On 7 Aug 1943 the Fernhill (Master K.J. Neuberth Wie) was hit on the port side in the engine room by one torpedo from U-757 about 300 miles west of Sierra Leone, while she was proceeding alone after her convoy OS-52 had been dispersed off Bathurst. The ship sank within five minutes, killing the three men on watch below and one British gunner. The survivors abandoned ship in lifeboats and rafts and were picked up two days later by the American steam tanker Idaho in 07°13N/19°59W after being located by Catalina aicraft and landed in Freetown on 10 August. The third engineer Nils Bremer Johannesen was taken prisoner by the U-boat, this was not noticed by the other survivors.