Between 22.17 and 22.20 hours on 23 Feb, 1943, U-202 fired four bow torpedoes at the convoy UC-1 about 400 miles south of the Azores and damaged the Murena, British Fortitude and Empire Norseman. At 22.21 hours, the stern torpedo was fired, which hit the Esso Baton Rouge.
The Esso Baton Rouge (Master James S. Poche) in station #43 was struck by the torpedo on the starboard side between the engine room and aft bunkers. The explosion carried away the bulkhead between the tanks and the engine room, filled the latter compartment with burning oil, killed one officer and one man on watch below and stopped the engines. Debris flew over 50 feet in the air and one armed guard was killed. As the ship started to settle by the stern, the eight officers, 35 men and 25 armed guards (the ship was armed with one 4in, one 3in and eight 20mm guns) abandoned ship in three lifeboats, after three rafts were carried away, because the ship still had headway. Within 90 minutes all survivors were picked up by the British sloop HMS Totland (Y 88). The tanker finally sank by the stern about 04.00 hours the next morning. Two crew members and one armed guard, all seriously burned from flaming oil, were treated on the sloop and put ashore at Antigua on 4 March. The remaining survivors were transferred to the Dutch steam merchant Maaskerk and arrived in Trinidad on 6 March.