[RSwank]

A little further down in the link Juha gave is an account from Signalman Hendry, who was on the Sharpshooter (or Scylla? , it is not quite clear which).

"Being one of the tail-end Charlies we were ordered to search for any survivors. We had cruised around for quite a time in a sea covered with pieces of wreckage and an oily scum when we spotted a man on the edge of it all and got him on board, remarkably uninjured apart from shock. He was a coloured American cook from a Liberty ship, who told us he had been manning the ship's after gun when a sudden explosion blew him into the sea - apparently the only survivor.
"Yessir, I sure am a lucky guy!" he repeated over and over again"

‘The surprise came later when we found that his ship was still safely afloat.; it was actually the ship abeam of her which had been hit and gone down, the blast from the explosion having travelled across and hurled him into the water. But he certainly was a "Lucky guy", considering how small a man looked in the sea."


Curious, that if this cook is David H Galley (Galley was the chief cook on the Nathanael Greene) he "appears" to be uninjured. I wonder if there were some internal injuries that become evident later. I do think one could make a good argument that the missing "Messman" that started this thread was David H Galley.