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PRECIOUS ATLANTIC CARGO

Written by Rev.Dr.W.Nicol who gives me full permission to place this story on this page.

A year or so before the end of the Second World War my family’s time in British Guiana came to an abrupt end. The war of the North Atlantic had passed through the years when German U-Boats could pick off Allied cargo and passenger vessels more or less as they liked, to the time when well organised, protected convoys were ferrying more and more provisions, essential war materials, and personnel from the United States to Britain in preparation for the long-awaited D-Day which would soon bring the war to an end.
Cargo ships were beginning to sail again from British Guiana and some also took a few passengers in the interest of security, sailing dates and dates of arrival weren’t disclosed until the very last minute, and then made known only to those directly involved. So it was that we had our passages booked, sold our non-essential belongings and hastily packed the rest, bade a few close friends farewell, and sailed on a small freight and passenger vessel from Georgetown in the summer of 1944.
From the routine of school in BG the excitement and novelty of the long voyage home was, for me, a welcome adventure. For my parents there must have been mixed feelings of sorrow and relief, of satisfaction and frustration, of joy and expectation but also anxiety and even fear, doubts and uncertainties about exposing themselves and their children to the hazards of a long sea trip during war. Whatever their feelings they concealed them well from their children. From Georgetown we made our way along the coast to Trinidad where we stayed a few days in Port of Spain before setting off with a few other ships ‘their safety in numbers’, they said, calling at different West Indian islands on the way to New York. My memories of this part of the trip are of beef-juice drinks and crackers on the deck, a gong calling us to meals, and stopovers at tropical islands in emerald green seas, with traders selling mangoes and other fruit from canoes or launches alongside our ship and boys diving for money thrown from the side. Douglas, my brother, dived from the ship and swam among the other boys once or twice.
In New York we seemed in another world. Trains on overhead railway lines rattled along the dockside: streets thronged with crowds of people and the incessant noise of traffic and taxi drivers filled the frosty air. Towering skyscrapers seemed to hem us in. Our cargo-cum-passenger ship seemed to shrink as other, bigger vessels assembled around us.
A walk along Fifth Avenue, a hair cut on some other Avenue, a bowl of creamed corn soup in a cafeteria and losing a handful of peanuts at a vendor machine on the dockside. The peanuts shot out of the machine on to the stone floor when we put a nickel into the machine. These are all I remember about New York, apart, of course, from the green Statue of Liberty, which we passed to join the 150 odd other ships of the convoy which was to make its zig-zag way north and east almost as far as Greenland and Iceland, and eventually south, past the Hebrides and the west coast of Scotland to Liverpool.
My memories of our return voyage after we left New York are of hearing it being said that ‘The speed of a convoy is the speed of its slowest ship’. (It must have been ours.) Corvettes and frigates rushing about at great speed, in all kinds of weather, between and across the order lines of every kind of merchant ship stretching to beyond the horizon, and the endless days filled with cascading fountains of exploding depth charges in the wake of escorting war-ships. I can still hear the reassuring voices on the tannoy from the Naval officers escorting us, telling us that they were ‘only practicing’ and the dull boom-booms at night from the same depth charges. As we came alongside the dock in Liverpool at the end of the trip, the ‘Guianesekind’ expression which the three of us, Douglas, Mary and I, three children brought up for seven years in British Guiana, said in all, ‘We jam! We jam!’, exclaiming with one voice, excitement and relief. We were back home. Later that night my father heard from one of the officers from our ship known as ‘Sparks’, that several German U-boats had been sunk attempting to get to our convoy.

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