大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Bruce Logan of the CSV Media NI Team on behalf of Thomas Houston and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.
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The main threat was the German submarines. They were known as U-Boats, even from the First World War. Most of it was concentrated about when you would be going, it would be about 30 degrees west, and most of it would be attached around that, it would be off Iceland. That was where the defence destroyers were based, so they were always close by if there was a big attack, like there was on the Convoy that I was on, which was 118.

In the early hours of the morning, the first indication that we had was one big merchant ship that was carrying a lot of whiskey, believe it or not. It was the first to be torpedoed, and that was at about 10 o'clock at night. We went through the night, and there didn't seem to be any more trouble, although the destroyers were there, and dropping their depth charges. They continued until it was midday, and then they came in as a pack, a wolfpack of around 14 subs, and they started then picking us off from the convoys.

The convoys would be so many ships in line, and we were in the outside line, which was number 10. And it was during that time that we got sunk, along with a few others which I remember, and I took a note of the names, so I have those.

The cargo that we were taking out didn't seem to be to me a great cargo, because it was coal, a cargo of coal that we had loaded up with. That is what our cargo was. We were taking it to St John, New Brunswick. That was the Company's regular run anyway, it and Montreal. The cargo of coal, of course, meant that it did muffle the torpedo whenever it was, and it did give us a bit of a chance to prepare ourselves. Wherever we were, we knew that we had to get to the lifeboat.
As a matter of fact [the coal] didn't explode, it muffled and shall we say took the full blast of the torpedo. We later heard they tried with another because the ship wasn't sinking quick enough, with another torpedo but it didn't explode at all.

It was a case of getting up to the boats. The boat drill we had done for weeks, and now we put into practice. I recall that when I was in my cabin that had to get to the boat deck so I rushed out and get up onto the boat deck for the launch of the lifeboat. You all had to take your hand at it. It struck me when I was looking at the boat that I was just standing by, perhaps more getting more in the way than anything else. I remembered that I had a new military overcoat, and I rushed down into my Burka cabin, and grabbed this. Why I don't know, because my other uniform was there but I didn't take it, I just took the coat. I rushed and got up to the deck, and when I was picked up I had the coat.

[Actually] it was midday when we were torpedoed.

The ship that rescued us was one of the ships that were converted. It was the St Apollo, it was a converted Trawler. They were overcrowded, but they were able to hold onto most of us until the bigger destroyers came alongside and took us off. The people, the sailors on that whenever we were transferred, we were then allocated, they would be in charge of such and such a person. I got the privilege to be with the ASDIC operator. He was kind enough to let me have his bunk whenever he was off-duty. One wee thing that he did do, he had his own personal card and before we left he then signed and autographed it to me, and it says "Better late than never". I've still got it, I kept it very carefully.

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