Dixie Arrow was the last of the Arrow class, a group of twelve oil tankers built for the Standard Oil Company of New York -- Socony, the corporate ancestor of what would eventually become ExxonMobil. She was constructed at the New York Shipbuilding Corporation's South Yard in Camden, New Jersey, launched on September 29, 1921, and delivered to the Standard Transportation Company that November. Designed by Socony's naval architect Nicholas Pluymert for service in the Far East, the tanker measured 8,046 gross register tons and carried a quadruple expansion steam engine that pushed her to a maximum speed of 11 knots. For her first two years she hauled petroleum products to East Asia and returned with holds full of coconut oil, tung oil, and other vegetable oils from Manila -- an unusual practice, since most tankers sailed home empty. Socony opposed wasting a return voyage. By the early 1930s her route had been shortened to the East and Gulf Coasts, running crude oil from Texas to refineries in the northeast.

When German U-boats began prowling the American East Coast in early 1942, the waters off North Carolina became a killing ground. The continental shelf narrows dramatically along Hatteras Island, allowing submarines to lurk in deep water mere miles from the busy shipping lanes. Nearly 400 Allied vessels would be sunk by U-boats off the North Carolina coastline during what the Germans called the Second Happy Time -- a grim nickname celebrating the ease with which they destroyed undefended merchant ships. The Americans had no coastal convoy system yet; it would not be established until the summer of 1942. Dixie Arrow joined some 200 tankers shuttling crude oil from the Gulf Coast to factories in the north, fueling the American war effort. She sailed without weapons and without escort.

Shortly before 9:00 AM on March 26, 1942, Dixie Arrow entered Cape Hatteras's infamous Diamond Shoals, zig-zagging with 45-degree tacks and altering course every six to nine minutes. The seas were clear and calm. Aboard U-71, the German lookout had been about to call it a day when he spotted masts on the southern horizon. The torpedo struck amidships. A massive explosion tore through the tanker's midsection, sending a mushroom cloud of smoke and fire visible for miles. Burning crude oil spread across the water's surface, trapping crew members between the flames above and the sea below. Able Seaman Oscar Chappell, with fire shooting up around him, turned the wheel hard to starboard, bringing the bow into the wind so that seven men trapped on the forward deck could jump clear of the flames. Two lifeboats were destroyed instantly. A third swung wildly on its davits and threw a crewman to his death. The fourth lifeboat launched with fourteen men aboard. Of Dixie Arrow's 33-man crew, eleven perished. The tanker broke in two and slipped beneath the waves that evening.

Today the wreck of Dixie Arrow sits upright on the ocean floor off Cape Hatteras, her bow and stern close together and well preserved. The boilers and steam engine rise prominently from the stern section, while the midships area -- where the torpedo struck -- is a collapsed tangle of machinery and steel. Barracudas patrol the superstructure. Sand tiger sharks drift through the holds. Southern stingrays glide over the sand, and loggerhead sea turtles cruise past on their migrations. The wreck has become an important artificial reef and a magnet for divers, who descend to explore the remains of a ship that embodies one of World War II's lesser-known but deadliest campaigns. Environmental surveys have confirmed that Dixie Arrow's cargo tanks are empty, with no oil remaining on or within the wreck. Hurricane Isabel in 2003 swept away feet of accumulated sand, revealing portions of the tanker that divers had never seen before.

On September 25, 2013, the wreck and 61.7 surrounding acres of seabed were designated a National Historic Place by the United States government. In 2016, the site was incorporated into the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, placing it under federal maritime protection -- a designation shared with the wreck of the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor, which lies nearby. The protection does not restrict civilian wreck diving or charter fishing, activities that have long brought visitors to this patch of ocean. Dixie Arrow rests in waters that have claimed ships for centuries, from colonial merchantmen to Civil War warships to the tankers of World War II. The Outer Banks have earned their reputation as the Graveyard of the Atlantic, and Dixie Arrow is among the most visited graves.