Bridget Fitzpatrick c.1881 - October 14 1942
"Caribou was a passenger ferry operating between Port-aux-Basques, Newfoundland, and Sydney, Nova Scotia. Torpedoed in the Cabot Strait between the two ports, Caribou sank in four minutes, with the loss of 137 passengers and crew, among them women and children. The attack led to popular outrage in Newfoundland and Canada."
~from www.warmuseum.ca
I remember my mother (Catherine Anne Fitzpatrick/Dobie) telling me - when I was in my teens or early twenties - about a Fitzpatrick family relative (perhaps one of my grandfather's cousins?) who had lost her life on a ferry crossing during a German U-boat attack at the time of the Second World War. At the time I first heard about this (around 1980), the Internet did not yet exist, and so I never found out much more about the incident. From my recent on-line family research, however, I've uncovered many of the details of this tragic incident, and thus this page is dedicated to the memory of Bridget Fitzpatrick, who gave her own life to save that of another.
~Robert Stewart Dobie |
Above: Bridget Fitzpatrick,top row, immediately to the left of the captain. She was working as a stewardess, and was the only female crew member on-board to lose her life.
|
Above: Located in Bay Roberts Roman Catholic (old) Cemetery, Newfoundland
|
Above: The S.S. Caribou after being struck by German submarine U-69 on 14 October 1942.
Left: The inscription on the grave marker reads as follows:
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF BRIDGET FITZPATRICK WHO GAVE HER LIFE ON THE ILL FATED CARIBOU TO SAVE A PASSENGER OCT. 14TH 1942 AGED 61 YEARS. |
It Happened in October
Below: The cover and selected pages from an old, rare book entitled "It happened in October". Note especially the transcription immediately below which gives several details of Bridget's life, including her last hours, and the recovery of her body.
Below: The cover and selected pages from an old, rare book entitled "It happened in October". Note especially the transcription immediately below which gives several details of Bridget's life, including her last hours, and the recovery of her body.
ON THE INSIDE COVER PAGE, THERE IS A PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN IDENTIFIED AS "MISS BENNETT, "DAUGHTER OF THE LATE JOHN R. BENNETT, WHO CHRISTENED THE CARIBOU. MISS BENNETT IS NOW MRS. KEDDIE, RESIDING IN MONTREAL." ON THE OPPOSITE PAGE, THERE IS A PICTURE OF MISS BRIDGET FITZPATRICK, THE "LATE STEWARDESS, S.S. CARIBOU." THE FOLLOWING IS NOTED OF HER WORK ON THE SHIP: "MISS FITZPATRICK WAS A NATIVE OF BAY ROBERTS, CONCEPTION BAY, A DAUGHTER OF THE LATE MR. AND MRS. MATTHEW FITZPATRICK. SHE WAS WELL AND FAVOURABLY KNOWN NOT ONLY IN HER NATIVE TOWN, BUT ALL AROUND CONCEPTION BAY, AND THE AVALON PENINSULA AS WELL. FOR MANY YEARS SHE RESIDED IN THE U.S.A. AND HELD RESPONSIBLE POSITIONS IN SOME OF THE FINEST AMERICAN HOTELS. RETURNING LATER TO HER NATIVE NEWFOUNDLAND, SHE WAS ENGAGED IN HOUSEKEEPING AT THE HOME OF REVEREND FATHER, ASHLEY OF TORBAY, A POSITION SHE HELD UNTIL HIS PASSING SOME YEARS AGO. HER LAST CHANGE WAS THAT OF STEWARDESS OF THE ILL-FATED CARIBOU. NEWFOUNDLAND RAILWAY OFFICIALS, QUICK TO OBSERVE HER DYNAMIC PERSONALITY, AND THE EFFICIENCY, WITH WHICH SHE CARRIED OUT HER DUTIES, POSTED HER TO THIS CHARGE SOON AFTER SHE ENTERED THE STEAMSHIP SERVICE.
