大象传媒

Jim Cowey,
This story is taken from an interview with Jim Cowey, The interview was by Deirdre Donnelly, and transcription was by Bruce Logan.
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I鈥檓 Jim Cowey. I鈥檓 a Commander, retired. And I live in Egmonton, Alberta, Canada, which is away up in the north central part of Alberta, in the western section.

When I turned 17 - I could join the Navy legally if my mother would let me. And I did. I was not very long in reserve, because I was a trained sailor. I knew how to march, I was a trained cadet. So I got into the Navy very quickly, and went through the training as an instructor. I then went to the West Coast and trained out there. What is called Navy Qualifying, Able Seaman Qualifying, and then I was transferred to Vancouver after training, and was on the Aircraft Carriers. Of which the UK had 18 of them. Canada took 2 of them, but I never got to sail on them, because I was transferred off. They had brought in 900 RN personnel to man these ships at that time. I was transferred to the coast and immediately was transferred onto HMCS Wentworth, which was a Frigate. The Wentworth was sent around from the West coast.This became the senior ship on a convoy run. The senior officer was a Lt Commander by the name of Pringle, And that鈥檚 when I started doing the Newfoundland run.

[What does 鈥淭he Run鈥� mean?]
Going from 1 place to another. A 鈥渞un鈥�, we could go a lot of different ways. If there was a lot of U-boat activity, which by the time that I was on there which was 1944, before the end of the war, we knew where the subs were because we had broken their code by Ultra. We knew where they were congregating, so we were able to manipulate convoys around them. But we would still get knowledge that there were some around. And if we got the contact, we attacked. We never sank a sub, not like Gordon who got 4. We never did. So we kept plugging away, but it was over from, Newfoundland to Derry. We would pick up the convoy, which would be really assembled in Halifax, in Bedford basin. They would come out with other groups of small ships like Minesweepers, which were not good for traversing the ocean, and older corvettes. And they would take them to a point SE of Newfoundland. Approx where the Titanic went down. And we would then take over the ships, and we would take them all the way across. The ships that they were bringing over were always empty. They dropped their loads and they were 鈥� so we would take their full ships from USA and Halifax, and they would bring back any empty ones back to North America.

[What was on the convoys? What kind of goods?]
There was a lot of military people. There was food. We literally fed the whole of the UK, for all that time. There was the trucks. Loaded with aircraft, tied up on the top. They were just covered with foam. We would carry Tanks, guns, ammo, oil, fuel, food. The only things we never seemed to be able to carry was fresh fruit, like oranges or bananas. You have to think that through the war there were very few children who knew what a banana was, or an orange. They don鈥檛 grow over here. And it鈥檚 not essential growth, to keep a population fed. But flour, grain, minerals, iron ore, they would do a lot of building ships and steel here. All these things. The size of a convoy might extend from 35-40 ships. A small, very fast convoy or larger slower moving convoys might end up at over 110 or 115 ships. My group brought the largest convoy ever to sail. It was in the papers. That鈥檚 how I know. But there was a huge thing. And 110 ships would cover a space about the size of Londonderry. 1 after the other for how many ships, 10? And then over in the next line, another 10, and another 10 鈥� you get 10 wide, about 5 miles long.
We would sweep around, looking for these subs if they were there. Once,we had to sail south, there was so much activity and I guess we were sailing to close to the French bases at Brest, and we did lose a ship. Just a merchant ship. But this was what our job was, and it didn鈥檛 seem much to us then. But when you read back much later on how what you were doing was helping to feed this group, you were trying to get all these soldiers and aircraft into Britain, food and all this for them. It鈥檚 kind of special.
It was the Atlantic, it was the biggest battlefield in the world for the longest time. You have to realise how big the North Atlantic is. If you put your hand over the whole side of a map, it covers the whole thing. And we had to cover that.

