Most of these guys are dead by now. It will be the families buying the medals to commemorate the service of loved ones.
Before the Allies learned how to protect convoys, and before the Liberty ship program really took off, the Germans were sinking cargo ships faster than the Allies could build them. A lot of times there were no rescue ships available to pick up survivors. It was the definition of hazardous service.
I was astonished to see the number of commercial ships lost off our east coast at the start of WWII.
One of the sailors on my ship (merchant) was an old navy armed guard who sailed on those merchant ships during the war. There was a dispatch hall in New York where the navy armed guard would go to receive their assigned ship. He remembers seeing a sailor dispatch in the morning with his sea bag and that evening back at the hall soaking wet without his sea bag.