"HERE, BRIDGET, AS SHE WAS FAMILIARLY KNOWN, BECAME ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR EMPLOYEES OF THE NEWFOUNDLAND STEAMSHIP SERVICES. HER DEVOTION TO DUTY COUPLED WITH HER CHEERFUL PERSONALITY ENDEARED HER TO ALL. SHE DIED AS SHE WOULD HAVE WISHED TO DIE, AT HER POST OF DUTY AND IN THE SERVICE OF HER COUNTRY. HER BODY, ALL THAT WAS MORTAL OF THAT BRAVE AND VERY BELOVED WOMAN, WAS FOOUND FLOATING IN THE SEA, NEAR THE SPOT WHERE THE GOOD SHIP IN WHICH SHE SERVED SO WELL, NOW RESTS ON THE BOTTOM OF THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE. TAKEN TO PORT-AUX-BASQUES WITH OTHER VICTIMS, HER BODY WAS PREPARED FOR BURIAL AND NOW RESTS BESIDE HER BELOVED PARENTS, IN THE BEAUTIFUL ROMAN CATHOLIC CEMETERY, AT BAY ROBERTS, HER NATIVE HOME." A NOTE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE, READS, "THE WRITE-UP IS DEDICATED TO HER MEMORY BY MR. RICHARD FINN, MANAGER OF THE WEST CORNER BROOK TOWN COUNCIL."
http://gravenhurstmuskoka.blogspot.ae/2014/04/october-1942-sinking-of-ss-caribou-goat.html
"HERE, BRIDGET, AS SHE WAS FAMILIARLY KNOWN, BECAME ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR EMPLOYEES OF THE NEWFOUNDLAND STEAMSHIP SERVICES. HER DEVOTION TO DUTY COUPLED WITH HER CHEERFUL PERSONALITY ENDEARED HER TO ALL. SHE DIED AS SHE WOULD HAVE WISHED TO DIE, AT HER POST OF DUTY AND IN THE SERVICE OF HER COUNTRY. HER BODY, ALL THAT WAS MORTAL OF THAT BRAVE AND VERY BELOVED WOMAN, WAS FOOUND FLOATING IN THE SEA, NEAR THE SPOT WHERE THE GOOD SHIP IN WHICH SHE SERVED SO WELL, NOW RESTS ON THE BOTTOM OF THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE. TAKEN TO PORT-AUX-BASQUES WITH OTHER VICTIMS, HER BODY WAS PREPARED FOR BURIAL AND NOW RESTS BESIDE HER BELOVED PARENTS, IN THE BEAUTIFUL ROMAN CATHOLIC CEMETERY, AT BAY ROBERTS, HER NATIVE HOME." A NOTE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE, READS, "THE WRITE-UP IS DEDICATED TO HER MEMORY BY MR. RICHARD FINN, MANAGER OF THE WEST CORNER BROOK TOWN COUNCIL."
http://gravenhurstmuskoka.blogspot.ae/2014/04/october-1942-sinking-of-ss-caribou-goat.html
Below:
Mention of Bridget 'Bride' Fitzpatrick ~ from http://www.newfoundlandshipwrecks.com/Caribou/Documents/magisterial_enquiry
Mention of Bridget 'Bride' Fitzpatrick ~ from http://www.newfoundlandshipwrecks.com/Caribou/Documents/magisterial_enquiry
The statement of Nelson Forward of Channel in the District of Burgeo and Lapoile taken before me the undersigned Stipendiary Magistrate at Channel this 5th day of November A.D. 1942 who upon oath saith as follows
The Heaviest Blow of All
http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/history/second-world-war/battle-gulf-st-lawrence/caribou
The last loss of the 1942 season was the largest, and perhaps the most tragic. It was the Sydney to Port aux Basques ferry Caribou, which was sunk by U-69 in Cabot Strait during the early morning hours of October 14, 1942. As the U-boat’s torpedoes struck home, the ferry’s lone escort, HMCS Grandmère rushed in to ram the attacker, and then dropped a pattern of six depth charges when the submarine crash dived. The submarine would remain submerged while the ferry’s passengers fought for their lives above.
For 90 minutes, the Grandmère’s captain, Lieutenant James Cuthbert, attempted to find and destroy the submarine in accordance with naval orders, all the while tortured by the knowledge that he could be plucking Caribou survivors from the sea instead. Finally, he joined the concerted air-sea rescue effort. Later he would recollect the painful decisions he and those in similar situations had made:
God. I felt the full complement of things you feel at a time like that. Things you had to live with. You are torn. Demoralized. Terribly alone .... I should have gone on looking for the submarine, but I couldn’t. Not with women and children out there somewhere. I couldn’t do it any more than I could have dropped depth charges among themFootnote 3.
