Hi All,

The following is part of a Daily News article reprinted in “The Pointer” (a veteran’s publication) for June 2005 through October 2005:

WWII “Lifeboat Baby” dies at 63

“HE WAS THE BABY “Hitler couldn't get” - delivered in a lifeboat tossing in rough seas after the ship carrying his pregnant mother was torpedoed by a Nazi U-boat.

Jesse Roper Mohorovic was born off North Carolina on March 30, 1942, just hours after the merchant ship City of New York sank in stormy seas.

Last Saturday, the man whose birth inspired a nation passed away at age 63 after a bout with lung cancer

Named for the Navy destroyer Jesse Roper, which came to the lifeboat's rescue, Mohorovic's unlikely story earned him headline nicknames such as “the lifeboat baby,” “son of the sea” and, of course, the boy who “Hitler couldn't get” in the Daily News and other papers.

As 20-foot waves washed over the lifeboat, a Brooklyn doctor with two broken ribs delivered the boy. “I didn’t have to wash the baby,” Dr. Leonard Conly would later say. “The sea did that for me.”

Jesse Roper Mohorovic went on to live a life filled with achievement.

The family settled in Washington Heights after mom, Desanka Mohorovicic - the name was later shortened - rendezvoused with husband, Joseph, an attaché with the Yugoslav Consulate in New York.
.
.
He got his law degree from Fordham, his tuition paid by James Farrell, president of Farrell Lines, which owned the torpedoed merchant ship. Jesse enlisted, appropriately enough in the Navy."

The article goes on to say he also had two sisters in the lifeboat that eventful night.

From the member’s area:

At 19.36 hours on 29 Mar, 1942, the unescorted City of New York (Master George T. Sullivan) was torpedoed by U-160 (Georg Lassen) about 40 miles east of Cape Hatteras, while she steamed in twenty-foot seas on a nonevasive course at 14 knots.

The torpedo struck the #3 hold just below the bridge on the port side at the waterline.

The armed guards fired twelve shots with the 4in gun on the poop (the ship was also armed with four .50cal and four .30cal guns) at the periscope of the U-boat.

U-160 circled the stern at a distance of about 250 yards and fired off the starboard quarter a second torpedo that struck the starboard side at #4 hold, causing the ship to sink stern first after 20 minutes.

Most of the 13 officers, 70 crewmen and 41 passengers abandoned ship in four lifeboats, the nine armed guards jumped off the ship as water reached the after deck.

There were 24 dead and 109 survivors.

I wonder what was recorded in his birth certificate for “place of birth” (-: What a tough way to start out your life.

Regards,

Ken Dunn