I think I was probably too young to be frightened. I was a quartermaster in those days. And so I steered the ship until we went into action, or came up the Foyle river when the cox鈥檔 took over. My action station was in the Aft magazine, way down at the bottom, completely surrounded by oil and very close to the water. Right back in the back end of the ship. And if they were firing depth-charges around,that was kind of frightening. But that鈥檚 about the only time I can say I was frightened. Never in any storm. I was never seasick. Strange, I was never seasick.
To the port of Derry - We would be bringing the ships in, and there was 2 ways you could bring ships in. to Liverpool, which is the basic place to drop them off. There鈥檚 no place to drop them off in the south of Ireland, in Eire. So we had to come up past the south to Liverpool. And we would get fairly close to the bottom end of the channel there. And other groups would come out and take them into Liverpool. And we would break off, and we came around on the west coast. A couple of occasions we came into Derry through the Irish sea, past the isle of Man, past Liverpool.
I don鈥檛 think I ever watched Ireland appear over the horizon. We seemed to come in close to Ireland during the night. And we got up in the morning and the sun was coming up. In the summer the watches changed at 4am, first light, and then the next thing you knew you were very close to Ireland, and this green, because all you had looked at was black, grey, choppy white water for 2 weeks. The longest convoy we ever pulled was 21 days. And we had to go away down south past the Azores. And that was in January. I remember that date. January the 6th. The temp was 106. There you are on a metal ship without air-conditioning. That was 1 way.
Other times when there was u-boat activity we had to go north close to Ireland, up through the Denmark straits and up through that way. To give us the greatest air cover we could get. We made a deal with Iceland that would allow our planes to fly out of there, that would give us a lot of cover the way over. Then we could get almost all the way. The area in-between, in the early days between how far east our planes could cover us and how far west the planes from this side could cover us, for a long while until we got new aircraft, would leave a blank space in the middle, which became a death alley fro a lot of ships. That鈥檚 where we lost the most merchant ships, was in the Death Alley.
We had special groups. Gordon was on a special group, they would come out and help us. For a while he was on the Murmansk run. We had special striking groups that would come out and give us extra ship coverage. Just before D-Day, when we were bringing convoys in and didn鈥檛 know what was happening, and Germany knew something was happening, they sent all sorts of subs out, and we had some pretty big efforts. We picked up an extra 20-30 escorts. Just to surround these larger convoys. And they were fast convoys we were taking. Even had a ship called the 鈥淏lack Prince鈥�, which was an AA cruiser. And she just bristled with guns, so she could cover the whole convoy with aircraft. We never lost a ship. We just pulled into Moville, that鈥檚 where we stopped.
We fuelled at Moville. There was a tanker stuck out there all by its lonely little self. And as soon as the ships started to pull in and fuel up, we were senior ship so we were always first in, to oil up. There鈥檇 be another ship on the other side. It could oil 2 ships at once. And the bum-boat would come out. It was amazing. This guy knew the convoys were in, the escorts, he鈥檇 come alongside with his little boat, he couldn鈥檛 come aboard, and say what he had to sell. And he had things on that little boat of his that we couldn鈥檛 get in Canada or USA, like silk stockings. I was too young, I didn鈥檛 know that this 20yo experience of some stockings could do for you in a place like NYC or Halifax.
He would sell anything. It was Xmas eve 1944, we came in and gassed up. The bum-boat came out, and he had live turkeys in his boat. A fellow by the name of Pete Leawnowitz and myself and another Quartermaster by the name of Warren, we bought a turkey. We were going to have turkey for Xmas dinner. Because we didn鈥檛 know if we had any in our freezers. So we bought it, and we tied it down. We got in, by this time we had contacted our cook and he said 鈥渙h yeah, we鈥檒l do it鈥�. Although he had turkeys aboard, frozen ones. And so we eventually took the turkey aboard. Jetty 16 at Derry, here and there, which is away up there. We took it out on a bollard, we stretched the neck out, I held the neck, Warren held the legs, the wings down, and Leonowitz took the axe and we took the head off the turkey. And the Turkey flapped out. We were all city boys, we didn鈥檛 know how a turkey would react like this. Warren let go of the legs, and over the side it went. Into all this oil and gunk which was around the jetty and between the ships.