That night the ferry’s complement included 237 crew and passengers: 46 crew members from the Newfoundland Merchant Navy, 73 civilians and 118 Canadian, British and American military personnel. Only 101 survived the disaster. Of the crew, 31 perished, including the Master, Ben Taverner, and his two sons Harold and Stanley, both serving as First Officers. The crew losses also included five other pairs of brothers and Bride Fitzpatrick, the only female member of the Newfoundland Merchant Navy known to have lost her life to enemy action during the Second World War. The civilian death toll included at least five mothers and 10 children. Many of the military passengers were Newfoundlanders in the Royal Navy or the Canadians in uniform who were travelling home on leave. Two were Nursing Sisters of the Royal Canadian Navy: Agnes Wilkie became the only Canadian Nursing Sister to die due to enemy action during the war; the other, her good friend and travelling companion, Margaret Brooke, was named a Member of the Order of the British Empire for her gallant efforts to save Wilkie as they drifted through the night on a life raft.
More than any other event, the loss of the Caribou revealed to all Canadians our vulnerability to seaward attack and brought home the fact that the war was not just a European show. Thankfully, while Canadians and Newfoundlanders mourned their losses, Admiral Dönitz was pulling his submarines out of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. His last five U-boats in the theatre had encountered too much opposition and had sunk only five ships. Donitz believed that such results could not justify a continued presence in Canada’s inland waters.
It had been a tragic season, with 21 ships sunk and many others damaged. Aircraft were lost. Nearly 300 people perished. Valuable cargoes were destroyed. Access to the port of Montréal, arguably the best equipped in Canada, was dramatically curtailed. Military authorities, aware of the limited resources they had been able to muster for the defence of the St. Lawrence theatre, privately chastised themselves and vowed to do better the next year.
Still, a victory of sorts had been won. Ever-improving defences had deterred the U-boats, although it would take a post-war examination of German war records to confirm how seriously. But even at the time the news was not all bad. In determining the success or failure of convoy operations, the critical measure was merchant cargoes safely delivered.
The Honourable Angus MacDonald, Minister of National Defence for Naval Services, touched on this subject in his address to the House of Commons on March 17, 1943:
The honourable member for Gaspé .... said that the battle of the St. Lawrence gulf was lost .... I say that the battle of the St. Lawrence gulf has not been lost. I am not going to give the exact figures, which would perhaps help the enemy, but I can say that of the total tonnage which used that river and the gulf last year only three out of every thousand tons was sunk. That is a fairly good record. I know the general average of convoy sinkings throughout the world, and I can say that if you lose only three tons out of every thousand you have at sea you are doing pretty well, in fact somewhat better than averageFootnote 4.
http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/history/second-world-war/battle-gulf-st-lawrence/caribou
The last loss of the 1942 season was the largest, and perhaps the most tragic. It was the Sydney to Port aux Basques ferry Caribou, which was sunk by U-69 in Cabot Strait during the early morning hours of October 14, 1942. As the U-boat’s torpedoes struck home, the ferry’s lone escort, HMCS Grandmère rushed in to ram the attacker, and then dropped a pattern of six depth charges when the submarine crash dived. The submarine would remain submerged while the ferry’s passengers fought for their lives above.
For 90 minutes, the Grandmère’s captain, Lieutenant James Cuthbert, attempted to find and destroy the submarine in accordance with naval orders, all the while tortured by the knowledge that he could be plucking Caribou survivors from the sea instead. Finally, he joined the concerted air-sea rescue effort. Later he would recollect the painful decisions he and those in similar situations had made:
God. I felt the full complement of things you feel at a time like that. Things you had to live with. You are torn. Demoralized. Terribly alone .... I should have gone on looking for the submarine, but I couldn’t. Not with women and children out there somewhere. I couldn’t do it any more than I could have dropped depth charges among themFootnote 3.
That night the ferry’s complement included 237 crew and passengers: 46 crew members from the Newfoundland Merchant Navy, 73 civilians and 118 Canadian, British and American military personnel. Only 101 survived the disaster. Of the crew, 31 perished, including the Master, Ben Taverner, and his two sons Harold and Stanley, both serving as First Officers. The crew losses also included five other pairs of brothers and Bride Fitzpatrick, the only female member of the Newfoundland Merchant Navy known to have lost her life to enemy action during the Second World War. The civilian death toll included at least five mothers and 10 children. Many of the military passengers were Newfoundlanders in the Royal Navy or the Canadians in uniform who were travelling home on leave. Two were Nursing Sisters of the Royal Canadian Navy: Agnes Wilkie became the only Canadian Nursing Sister to die due to enemy action during the war; the other, her good friend and travelling companion, Margaret Brooke, was named a Member of the Order of the British Empire for her gallant efforts to save Wilkie as they drifted through the night on a life raft.
