Dawn of Infamy by Stephen Harding

Author:Stephen Harding
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780306825040
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2016-09-24T04:00:00+00:00

THE FAMILY MEMBERS OF CYNTHIA OLSON’S crewmen were not the only ones seeking financial compensation following the ship’s disappearance. Almost immediately after being briefed on the contents of Lurline’s radio log during the second week of December 1941, Whitney and George Olson approached San Francisco ATS superintendent Mellon with questions about how the Army would reimburse the Olson Company for the loss of the vessel. Mellon, by this point inundated with the massive amounts of paperwork necessary to convert his ATS office to a wartime footing, asked the brothers to submit a formal invoice that could be passed up the chain of command.

The Olsons lost no time in producing the requested invoice, submitting it to Mellon during the second week of January 1942. The document likely took the ATS superintendent’s breath away, for the Olsons asked for a total reimbursement of $346,600 for the twenty-three-year-old vessel. In support of their request, the brothers cited their original purchase price as $113,000 and noted that they’d spent an additional $69,000 on repairs and improvements. In addition, they pointed out that in May 1941 Cynthia Olson’s hull and machinery had been insured for $160,000, which was increased to $200,000 on November 19, 1941, as part of the ATS charter agreement. As required by that agreement, the Olson Company had prepaid the premiums for the entire six-month charter period, a total of $7,397.26, though the premiums did not figure in the Olsons’ initial claim.34

Mellon passed the reimbursement request up the chain of command, noting in his transmittal letter that he considered the $346,600 figure “entirely too high for a vessel of [Cynthia Olson’s] age and condition.” His superiors obviously agreed, for no reimbursement was immediately forthcoming. Indeed, as of June 1943 the Olsons’ invoice was still “under review” by the Legal Office of the Transportation Corps’ Water Division. On June 8 the Legal Office attorney dealing with the Olsons’ claim issued a report upon which the ATS would base its counterproposal. It read, in part,

It is also noted that the San Francisco Port of Embarkation, together with the Maritime Commission, have approved a valuation of $100.00 per dead weight ton for war risk insurance for this vessel.

. . . It is the opinion of this Branch that a valuation of $100.00 per dead weight ton for the vessel in question is entirely too high, and in collaboration with the Maintenance and Repair Branch in the Water Division, it has been developed that the value carried in the charter party; namely, $200,000 for insurance purposes; is adequate and should be an equitable adjustment of the loss for all concerned.35

When notified of the government’s counteroffer the Oliver J. Olson Company found it neither adequate nor equitable and refused to accept it. While the Olsons had their corporate hands full operating a number of ships on charter to both the Army and Navy, they nonetheless found time over the following two years to file repeated requests for reimbursement of the $346,600 they’d originally requested. By the spring of 1945, it had become all too clear that the U.

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