I had a Xmas in Derry. But that also resulted in the fact that, since there were already a lot of people in Derry in December 44, that all hell seemed to break loose. Because we had 3 Canadian groups in, plus another couple of groups. There was a lot of ships in. and everything seemed to go crazy. Some of the ships got into the loopile systems and turned on their guns, they were firing flares and rockets up into the air. There was a lot of carousing around, and a lot of the guys were ashore. We learned to suffer with that, because we didn鈥檛 get to stay in. It was a 5-6 day turnaround to get the ship ready to go again.
There was a lot of fun here. One time, they built a rest camp up at Portrush or Portstewart. And some of the ships would come in, and half the ship鈥檚 company would be taken off and given R&R up at this camp here. Given old American Quanson huts, these half-round things. If you got it in the middle of summer, you were all right. But if you had to go R&R in the middle of winter, you went in and sitting down at the far end there was a little stove. Trying to keep this going. We froze, literally.
But we got up early in the morning, and we were able to do whatever we wanted. A lot of the guys went into Portrush, Portstewart. I can鈥檛 remember exactly where the rest camp was, it was 1 of those 2 towns. This gave some of us the opportunity to go into town and explore that. I took, 3 of went up to the Giants Causeway. It was the first time I had ever seen it. And it was nearly 60 years to the day that I went there the other day. Hasn鈥檛 changed a bit, I notice. That was a good experience.
I never tried to go across the line here, though some of the boys did. Into the Free State. They got a bike here in town, and it鈥檚 what, about a mile to the Free State. They were all right as long as they took their hats off. They were in their burberries, just going across. They had fun.
We had a good group. We had basically 7 ships. And as 1 of the fellows here was the navigator on one of the ships on my group. Mr Butterfield. And he became a Master Mariner and everything he was a Captain on the Coastal ships out of the West Coast in our group.
For a dance or a party or something like that, we used to come up to some place in the Diamond here, to dance. But we also asked a lot of the WRENS from Boom Hall, because they were coming in and servicing our ships. They鈥檇 come in, change all the pistons on our depth charges, they would clean the guns, they would do this and that. It was really a messy story. And they were great workers. We weren鈥檛 used to this, even from our own WRENs, because they didn鈥檛 do this kind of work. They were mostly clerical. With these gals they just got in, with their elbows up in grease, cleaning guns. So we would have the occasional party aboard ship. It was really great.

When we were coming in there was always a bunch of them out there, waving and welcoming us in. This was strange, because we knew they were ours. Because we started off at Moville, and we had heard and knew that there was a German consular representative up there, recording all the ships coming in, and all the ships going out. So they had a very good knowledge of when we were leaving and when we were going in.

You mentioned Limavady]
We used to come in, and we鈥檇 be compressed to come by Limavady. And there was always 4-5 spotlessly clean USN ships in there. Because we were close there, and all these Americans were lining there, and they鈥檇 be screaming at us 鈥渁ny grub for sale鈥�. And some of the lads might have saved some, and they鈥檇 struggle over 10lb or 15 lb, maybe throw it over, and we鈥檇 do the same. We were that close that we could do it. We were squeezing by. I don鈥檛 know if it was Limavady. Nearly 4-5 ships lined up there, all USN minesweepers probably, but there was no more sweeping of the channel any more so they weren鈥檛 needed. Our minesweepers were doing the same thing. They just sat there until they could be returned to the USA. They had a great life. One other time there was a damaged USN destroyer that we took back in convoy. She could only go maybe max 15 knots, and as we sailed at an average of 10 knots an hour it took an awful long time to cross the ocean at that speed. As we got close to Newfoundland, then what we called the Triangle group would come up and pick up all these empty ships. And they took that Destroyer to Boston. Boston was part of the triangle run 鈥� Boston, NYC, Halifax.

We started out with the RCN at the start of the war with 3600 reserve-type sailors. We had 10 ships. 6 of them were destroyers, and as soon as the war started all the ones on the West coast were shipped to the East coast, to do service out here. The others were little coastal ships. That was quite an impressive thing, as we ended up as the third largest navy in the world, So why did we Prairie boys want to join the Navy? Why didn鈥檛 we stay with the Army? We wanted to get away from all this dust and dirt, because it was just after the dustbowls and everything like that. So we joined the RCN. Now, 40% of all those prairie sailors came from the 3 Prairie provinces 鈥� Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta.
[Did you have any girlfriends in Derry?]
I saw all these grey-haired women around the ships today, and I thought 鈥淚 wonder if I ever danced with any of them.鈥� I can鈥檛 recall, and I don鈥檛 kiss and tell!
We didn鈥檛 have that much opportunity. We just went in, we turned the ship round in 5 days and went back again. Some of the guys did, but they stayed longer than we did.

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