The Battle of the St. Lawrence (38 page)

There was no final U-boat offensive in the St. Lawrence.

The war off Canadian shores ended with a ghastly coda—a coda that replayed not only the sinking of the minesweeper HMCS
Clayoquot
in the same waters four months earlier, on Christmas Eve 1944, but also the experience of the hundreds of men, women and children torpedoed in the St. Lawrence. At 6:35 a.m. on April 16, 1945, U-190, commanded by twenty-five-year-old
Oberleutnant zur See
Hans-Edwin Reith (her chief engineer being Weiner Hirschmann), torpedoed HMCS
Esquimalt,
then on patrol just out of sight of Halifax. Most of
Esquimalt
‘s crew of seven officers and sixty-four ratings managed to get off the ship in the four minutes before it plunged to the bottom. But five officers and thirty-nine ratings died in the frigid waters off Halifax as they waited more than six hours for rescue.

Sixty years later, Terry Manuel, then a twenty-year-old ship’s writer from New Brunswick (as ship’s writer, Manuel was an administrator who reported directly to
Esquimalt
‘s captain, Lieutenant Robert Macmillan, DSC, RCNVR), recalls this last torpedoing of one of His Majesty’s Royal Canadian Ships in the Second World War and the last awful struggle of His Majesty’s officers and ratings to survive in the cold waters off their own shore: “At around 6:10 a.m., I was released from my dark-hours watch at the starboard depth-charge thrower and went below to my quarters in the chief and petty officers’ mess in the forward part of the ship, where there were three other officers. I figured I had an hour to catch a nap before I had to report for my regular duty post, so I stripped off my pants and socks and used my life jacket as a pillow.

“As soon as I laid down, I heard a loud thump that I thought was the minesweeping gear that we had loaded in Halifax shifting. Then I heard a large crash, and the ship shook and began to keel over toward the port side.
The lights glimmered and then went out. I jumped up from my bunk and ran to the emergency hatchway, which opened onto the deck. I found it in the darkness, but because the plates were buckled, it couldn’t be opened.

“Then, as the ship continued to roll over on her side, I decided to try to go out through the communications mess. The hatchway to the compan-ionway that led to that mess was now up above us. I climbed up the wall to get to the hatchway and then fell into the communications mess. Just as I got to the companionway that I hoped would take me to the deck, Carl Jacques, a petty officer from Nova Scotia, came charging up and vaulted over my shoulders and into the hatchway. But I couldn’t hold on and fell back into the communications mess, which was now filling with water. Finally, I managed to get into the companionway. Just as I did, I saw on my right a huge wave of foaming water rushing towards me. The water pummelled me about and pushed me up the companionway.

“Below me I saw only darkness. Above me some faint grey light. Even though I could not swim, I began thrashing my way up. The ship rolled again and I was pushed out of the companionway onto the side of the ship. To my left I could see the ship’s bow pointing upwards; she was on her way down. Within seconds I heard someone yell, ‘Swim, damn it! She’s going under!’

“I saw a life jacket and tried to get to it. As I did, another sailor also got to it. Each of us managed to get one arm into it. By then the ship was gone. Less than four minutes had passed.

“Soon the life jacket became too waterlogged to keep us both afloat. I saw a canvas kit bag floating in the water and grabbed hold if it. Then I realized that the sailor I was sharing the life jacket with was going under, so I grabbed him by the hair and held onto him.

“A few moments later, a Carley float appeared and I heard Carl Jacques yell, ‘Hang on, scribe!’ He jumped in the water and swam to us and then pulled us to the float. I hung on in front and he climbed back onto the cork ring of the float. Ten minutes later he was dead and we had to throw his body over.

“There were eighteen of us in and around the float in terribly cold water. It didn’t take long for the water, chilled by the ice currents that came down from the Arctic, to take its toll. One by one, men around me died and floated off.

“Twice we thought we’d been spotted. Once by a plane about an hour after the sinking, but he later reported that he thought we were fishermen. Then,
at 8 a.m., we saw what we called the four-o’clock navy, the minesweepers that patrolled off Halifax during the day. They were almost within shouting distance when they turned away and soon vanished over the horizon.

“And still more men died while we waited, until finally, after almost seven hours, another patrol plane, which I later learned had been sent to look for us because there had been nothing heard from us, spotted us, wiggled its wings and alerted the authorities in the light vessel, who alerted
Sarnia.

“By the time
Sarnia
steamed into Halifax with the twenty-seven of us who survived and several bodies, we could see the streets were lined with people. Above the streets, standing on the roofs of their work sheds, stood silent workers with their hats off.”

Fourteen days later, Canadian Wrens at a secret listening post in Coverdale, New Brunswick, recorded a signal sent by
Grossadmiral
Dönitz informing his U-boat commanders of Adolf Hitler’s death and that, following Hitler’s political testament, he, Karl Dönitz, was assuming the position of
Reichsprasident.
Seven days later, he signalled the fleet again, his rather grandiloquent words laying the foundation both for his defence at what he knew were the coming war trials and for the
U-Bootwaffe
mythology:

Four of the U-boats that invaded the St. Lawrence surrendered. The first was Helmut Schmoekel’s U-802, which surrendered on May 11 at Loch Eriboll in Scotland. The following day, Kurt Peterson’s U-541 surrendered at Gibraltar. On the thirteenth, U-1228, commanded by Friedrich-Wilhelm Marienfeld, surrendered at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. A day later, Hermann Lessing turned U-1231 over to the British at Loch Foyle in Scotland. U-802, U-541 and U-1228 were scuttled. U-1231 was turned over to the Soviet Union, which rechristened it N-25; it served until the late 1950
S
and was broken up in 1960.

