Coast Trader sailed from Port Angeles, WA, to San Francisco, CA. About thirty miles from the Strait of Juan de Fuca the I-26 (Yokota) attacked the ship as she steered a nonevasive course. A torpedo blasted a six foot hole in the starboard side beneath the #4 hatch in the stern. The explosion blew the #4 hatch cover forty feet in the air, and scattered bits of paper from the 2,000-pound newsprint rolls over the deck. The engines immediately stopped and the hold filled with steam. The gun crew offered no counter offensive. Ammonia fumes leaking from the ship's refrigeration unit overcame some of the crew as they mustered at their boat stations. The men managed to launch one lifeboat and two rafts. The fishing vessel Virgina I towed the lifeboat to Neah Bay thirty hours after the attack. Ten hours later the Canadian corvette Edmundston (K-106) picked up the rafts carrying nine officers, twenty-eight men, and nineteen armed guards and landed them at Port Angeles. One man died from exposure before being rescued. The freighter sank stern first at 1435. Browning