Harwich Man’s Book Details Provincetown Sub Tragedy

Ninety-eight years ago last week, just before Christmas 1927, the U.S. Navy submarine the S-4 sank off Provincetown with 40 men trapped inside.

Provincetown residents watched with horror and sadness as rescue efforts failed and at last the trapped men’s air ran out.

Now author David Zeni of Harwich, a former lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, has written a masterful book about the tragedy, “Sail Four: A Submarine Story” (Mr. Ghost Books, 2025). The 340-page book is exhaustively researched and beautifully illustrated with photos from the 1920s.

“I first learned of the story in 1972 when, as a 16-year-old, I saw an exhibit of photos related to the story in Provincetown,” Zeni said in an email interview last week. “Years later, after serving on a submarine and moving to the Cape, I became interested again and started to attend the annual memorial service of St. Mary of the Harbor.” That church, located on the water side of Commercial Street in Provincetown, held a memorial service for those who died on the S-4 until the pandemic.

While Zeni was at the memorial service he met a St. Mary parishioner who gave him a tip about a retired United Press reporter named Boyd DeWolf Lewis. Lewis arrived in Provincetown to cover the story within hours of the sub’s sinking in 1927. In 2002 Zeni travelled to Vienna, Va. to interview Lewis, who was then 96.

“He remembered it like it was yesterday — his second big story as a reporter, following the Sacco and Vanzetti case,” Zeni says. “Hearing him was like listening to an eyewitness minutes after seeing a major event.”

The S-4 sinking made international headlines.

Lewis told Zeni that the submarine’s sinking was “still a great story,” and encouraged him to write about it. So Zeni set out to research and write “Sail Four.”

The story of how the S-4 sank is a tragic one. On Saturday, Dec. 17, the Coast Guard destroyer Paulding was patrolling off Provincetown looking for rumrunners. These were the rollicking days of Prohibition. When the S-4 emerged from underwater speed trials, it crashed violently into the Paulding. The S-4 rolled over and sank bow first. While most of the crew likely died immediately, six men remained alive in the forward torpedo room. It was believed that they had 72 hours of air left, making any rescue efforts in rough seas a race against time. Provincetown residents were heartbroken as the five men tapped out messages in Morse code as their air ran out. When Navy divers reached the submarine after four days, all the men had perished.

While the outlines of the story are well known, Zeni’s research brings alive the crews of both vessels and also what transpired before, during and after the sinking. After offering background on the Paulding and the S-4, Zeni moves ahead to the Army v. Navy game of November 1927.

The S-4’s commanding officer “propels the story forward, often from his perspective, leading up to that fateful day, Dec. 17, 1927,” Zeni says.

“When I started my research, you had to have the permission of a blood relative to see the military personnel file of the deceased sailors,” Zeni says. “Then, a miracle.” In 2004 the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) opened military records that were over 62 years old — including the S-4’s crew’s records.

“Details from those records are woven into my narrative,” Zeni says.

Adding even more color to the narrative are the original letters between the S-4’s commanding officer and his wife. Zeni bought them from a military memorabilia dealer as a lot on eBay. He also interviewed descendants of many of the people involved with the incident.

“It’s a sad story, to be sure, but in telling it, I wanted to give those lost sailors a life, a personality,” Zeni says. “Recall their humanity, not just their loss. That is why this is a work of creative nonfiction.”

The creative nonfiction aspects of the book are seen in dramatizations of events inside the submarine. But Zeni doesn’t stray far from the facts — most dialogue comes from personal letters and official documents.

While in the 1920s the submarine was known as the S-4, military and official government correspondence often referred to it as “Sail Four.” Hence the title of Zeni’s book. Zeni himself served aboard the submarine Tecumseh, adding even more veracity to the book. It “reinforced for me that while a surface vessel has many personnel scanning the horizon to prevent collision, a submarine has only the eyes of the officer on the periscope,” Zeni says. “It’s a dangerous business.”

After the S-4 sank, money was appropriated to improve submarine safety. This led to the development of the McCann Rescue Chamber, a device capable of bringing submarine crewmen up from a sunken submarine. It was first used in 1939 to rescue 33 men.

Zeni will sign copies of “Sail Four” at Yellow Umbrella Books in Chatham on Saturday, Dec. 27 from 1 to 3 p.m.