By September 1945, HMCS
Arrowhead
and
Vegreville
and all the Fairmiles that had served in the St. Lawrence had been turned over to the War Assets Corporation for disposal. HMCS
Rimouski
and
Trail
followed on August 30, 1946. HMCS
Truro
was paid off on September 17, 1946, seven years and sixteen days after the start of the Second World War.

SS
Nicoya
(May
11
,
1942)

William John George

Henry Mills

James Stanley Newcomb

Douglas Phillips

Frank L. Smith

H. V. Woodthrope

SS
Leto
(May
12, 1942)

J. Breet

J. van Boven

M. A. de Keyzer

A. Eager

H. J. Holzhaeur

Frederick van Hoogdalem

J. Hoogenboom

Wilhelm Koning

G. J. Smit

A. J. Stanneveld

F. H. A. Thomas

SS
Anastassios Pateras
(July
6, 1942)

Silvino Eugenio

John Howard

Ham Karamm

SS
Hainaut
(July
6, 1942)

Said Nouman

SS
Dinaric
(July
6, 1942)

James Jameson

Henry Thomas

Herbert Walton

Slavko Ziganto

SS
Frederika Lensen
(July
20, 1942)

Ali Edris

Ali Mossadden

Abudul Rajack

Robert James Spence

SS
Chatham
(August
27, 1942)

Emilio Blackstone-Pietranera

Francis S. Blake

Cornelius Clark

Abel De Souza

George T. Harrison

William Hurlston

Richard Scadding

7 known only to God

USS
Laramie
(August
27, 1942)

Carmine Joseph Aloia

Dan Lynch

Erwin Wesley Parks

Gordon Leslie Spiering

James Curtis Voorhees

SS
Arlyn
(August
28, 1942)

John H. Bergeron

Roy W. Creighton

Charles J. Jeremias

Lawrence J. Lynch

Isidro S. Manzo

Mack Parks

Eladio A. Sanchez

John Taraza

Pedro Velez

Joseph L. Weeks

Jarvis S. Williams

George M. Willis

SS
Donald Stewart
(September
3, 1942)

Romeo Gaudet

Harry Kaminsky

Harvey Sutherland

SS
Aeas
(September
6, 1942)

2 known only to God

HMCS
Raccoon
(September
7, 1942)

George M. Adams

John M. Allen

James C. Anderson

Royden G. Ashmall

Roger Belanger

John J. Boudreau

Charles R. Champion

John E. Cherpeta

John F. Cook

Guy L. Dillabough

William Duncan

George Fowler

Owen W. Fralic

Frank J. Gallant

William C. Hamilton

Willam A. Harvie

Robert H. Henderson

Arthur G. Holmes

Ernst F. Howe

John J. Hughes

Joseph W. G. LaFlamme

Henry B. Lucas

Ralph O. Martindale

Russell H. McConnell

John H. McDonald

Harry F. Muller

John G. Parsons

Albert J. Payne

Louis H. Prowse

John E. Sheflin

John N. Smith

Beverly G. Stewart

Michael Sweeney

Glenwood L. Taylor

James E. Thomas

Percy J. Thomas

SS
Mount Pindus
(September
7, 1942)

3 known only to God

SS
Mount Taygetus
(September
7, 1942)

Georgeios Triantafyllarous
¹

3 known only to God

HMCS
Charlottetown
(September
11, 1942)

John Willard Bonner

Donald St. C. Bowser

Todd David

John C. Garland

John A. Grant

Peter K. Lovat

John Lundrigan

Thomas A. MacDonald

Edmond C. Robinson

Leonard A. Wharton

SS
Inger Elizabeth
(September
15, 1942)

P. Kool

3 known only to God

SS
Carolus
(October
9, 1942)

Knut Anderson

Verner Anderson

Pablo Cubbillas

Onni Heino

Niilo Helenius

Runar Karlsson

Eryitt Kukkonen

John Joseph MacDougall

R. F. McGraw

John Milmine

Sulo Aarne Seppala

SS
Caribou
(October 14, 1942)

Crew

Israel Barrett

Llewellyn Carter

Eliha Coffin

James Hubert Coffin

Howard Cutler

Richard Feltham

Miss Bride Fitzpatrick

Charles Ford

Maxwell French

George Gale

Jerome Gale

Clarence Hann

Harry Hann

William Hogan

Charles Humphries

Victor Lomond

Thomas Moist

Charley Pearcey

James Pike

James L. Prosper

Joseph Richards

William Samms

Israel Sheaves

John Skeard

Albert Strickland

Garfield Strickland

Benjamin Taverner

Harold Taverner

Stanley Taverner

Arthur Thomas

George Thomas

Army Personnel

C. R. Abelson

C. G. Cochrane

T. A. Currie

P. Diamond

E. S. Francis

L. A. MacIntyre

J. C. B. McDonald

H. R. Mills

L. M. Sheppard

A. A. Sullivan

H. M. Tough

Royal Navy and Royal Canadian Navy Personnel

E. Barrett

Eli Maxwell Bishop

C. Creston

William A. Glasgow

A. Marshall

J. R. Masson

G. N. May

A. Nash

W. C. Poole

E. R. Quinlan

G. W. Randall

N. Rowe

R. J. Skinner

R. Smith

J. Tapper

W. J. Vey

E. Warren

R. White

Miss A. W. Wilkie

J. W. H. Windsor

Royal Air Force and Royal Canadian Air Force Personnel