More than any other event, the loss of the Caribou revealed to all Canadians our vulnerability to seaward attack and brought home the fact that the war was not just a European show. Thankfully, while Canadians and Newfoundlanders mourned their losses, Admiral Dönitz was pulling his submarines out of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. His last five U-boats in the theatre had encountered too much opposition and had sunk only five ships. Donitz believed that such results could not justify a continued presence in Canada’s inland waters.
It had been a tragic season, with 21 ships sunk and many others damaged. Aircraft were lost. Nearly 300 people perished. Valuable cargoes were destroyed. Access to the port of Montréal, arguably the best equipped in Canada, was dramatically curtailed. Military authorities, aware of the limited resources they had been able to muster for the defence of the St. Lawrence theatre, privately chastised themselves and vowed to do better the next year.
Still, a victory of sorts had been won. Ever-improving defences had deterred the U-boats, although it would take a post-war examination of German war records to confirm how seriously. But even at the time the news was not all bad. In determining the success or failure of convoy operations, the critical measure was merchant cargoes safely delivered.
The Honourable Angus MacDonald, Minister of National Defence for Naval Services, touched on this subject in his address to the House of Commons on March 17, 1943:
The honourable member for Gaspé .... said that the battle of the St. Lawrence gulf was lost .... I say that the battle of the St. Lawrence gulf has not been lost. I am not going to give the exact figures, which would perhaps help the enemy, but I can say that of the total tonnage which used that river and the gulf last year only three out of every thousand tons was sunk. That is a fairly good record. I know the general average of convoy sinkings throughout the world, and I can say that if you lose only three tons out of every thousand you have at sea you are doing pretty well, in fact somewhat better than averageFootnote 4.
Sinking of the Caribou
http://www.heritage.nf.ca/law/caribou_sinking.html
The year 1942 was a bad year for shipping off the east coast of North America. With the German declaration of war on the United States shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, the gloves came off. Admiral Karl Dönitz, the head of the U-boat arm, had long planned for an assault on North America, but had been held back by Hitler’s insistence that American ships were not to be attacked. With the entry of the United States into the war, this restriction was lifted. Dönitz unleashed Operation Paukenschlag on January 12, 1942, when Reinhard Hardegan’s U-123 sank the British steamer Cyclops approximately 100 miles southeast of Cape Sable, Nova Scotia.
SS Caribou, ca. 1920s - 1940s
The SS Caribou was sunk by the German submarine U-69 on 14 October 1942.
Photographer unknown. Reproduced by permission of the Archives and Manuscripts Division (Coll. 115 16.07.002), Queen Elizabeth II Library, Memorial University, St. John’s, NL.
with more information(24 kb) Over the next few months U-boats sank a total of 44 ships in Canadian waters with the loss of only two U-boats. The Gulf of St. Lawrence was found to be the richest hunting ground and during what became known as the Battle of the St. Lawrence, U-boats attacked seven convoys, sank 20 merchantmen, a loaded troopship, and two Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) warships. The pièce de résistance, so far as domestic impact was concerned, was the sinking of the Sydney to Port aux Basques passenger ferry SS Caribou by U-69 on the night of October 13/14, with the loss of 136 people including 10 children.
U-69
U-69, under the command of Kapitän-Leutnant Ulrich Gräf, entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence through the Cabot Strait on September 30, 1942. Finding no targets, he cruised up the St. Lawrence River and on the night of 8/9 October sighted the seven-ship, Labrador to Quebec convoy, NL-9. Despite the presence of three escorting corvettes, Gräf sank the 2245-ton steamship SS Carolus with the loss of 12 of her crew. This sinking, a mere 275 kilometres from Quebec City, caused an uproar in both Quebec and Ottawa. However, it would be nothing compared to the distress caused by the sinking of the Caribou a few nights later.
The Sydney to Port aux Basques ferry SS Caribou left Sydney at approximately 9:30 p.m., on October 13, 1942. On board were 73 civilians, including 11 children, and 118 military personnel, plus a crew of 46. Just before departure, the Caribou’s master, Captain Benjamin Tavenor, ordered all passengers on deck to familiarize themselves with the lifeboat stations. Both he and his crew knew of the danger of U-boat attack – on the previous trip, the Caribou’s escort had attacked a contact, but without success. This might have been U-106, which had attacked a Sydney to Corner Brook convoy nine hours later.
