would bring her directly across the track of the southbound convoy.” The vessel was the S.S. Camas Meadows, sailing unescorted from Delaware Bay en route to Trinidad.
St. Augustine’s officer of the deck called Lieutenant Hatch to the bridge, but it took a few critical minutes for him to arrive. As the range closed to 3,000 yards, the officer of the deck instructed a signalman to make contact with the tanker. The name of the signalman was not given in the report. It may have been Pierce, but records state that there were seven other signalmen aboard. The tanker did not respond to the signal lamp, nor when “the running lights of the ST. AUGUSTINE were flashed on to attract attention[.]” The signalman continued to challenge the tanker, which gave no indication that she had seen the signal even as the range closed to 2,000 yards.
In fact, the crew of the tanker had seen the signal but had no signalman on duty. Under regulations in place at the time, a merchant ship sailing alone was only required to have one signalman aboard, not one on duty at all times, though the author the report noted that “all licensed officers were usually qualified to send and receive blinker signals.” Whatever the reason, the Camas Meadows’s third mate, serving as the officer of the deck, sent for his signalman rather than trying to answer himself.
Lieutenant Hatch finally arrived on the bridge of St. Augustine. A witness “recalled later that ‘the skipper was pretty mad because she (the tanker) was coming right at us.’” The officer of the deck gave a one more order to the helmsman: “Turn to base course.” It was a fatal mistake.
The report explained:
The ST. AUGUSTINE always responded slowly, and when this order was given the vessel was doing only two-thirds speed. Apparently the OD [officer of the deck] failed to judge accurate the sluggishness of his own ship and the speed of the approaching tanker, for the order, “Turn to base course” required a sharp turn to port which forced the ST. AUGUSTINE to cut across the bow of the oncoming tanker. Within a few seconds, it became apparent that the order was a mistake in judgment; that the ST. AUGUSTINE did not have enough time to cross. The Captain stepped in to do what he could, and gave the order,
“Full left rudder.”
“At the same time, the Captain rang up the speed indicator to the black gang [engine room crew]. In a matter of seconds, the Captain shouted, “Stand by for collision.”
Aboard the oncoming tanker, the “third mate ordered the engines put full astern [and] the wheel put hard right.” It was too late. The tanker collided with St. Augustine amidships on her starboard side at approximately 2325 hours, inflicting massive damage upon the gunboat. Some of her crewmembers were undoubtedly killed in their bunks as the crew quarters took a direct hit. Others fell victim to steam escaping a ruptured boiler in the engine room.
Lieutenant Hatch ordered the crew to abandon ship and make for the tanker, now stopped nearby. One of the gunboat’s lifeboats was damaged in the collision, and the vessel sank rapidly enough that there was only enough time to cut the boats and rafts loose rather than load them. About two-thirds of the crew managed to escape the vessel, but their ordeal was just beginning: “Within three to five minutes after the collision, the St. AUGUSTINE settled by the stern, stood on her beam’s end, and sank, leaving more than one hundred men scattered in the freezing water of that cold night.”
St. Augustine sank at approximately 38°12’N, 74°10’W, a mere 133 miles from Signalman 3rd Class Pierce’s hometown. He was one of the men who escaped the gunboat, but the water temperature was approximately 38°F, cold enough to induce lethal hypothermia in as little as thirty minutes.
The crew of the Camas Meadows made no attempt to rescue the survivors. The captain of the tanker later told a board of inquiry that he felt that it would be impossible to get his ship into position to launch his vessel’s boats without running down the survivors in the water. Furthermore, he argued “that the seas were running so high that he believed they were more than the lifeboat crews could overcome, especially since his crew had been on board less than ten days, and many of them had never before been to sea.”
The crew of U.S.C.G.C. Argo had been observing the incident unfolding at a distance of about 2,000 yards but initially believed that St. Augustine had simply passed in front of the tanker. It was only after Argo’s officer of the deck observed “that the bow of the ST. AUGUSTINE appeared to loom up out of the water at a very high angle” that he began to suspect something was wrong. Suddenly, Argo’s officer of the deck lost sight of St. Augustine. Unable to raise the gunboat by radio, he was alarmed that Camas Meadows “had stopped and had put on all running lights” and “immediately called the Captain of the ARGO [and] sent the coxswain of the watch to rouse all officers and crew.”
The survivors had been in the water for about 20 minutes when Argo arrived at their position. The report about the accident stated that her crew had no choice but to triage:
Because of heavy seas, it was difficult to tell which men to rescue first, but it was decided to leave the individual men until last in order to get to the largest groups which might be washed off rafts and scattered if left. As soon as men had been taken from rafts, heaving lines were thrown across bodies of individual men in the water. If they failed to respond to the line, it was presumed that they were dead and preference was shown to those who were waving lights or showing other signs of life.
Several coast guardsmen from both Argo and Thetis risked their lives by jumping into the frigid water to reach survivors, one officer staying in the water for about 40 minutes until he was hauled back aboard his vessel in a station of exhaustion. Despite their efforts, the coast guardsmen rescued only 30 men from St. Augustine’s crew of 145. Argo saved 23 and Thetis another seven. Rescue vessels recovered 67 bodies, including that of Signalman 3rd Class Pierce.
