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Lanier was stationed aboard USS Truxton (DD-229), a destroyer home ported in Boston. The Truxton was assigned to escort duty, protecting convoys of merchant ships from U-boats.
In February of 1942, the Truxton and two other Navy ships ran aground in one of the worst recorded storms in the history of the North Atlantic. The flagship, USS Wilkes, was re-floated within three hours, but the Truxton and Pollux were pounded against the rocks until both ships broke up and sank.
As Lanier spoke to me about the disaster, his normally playful voice grew quiet and solemn. His smooth speech mannerisms became halting and a bit disjointed.
"We were about two-hundred yards from shore," he said. "The waves would pick the ship up and slam it down into the rocks. It just broke in two, like you would take a pencil and snap it in half. Crude oil was everywhere. Everybody was covered in oil. It was twenty below zero, and the oil just jelled. It was like tar.
"My boss, Third Class Henry Langston, was from Truxton, Virginia: right outside of Portsmouth. And Houston, he was from New York. Billy Gene Turner was from Pine Bluff, Arkansas. And we had one Filipino, Tom Dayo. They all died.
"We thought we were in Iceland, you see? The storm had blown us everywhere. We had no way of knowing where we were, so we thought we were in Iceland. And my friends said they'd probably lynch us if we went ashore. Negroes...that's what they called us back then...were not allowed to set foot in Iceland.
"I got on the last raft. The other Stewards wouldn't come. By that time, about half of the crew had been washed overboard. But the other black Sailors said, 'why try to make it? We'll wait till the Navy gets here.' By then, the planes were starting to fly over. But none of the other Steward's Mates made it ashore. They didn't get rescued. The ship just broke apart, and they died."
In all, 110 Truxton Sailors were drowned, frozen to death, or battered to death by the rocks. Ninety-three Sailors from the Pollux died as well.
Of the 46 Sailors who escaped the sinking of the Truxton, 45 were white. Lanier Phillips was the only African American survivor. The other black and Filipino Sailors remained aboard the ship as it was torn apart on the rocks, more willing to take their chances with the sea than with the lynch mobs they expected to find ashore.
The Sailors who did make it to shore found themselves at the foot of a three hundred foot tall cliff, covered in ice. Sick from oil and swallowed seawater, most of them were too exhausted, too battered, and too frozen to even think about such a climb.
Seaman Second Class Edward Bergeron still had a bit of life in him, and he had a knife. He cut handholds into the ice, and managed to drag himself to the top of the cliff. When he reached the top, he spotted lights in the distance, and went for help. The local citizens brought ropes and slings, and made trips up and down the cliffs until every surviving Sailor had been rescued.
Lanier had lost consciousness at the bottom of the cliffs. He woke to find himself lying on a table in an unfamiliar building, under the care of several white women. Other Sailors lay on nearby tables, also under the care of local women. The ladies were washing the Sailors with warm water, trying to pull them back from hypothermia, and also to wash the tar-like crude oil from their bodies.
Lanier quickly realized that he was naked. His mind flew into panic mode. He was a black man ashore in Iceland. That alone might be enough to get him lynched. To make matters worse, he was naked in the presence of white women, and they were touching his body. That had to be enough to get him killed.
The only thing hiding the color of his skin was the crude oil that coated his body. For the moment, every one of the rescued Sailors were black. But, when the oil was washed off, the rest of the survivors would be white. Lanier would still be black. And then things were going to get ugly.
One of his caretakers kept scrubbing the same spot over and over again. "This poor boy," she said. "The oil has gotten into his pores. It just won't come off."
Lanier decided that the sooner the truth came out, the less trouble he would be in. "Ma'am, that's not going to come off," he said. "That's the color of my skin."
And it was out in the open. He was a naked black man in Iceland. His situation could hardly be more damning.
But Lanier was not in Iceland. The storm that had wrecked his ship had pushed them far off course. This was not Iceland at all, but St. Lawrence, Newfoundland.
The lynching that Lanier was expecting never materialized. Quite the contrary. The color of his skin didn't seem to matter to the people of St. Lawrence. They lavished Lanier with every bit of the dignity, respect, and tenderness that they showed the other Sailors. A local family took him into their home and cared for him through the night.
As he lay under the blankets of an unfamiliar bed in the home of a white family, Lanier began to reevaluate his personal worth. His entire life, he had been raised to believe that the color of his skin made him somehow inferior to white people. He had been kicked, abused, threatened, and belittled. Even the Navy, his chosen service, reminded him constantly that he was of less importance than his white shipmates. And now, here was a white family - an entire white community - treating him as though the color of his skin didn't matter at all.
