At 20.53 hours on 23 April 1942 the unescorted Lammot Du Pont (Master Robert Cameron Housten) was hit by one torpedo from U-125 when steaming on a nonevasive course at 9.5 knots about 500 miles southeast of Bermuda. The torpedo struck on the port side between the #4 hatch and the engine room. The explosion blew the booms at the #4 and #5 hatches onto the deck and threw a large column of water and linseed in the air. The ship rapidly listed to port and within five minutes rolled completely on her side. The nine officers, 36 crewmen and nine armed guards (the ship was armed with one 4in and two .30cal guns) began to abandon ship in one lifeboat and three rafts. Six crew members went down with the ship and two left on a broken raft. The other survivors tried to reach these men in the heavy seas, but they drifted away and were never found.

Eight crew members and seven armed guards on two rafts were picked up after two days by the Swedish motor merchant Astri and were transferred on 8 May to USS Omaha (CL 4), which brought them to Recife, Brazil on 11 May. The 31 crew members and two armed guards in the lifeboat drifted for 23 days before being rescued by USS Tarbell (DD 142), after being spotted by an aircraft about 40 miles from San Juan, but seven crew members and one armed guards already died of fever and three other crew members later died in a San Juan hospital.