The accident report stated:
The conclusion of the Board of Inquiry was that the officers responsible for conning the ST. AUGUSTINE put the vessel on a collision course through failure to properly estimate the course and speed of the CAMAS MEADOWS; that the situation was further aggravated by a turn to port in changing to base course, which placed the ST. AUGUSTINE directly across the bow of the oncoming vessel, thus resulting in collision. It was further stated that if there had been a signalman on watch on the CAMAS MEADOWS to reply to the challenge from the ST. AUGUSTINE and to receive information and orders from the Convoy Escort Commander, it is probably that no collision would have ensued.”
Another report stated:
On 17 January 1944, the President of the Court of Inquiry concerning the loss of USS ST. AUGUSTINE wrote to the Chief of Naval Operations [and] recommended that all merchant vessels be required to have a signalman on watch at all times, with means instantly available for signaling. He further pointed out that every effort should be made to brief outbound vessels which will cross convoy lanes of the traffic which they may be expected to encounter.
Both recommendations were denied, the first due to insufficient personnel and the second due to security concerns.
After services at the Robert T. Jones Funeral Parlor on January 16, 1944, Signalman 3rd Class Pierce was buried at the White Clay Creek Church Cemetery, where his younger brother had been buried and where his parents and one sister would also be buried after their deaths. Maxine Pierce remarried to Thomas J. Gallagher in Marion County, Ohio on December 18, 1945.
Signalman 3rd Class Pierce’s name is honored on memorials in Newark and at Veterans Memorial Park in New Castle, Delaware.
Notes
Wife’s Name
His wife was also known as Maxine Burke. She had been widowed before she met Pierce and there are marriage records for the couple under both names.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to the Delaware Public Archives for the use of their photo.
Bibliography
Census Record for H. Wayne Pierce. January 16, 1920. Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920. Record Group 29, Records of the Bureau of the Census. National Archives at Washington, D.C. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GRNJ-WNX
Census Record for Wayne H. Pierce. April 25, 1940. Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940. Record Group 29, Records of the Bureau of the Census. National Archives at Washington, D.C. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L9MR-M93T
Census Record for Wayne Pierce. April 8, 1930. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Record Group 29, Records of the Bureau of the Census. National Archives at Washington, D.C. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GR4B-DKS
Certificate of Birth for Harold Edgar Pierce. June 8, 1922. Record Group 1500-008-094, Birth Certificates. Delaware Public Archives, Dover, Delaware. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-DWBS-PYZ
Certificate of Death for Raymond F. Pierce. February 15, 1929. Certificate of Death for . Record Group 1500-008-092, Death Certificates. Delaware Public Archives, Dover, Delaware. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C91F-3S9C-7
Draft Registration Card for Harry Wayne Pierce. Draft Registration Cards for Delaware, October 16, 1940 – March 31, 1947. Record Group 147, Records of the Selective Service System. National Archives at St. Louis, Missouri. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSMG-XS4C-1
“Harry Wayne Pierce Killed in Sea Crash.” January 15, 1944. Wilmington Morning News. https://www.newspapers.com/article/63776873/
“Loss of USS ST. AUGUSTINE.” January 1944. World War II War Diaries, Other Operational Records and Histories, c. January 1, 1942–c. June 1, 1946. Record Group 38, Records of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. National Archives at College Park, Maryland. https://www.fold3.com/image/273585297
Marriage License Application for Thomas J. Gallagher and Maxine Rosamand Pierce. December 7, 1945. Marion County, Ohio, Marriage Record Vol: 27 1944 – 1946. https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/61378/images/TH-1-19301-46647-11
Official Military Personnel File for Harry W. Pierce. 1941–1942. Official Military Personnel Files, 1885–1998. Record Group 24, Records of the Bureau of Naval Personnel. National Archives at St. Louis, Missouri.
“Personal Items.” June 12, 1942. Journal-Every Evening. https://www.newspapers.com/article/63821581/
Pierce, Hannah. Individual Military Service Record for Harry Wayne Pierce. March 19, 1945. Record Group 1325-003-053, Record of Delawareans Who Died in World War II. Delaware Public Archives, Dover, Delaware. https://cdm16397.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15323coll6/id/20286
“Pierce Rites Held Sunday.” January 20, 1944. The Newark Post. https://udspace.udel.edu/bitstream/handle/19716/18911/np_034_50.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
“Signalmen on Merchant Vessels.” January 1944. World War II War Diaries, Other Operational Records and Histories, c. January 1, 1942–c. June 1, 1946. Record Group 38, Records of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. National Archives at College Park, Maryland. https://www.fold3.com/image/273585371
“St. Augustine (PG-54).” August 4, 2020. Naval History and Heritage Command. https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs/s/st-augustin.html
War Diary, U.S. Naval Base Cape May, New Jersey.” January 1944. World War II War Diaries, Other Operational Records and Histories, c. January 1, 1942–c. June 1, 1946. Record Group 38, Records of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. National Archives at College Park, Maryland. https://www.fold3.com/image/271075360
Last updated on November 1, 2026
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