大象传媒

My father, Fred Cooper, served in the Merchant Navy in WW2. He worked for Cunard as a Steward on troopships. I would like to hear from anyone who knew my father and of the experiences they shared. Here is an article he wrote about one of his war-time experiences. He thought the Cuba may have been the last transport ship to be torpedoed in the European conflict. The SS Cuba (reg. no. 171463) 11,300 tons gross, was built in 1923 by Swan Hunter for the French line CGT to be used on the St Nazaire-West Indies-Vera Cruz route. She was intercepted by a British warship in 1940, and used as a transport under Cunard management.

The Sinking of the Cuba

Dawn on the morning of Wednesday April 6th 1945, and the waters in the approaches to the Channel were as busy as London's Oxford Street on a Saturday afternoon - and just as dangerous.

Into the Atlantic end slipped a small convoy of troopships and escort returning from the French ferry service back to Southampton. I was a crew-member on one of those ships. She was a war-prize from the West Africa-Cuba run, and she was the "Cuba". I recall she was the only vessel in the war-time transport and hospital ship fleet to carry a swastika on her bow anchors. A reminder of her former owners. The history of the Cuba would have pleased James Bond, as we always felt there were more spies aboard her than ever 007 would meet in a lifetime, mostly of a Vichy type.

On that morning I had left the "glory-hole" (crew's quarters) and had just entered the Saloon Pantry. I said good morning to "Big Alf", the senior pantryman and he gave me the usual, unprintable seaman's reply. I said to him, "The Lady is wagging her tail again," which when translated told Alf that the Cuba was again slightly out of strict "line-astern" to the rest of the convoy. Alf passed a terse comment about the Cuba's navigation which again I cannot print. The time was 7.00 a.m.

I took a large pan of boiling water from Alf, intending to "top-up" the coffee urns. At that moment the torpedo struck amidships. Most seamen know there is no sound on earth like that of the impact of a "tin fish" striking home on the ship you are on. Unmistakeable. Alf, who was a six-footer, broad and handsome to boot, was hurled the length of his pantry. I finished up on my rear-end, outside the pantry entrance. "Away Ship's Boat Crew, Fred!" Alf yelled and we both grabbed our lifejackets and went up to the boat deck.

Most seamen, RN and MN, who have had to abandon ship (and this was my third time) know it is very rarely that you can get both Port and Starboard lifeboats away. We made our way to the Starboard side where the list was developing. Most of the British crew members were already on station, plus some Martinique and other West Indian engine room ratings. If one could be "lucky" under these conditions, we were lucky inasmuch as we were not carrying 3,000 U.S. troops, which we would have had on board if we were sailing from Southampton to Le Havre instead of homeward bound. We had a few war casualties and some medical staff. War-time regulations required ship's lifeboats to be already "swung-out" and held by wire grips. Those of us who had already been "bumped-off" thanked the Lord and the Ministry of War Transport for this regulation. However, as a lot of sailors know, getting a three and a half-ton lifeboat down from 75 feet to zero, while the platform you are on is trying to tilt you "into the drink" before your boat arrives there, is no joke. The mind registers one life-boat coxwain's shout to his crew about the way they were handling the twenty-foot oars, "Fend her off, you fg thickheads, you're not at Henley!"

She was the only ship I ever served on where the crew regularly used to run a raffle on what time her skipper would run her aground off Cowes - such was their opinion of his seamanship. As we struggled to steer our way clear of the sinking Cuba, before the suction took us down with her, one of the lads said "No more raffles". Our coxwain shouted, "Belay oars, we're clear." I gratefully rested my arms on my oar and suddenly realised I was scalded from fingers to elbows on both arms. This, when the torpedo struck home and everything went over me in the pantry. It had failed to register at the moment of impact.

The coxwain then put the rudder hard over and we circled warily, dreading hearing the blowing of air that tells you a U-boat conning tower will appear, dwelling on the thought of a sardonic Reichmarine Officer ordering a gun crew to "swing round" on us. There was a tremendous surge of water hitting us abeam and the starboard oarsmen shouted "She's going!" as the Cuba tilted her bow three hundred feet into the air and slid below to her watery grave.

Someone shouted "Watch that Port side" and we turned, scared of what we might see. A grey shape loomed out of the mist, zig-zagging as she came in close. I think I was the first to spot the fact that she was "wearing" a Canadian flag. Everyone else was watching the guns. No pools winner could equal the joy we felt as this great little ship, the Canadian frigate Nene, came amongst us, and the scramble nets came down as the crew helped us to come aboard. The Nene did us proud. Hot tea, clothes, the lot! One of the crew later told us, "You got yours at seven - he got his at ten." This meant that what we believe to be the last U-boat destroyed in the European War had been trapped in the Channel by the Nene's colleagues and as they say in the best diplomatic circles - duly despatched! We also feel that we may have been the last Transport to be sank in the European conflict.

As we sipped our tea and put on the sweaters passed out to us by the crew of the Nene, one of the Cuba's cooks suddenly remarked,

"I left the oven gases on......"

"Don't worry," his mate remarked drily, "they will be well out now!"

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