Equally characteristic, and modestly illustrative of the spirit in which these American escort-officers interpreted their duty, is the following account, written by the commander of the destroyer _Warrington_, of the attempt to save the _Wellington_, a British collier. "The _Wellington_," he wrote, "carrying coal to Gibraltar, left Milford Haven with a convoy of about twenty ships in the morning of Friday, September 13th. Sunday night the escort of British destroyers {266} left, and convoy proceeded under ocean escort of U.S.S. _Seneca_. About eleven in the morning of September 16th, the _Wellington_ sighted a submarine which porpoised and instantly thereafter submerged about one point on her starboard bow. Immediately afterward she was struck by a torpedo forward, and the forehold was quickly flooded. The _Wellington's_ crew of forty-four abandoned the ship in the two good lifeboats belonging to her, and were picked up by U.S.S. _Seneca_, the ocean escort. First Lieutenant Fletcher W. Brown, Coast Guard, attached to _Seneca_, asked and obtained the permission of his commanding officer to man the _Wellington_ with a volunteer crew and endeavour to bring her into port. A large number of the _Seneca's_ crew volunteered, and eighteen men were chosen. At the same time the Master of the _Wellington_, the first and second mates and ten of her original crew volunteered to return with the _Seneca's_ men. They were permitted to do so, and all went aboard the _Wellington_, with Lieutenant Brown in charge, but the Master of the _Wellington_ navigating. Unfortunately, before returning to the _Wellington_, one of the lifeboats which had been used when the ship was first abandoned had been cast adrift. This left the vessel with but one lifeboat, two jolly boats, and two life-rafts which Lieutenant Brown had made on board.