Escorting the Caribou on this trip was the RCN minesweeper, HMCS Grandmere. According to her log, the night was very dark with no moon. Grandmere’s skipper, Lt. James Cuthbert, was unhappy about both the amount of smoke the Caribou was making and his screening position off the Caribou’s stern, which was in accordance with British naval procedures for a single escort. Cuthbert believed the best place for Grandmere to be was in front of the Caribou, not behind, as Western Approaches Convoy Instructions advised. He felt he would be better able to detect the sound of a lurking U-boat if he had a clear field in front to probe. He was correct, for in Caribou’s path lay the U-69.
Gräf had actually been searching for a three-ship grain convoy heading for Montreal when at 3:21 a.m. he spotted the Caribou “belching heavy smoke” about 60 kilometres off the coast of Newfoundland. He misidentified the 2222-ton Rotterdam-built Caribou and the 670-ton Grandmere as a 6500-ton passenger freighter and a “two-stack destroyer.” At 3:40 a.m., according to Grandmere’s log, a lone torpedo hit the Caribou on her starboard side. Pandemonium ensued as passengers, thrown from their bunks by the explosion rushed topside to the lifeboat stations. For some reason, several families had been accommodated in separate cabins and now sought each other in the confusion. In addition, several lifeboats and rafts had either been destroyed in the explosion or could not be launched. As a result, many passengers were forced to jump overboard into the cold water.
HMCS Grandmere
Meanwhile, Grandmere had spotted U-69 in the dark and turned to ram. Gräf, still under the impression he was facing a “destroyer” rather than a minesweeper, crash dived. As Grandmere passed over the swirl left by the submerged submarine, Lt. Cuthbert fired a diamond pattern of six depth charges. Gräf, meanwhile, headed for the sounds of the sinking Caribou, knowing that the survivors left floating on the surface would inhibit Grandmere from launching another attack. However, U-69’s manoeuvre went unnoticed by Grandmere and Cuthbert dropped another pattern of three charges set for 500 feet. Gräf fired a Bold, an asdic decoy, and slowly left the area.
At 6:30 a.m. Grandmere gave up the hunt and started to pick up survivors. They were too few. Of the 237 people aboard the Caribou when she left North Sydney, 136 had perished. Fifty-seven were military personnel and 49 were civilians. Fifteen-month-old Leonard Shiers of Halifax was the only one of 11 children to survive the sinking. Of the 46-man crew, mostly Newfoundlanders, only 15 remained. Five families suffered particularly heavy losses: the Tappers (5 dead), the Toppers (4), the Allens (3), the Tavernors (the captain and his two sons), and the Skinners (3). The press truthfully reported that “Many Families [were] Wiped Out.”
Survivors of the SS Caribou, 14 October 1942
Unidentified survivors of the SS Caribou, which sank off the coast of Newfoundland on 14 October 1942.
Photographer unknown. Reproduced by permission of the Archives and Manuscripts Division (Coll. 115 16.07.034), Queen Elizabeth II Library, Memorial University, St. John’s, NL.
with more information(30 kb) News of the sinking sparked much outrage as victims’ friends and families, and the populace at large, condemned the Nazis for targeting a passenger ferry. An editorialist with The Royalist newspaper in St. John’s wrote that the sinking “was such a useless crime from the point of view of warfare. It will have no effect upon the course of the war except to steel our resolve that the Nazi blot on humanity must be eliminated from our world.” As bodies were recovered, the burials started. The Channel/Port aux Basques area was the worst hit as many crewmembers of the Caribou were local men. A funeral on October 18 for six victims was attended by hundreds of mourners, and a procession that followed the bodies to the grave sites reportedly measured two kilometres long.
The Burgeo took over the Caribou’s former route after the sinking, but eliminated night time sailings. To further reduce any possibility of attack, the Canadian navy ordered the ferry’s escort to navigate a zig-zag path in front of the vessel rather than follow from behind.
The U-69, meanwhile, remained hidden in Newfoundland waters, and on October 20, attacked the ore carrier Rose Castle traveling to Bell Island from Sydney. This time the torpedo did not explode and the vessel escaped unharmed. The U-boat, out of torpedoes, headed for home and was eventually sunk the next February by the British destroyer HMS Viscount while attacking a convoy east of Newfoundland. All 46 of the U-69’s crew were killed in the attack.
