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Deep Dive - where you can learn more about Pedernales.

The story of the SS Pedernales begins in nearby Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela in 1914 when vast quantities of oil were discovered beneath the lake. The channel from the open sea into Lake Maracaibo was too shallow to allow large, ocean-going oil tankers to enter, so a fleet of small, shallow-draft tankers, known as Lake Tankers, were designed and built to carry the crude to receiving facilities on the nearby island of Aruba. In 1928 Standard Oil acquired the facilites on Aruba, the fleet of tankers, and the lease for the Maracaibo oil holdings, and began to build a refinery that grew in size over the years. In 1938 Standard Oil secured a contract with Great Britain to supply 100 octane aviation gasoline. Because of the isolationsim of the US at the time, the contract stated the oil had to be refined outside of the US, and the refinery on the Dutch controlled island of Aruba was ideal. The SS Pedernales enters the story at this time; it was built in 1938 in Italy, was 355 feet long, and was owned by the Lago Oil and Transport Company, a subsidiary of Standard Oil. The refinery on Aruba quickly became one of the largest in the world and there are those who claim the Battle of Britain was won with the aviation gas refined in Aruba. This naturally drew the attention of the German High Command who dispatched a wolfpack of five German submarines and two Italian submarines to disrupt the production of aviation fuel. On February 16, 1942 the Pedernales was anchored in the roads of San Nicolas harbor Aruba, when she was torpedoed by the German submarine U-156, under the command of Werner Hartenstein. The Pedernales caught fire but remained afloat, unlike the Lake Tanker SS Oranjestad which was also torpedoed by U-156 at the same time, but sank in 70m of water. The crew of the Pedernales abandoned ship and left the hulk burning. The following day, after the fire had burned out, the ship was taken under tow and brought to just offshore of Palm Beach. The middle tank section, with the torpedoed damage, was cut out and dropped to the bottom where you can dive on it today. The bow section and the aft section with an intact engine room were towed to the Lago Dry Dock. The two sections were welded together, a wooden wheelhouse was added with all the required controls, and the vessel proceeded under its own power to Baltimore, Maryland. In Baltimore a new mid-section was welded in and the Pedernales returned to service transporting oil. When you have the opportunity to dive on the mid-section of the Pedernales reflect of the gravity of a world war in which nothing could be discarded, not even the front and aft sections of a torpedoed oil tanker.