Built in 1913 at Bremer Vulcan for Norddeutscher Lloyd the cargo ship Mark was seized by the U.S. in 1917 and renamed Suwanee. After the war she was given to Poland and renamed Poznan and in 1922 she was sold to the Luckenbach Steamship Company and renamed Paul Luckenbach. In Sept. 1942 she loaded tanks, B-25's and other material bound for the middle east. After touching at Cape Town she moved into the Indian Ocean where a Japanese submarine was waiting for her.

On September 22, 1942 Paul Luckenbach was torpedoed without warning by Cdr. Hisaichi Izu and I-29 some 780 miles west by south of Mangalore, India. The torpedo struck the port side and the ship settled by the bows. Over an hour later a second torpedo struck abaft of the first dooming the ship. The gunners fired four shots at what they thought was the submarine, but it turned out to be a drifting life raft. Shortly after the second torpedo hit the ship was abandoned, the sixty-one man crew taking to four lifeboats. Fortunately for the crew the submarine did not surface for many a merchant sailor after his ship was sunk was shot or run down by Japanese submarine commanders. In this case perhaps Izu assumed they could not cause any harm as they were in the middle of the ocean and it was unlikely they would ever see land again.

All sixty-one however did see land, albeit after a long and torturous journey in open boats. The four lifeboats made land separately at four different points along the Indian coast, I sadly do not have the exact dates. It is known that the first boat made land 21 days later and the last 26 days later.

Neither I-29 or Izu would survive the war, I 29 was sunk by USS Sawfish SS-276 in July of 1944 and Cdr. Izu was killed in I-11 sometime in late Apr. or early Mar. of 1944.