Growing up in Miami during the mid/late forties and into the 50’s, we always took terintine to the beach with us to clean off the tar from so many sunken ships just off the cost.
I highly recommend the book, "Operation Drumbeat" by Michael Gannon.
In vivid detail, he describes an attack by U-123 under the command of Reinhard Hardegen against a freighter just off the coast of Florida; U-123 was one of the five boats that set sail for the US coast in December 1941, just after the declarations of war between the US and Germany.
The U-boats were using their deck guns whenever possible, both because their targets were preposterously easy to sink and because they wanted to save their torpedoes for only the most difficult of shots. There was a particular ship that was perfectly silhouetted against an amusement park in Florida but was too close to the beach for them to risk the deck gun; there was genuine concern among the officers in the conning tower that a shot could end up landing on one of the rides. Determined to sink the ship but to save his torpedoes, Hardegen maneuvered his boat between the ship and the shore, raced up alongside it, and pounded it with the deck gun the whole time; the attendees at the amusement park witnessed first hand the most dramatic of sinkings, the explosions on the ship illuminating the U-boat and its crew for them.
I'm going to guess that You meant Turpentine.