July 9, 1942 the Grace Line's freighter Santa Rita was sunk by U-172 while returning to the USA from Egypt. The first torpedo ripped open her hull and destroyed the engines, giving the crew no choice but to abandon her, however while lowering the boats, one capsized and a crewman drowned, three others had been killed by the explosion. The remaining fifty-nine people got into two lifeboats. The U-172 came to the surface and machine gunned the ship and shelled the radio room. The Santa Rita was then boarded, searched and scuttled with charges.

Henry R. Stephenson, master of the Santa Rita was taken prisoner by the U-boat and was interned in the Milag Nord POW camp, he survived the war and was released during a prisoner exchange in Jan. 1945. All the other survivors were picked up, thirty-two of them by U.S. destroyers on July 11 and twenty-seven by a U.S. Army boat on July 25.