Laskowski, William
(1890 - Dec. 6, 1917)
Missing in actionDid you know that the first Polish heroes of the U.S. Navy during World War l were Ladislaus L. Adamkiewicz, Joseph Korzeniecky, and William Frank Laskowski?
Actually Laskowski, who served in the Navy under the name "William Laskon," was the first Pole to go down to the bottom of the sea aboard the USS Jacob Jones, the first ship sunk during the war by a German U-boat, on Dec. 6, 1917. The other two aboard the destroyer - Adamkiewicz, assistant surgeon, and Korzeniecky, machinist's mate first class - were rescued in the frigid waters six miles south of the Scilly Isles, southwest of England, clinging to small rafts, after their gallant ship was torpedoed. Before two officers and 64 enlisted men were drowned, the USS Jacob Jones, with seven officers and 95 enlisted men, picked up the survivors of three British shipwrecks - 44 off the SS Valetta, July 8, 1917; 22 off the SS Dafila, July 22, 1917; and 305 off a British cruiser, October 19, 1917.
Nobody knows exactly where Laskowski was born. With a little bit of detective work, I would assume that his first name was Wladyslaw, which many sons of Polish immigrants changed to William, and that the name given for his father was wrong in 1910 but right in 1920 but the same both times for his mother by the census takers in Camden, New Jersey. As census records show, Martin and Frances Laskowski, as the parents were first listed and William, ten years later, who came from Poland in 1887, had six children in Wilmington, Delaware, between 1890 and 1909. As is clear from the 1920 census, the family moved to Camden shortly after the sixth child was born.
Obviously, if William Laskowski enlisted in the Navy at Philadelphia in 1907, as one writer said, it meant his home was in Wilmington and not in Camden. The senior Laskowski was listed as a blacksmith in a shipyard in 1910 and a saloon keeper in 1920. At the same time the Polish population of Camden grew more than Wilmington and was increasingly better for Polish entrepreneurs. In 1920, for example, Wilmington had 3,243 persons from Poland, compared to 1,499 in 1900, and the Poles in Camden grew from 674 to 3,565 persons in the first two decades of the 20th century. In addition to building warships, the Polish people of Camden in 1913 built St. Joseph's Catholic Church, whose baroque style of architecture immediately drew the attention of viewers, and World War l raised their patriotism to a fever pitch. For the first time the sailor in the Laskowski family came to their attention.
On November 21-23, 1914, while his ship was engaged in fighting Mexican forces off Vera Cruz, the fireman first class from "Polish town," now known as Whitman Park, in Camden, was wounded in an arm and a leg. After getting out of the hospital, the Navy sent him to Camden, where on May 25, 1915, the New York Shipbuilding Company launched the USS Jacob Jones (DD 61), the first of two destroyers of this name, in the biggest shipyard on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River. During a shakedown cruise of the destroyer in the Delaware Bay, she sprung a leak in a compartment at the bottom of the ship and at the risk of his life Laskowski went to repair it. For a year or more, until the United States entered the war on April 6, 1917, the destroyer patrolled the waters off the East Coast and, in May, crossed the Atlantic to set up a base in Queenstown, Ireland. Then the USS Jacob Jones played an important role in anti-submarine patrols and escorting various convoys.
In the afternoon of December 6, 1917, the captain of the destroyer, Lt. Cdr. David W. Bagley, was in the chartroom when he heard the shout, "Torpedo" and immediately rushed to the bridge. He saw the torpedo about 800 yards from the USS Jacob Jones, rotating one way after another, and racing to strike amidship. After the explosion, Lt. Cdr. Bagley ran along the deck, ordering the officers and enlisted men not killed by the torpedo, to launch all rafts, boats, and splinter mats and abandon ship. Soon after the destroyer, with 66 dead bodies of officers and enlisted men on board, flipped over, stern first, and still lies beneath the sea off the rocky and dangerous coast of the Scilly Isles.
Within an hour of the explosion, the German U-boat that sank the first USS Jacob Jones surfaced and captured two of the American sailors still afloat. Lt. Cdr. Bagley, who tried to reach a deserted island in a dory, was rescued by an English patrol vessel. The rest of the survivors were picked up by other ships.
In addition to his name on a list of persons missing in action at Brookwood American Cemetery in England, the war veterans of Camden County, New Jersey, named an American Legion post in 1928 after Fireman 1/c Laskowski and Private John Wojtkowiak, who was killed in the battle of Argonne in France. The post stood for many years at the corner of Louis and Liberty streets, and now shares quarters with Polish Army Veterans in a building on Mt. Ephraim Avenue, both located in Camden.
From: Edward Pinkowski (2009)