Bag stashed since WWII found on Manitowoc

A leather toiletry bag hidden on the USS Cobia submarine since World War II recently was found by maintenance supervisor Paul Rutherford of the Wisconsin Maritime Museum in Manitowoc. The bag yielded a small red cloth bag, a rubber stamp, a “100 Cocktails” booklet and two poems, “Give Us a Drink” and “Navy Wife.”

MANITOWOC — Imagine Paul Rutherford's surprise when he was working aboard the USS Cobia and came across a bag that likely hadn't been touched by human hands since World War II.
Rutherford is maintenance supervisor for the Wisconsin Maritime Museum, where the submarine draws thousands of visitors each year.


The Cobia yielded its surprise to Rutherford on Dec. 21. He was on his back, squeezed into a tight space installing a protective cage around a light fixture above upper sleeping bunks in the after torpedo room.


"I had to take off the cover around the light fixture so I could use that to attach the cage to it," he said. "I realized I didn't bring the cages with me. I couldn't reach them and I didn't want to crawl down because it's a struggle, so I called for some help."


During the five minutes or so that he waited, his imagination went to work. He put himself in the mindset of a World War II submariner and wondered if one of them might have stashed something in a nearby nook.


"Wouldn't that be cool if I found something," he thought to himself.
Rutherford reached his hand above an electrical utility box behind the escape hatch.
And there it was. A brown leather zippered toiletry bag, flattened from being shoved into a 2- to 3-inch-high space more than 60 years ago.


"So I pulled it out," he said. "There was actually a lot of dust on it and one edge was spray-painted white," likely from remodeling during the '60s or '70s before the museum acquired the submarine, he said.


Rutherford waited until he finished his work and shimmied out of the tight space to see what was inside.

The bag yielded up a small empty red corduroy pouch, a rubber stamp with a seaman's name, a "100 Cocktails" booklet, and two poems, "Give Us a Drink" and "Navy Wife."

"That thing had definitely been up there longer than I've been alive," said Rutherford, 47. "If I wouldn't have forgotten to bring the cages with me, I would have never have found these items."
Using the rubber stamp as her guide, Karen Duvalle, submarine curator, consulted crew records and identified the objects as being from Seaman First Class Hersey J. Williams, who served aboard the USS Cobia on the submarine's fourth war patrol, which departed from Perth, Australia, on Dec. 12, 1945.