Article by Paul Collins. ©2006, Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage Web Site
http://www.heritage.nf.ca/law/caribou_sinking.html
The year 1942 was a bad year for shipping off the east coast of North America. With the German declaration of war on the United States shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, the gloves came off. Admiral Karl Dönitz, the head of the U-boat arm, had long planned for an assault on North America, but had been held back by Hitler’s insistence that American ships were not to be attacked. With the entry of the United States into the war, this restriction was lifted. Dönitz unleashed Operation Paukenschlag on January 12, 1942, when Reinhard Hardegan’s U-123 sank the British steamer Cyclops approximately 100 miles southeast of Cape Sable, Nova Scotia.
SS Caribou, ca. 1920s - 1940s
The SS Caribou was sunk by the German submarine U-69 on 14 October 1942.
Photographer unknown. Reproduced by permission of the Archives and Manuscripts Division (Coll. 115 16.07.002), Queen Elizabeth II Library, Memorial University, St. John’s, NL.
with more information(24 kb) Over the next few months U-boats sank a total of 44 ships in Canadian waters with the loss of only two U-boats. The Gulf of St. Lawrence was found to be the richest hunting ground and during what became known as the Battle of the St. Lawrence, U-boats attacked seven convoys, sank 20 merchantmen, a loaded troopship, and two Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) warships. The pièce de résistance, so far as domestic impact was concerned, was the sinking of the Sydney to Port aux Basques passenger ferry SS Caribou by U-69 on the night of October 13/14, with the loss of 136 people including 10 children.
U-69
U-69, under the command of Kapitän-Leutnant Ulrich Gräf, entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence through the Cabot Strait on September 30, 1942. Finding no targets, he cruised up the St. Lawrence River and on the night of 8/9 October sighted the seven-ship, Labrador to Quebec convoy, NL-9. Despite the presence of three escorting corvettes, Gräf sank the 2245-ton steamship SS Carolus with the loss of 12 of her crew. This sinking, a mere 275 kilometres from Quebec City, caused an uproar in both Quebec and Ottawa. However, it would be nothing compared to the distress caused by the sinking of the Caribou a few nights later.
The Sydney to Port aux Basques ferry SS Caribou left Sydney at approximately 9:30 p.m., on October 13, 1942. On board were 73 civilians, including 11 children, and 118 military personnel, plus a crew of 46. Just before departure, the Caribou’s master, Captain Benjamin Tavenor, ordered all passengers on deck to familiarize themselves with the lifeboat stations. Both he and his crew knew of the danger of U-boat attack – on the previous trip, the Caribou’s escort had attacked a contact, but without success. This might have been U-106, which had attacked a Sydney to Corner Brook convoy nine hours later.
Escorting the Caribou on this trip was the RCN minesweeper, HMCS Grandmere. According to her log, the night was very dark with no moon. Grandmere’s skipper, Lt. James Cuthbert, was unhappy about both the amount of smoke the Caribou was making and his screening position off the Caribou’s stern, which was in accordance with British naval procedures for a single escort. Cuthbert believed the best place for Grandmere to be was in front of the Caribou, not behind, as Western Approaches Convoy Instructions advised. He felt he would be better able to detect the sound of a lurking U-boat if he had a clear field in front to probe. He was correct, for in Caribou’s path lay the U-69.
Gräf had actually been searching for a three-ship grain convoy heading for Montreal when at 3:21 a.m. he spotted the Caribou “belching heavy smoke” about 60 kilometres off the coast of Newfoundland. He misidentified the 2222-ton Rotterdam-built Caribou and the 670-ton Grandmere as a 6500-ton passenger freighter and a “two-stack destroyer.” At 3:40 a.m., according to Grandmere’s log, a lone torpedo hit the Caribou on her starboard side. Pandemonium ensued as passengers, thrown from their bunks by the explosion rushed topside to the lifeboat stations. For some reason, several families had been accommodated in separate cabins and now sought each other in the confusion. In addition, several lifeboats and rafts had either been destroyed in the explosion or could not be launched. As a result, many passengers were forced to jump overboard into the cold water.
HMCS Grandmere
Meanwhile, Grandmere had spotted U-69 in the dark and turned to ram. Gräf, still under the impression he was facing a “destroyer” rather than a minesweeper, crash dived. As Grandmere passed over the swirl left by the submerged submarine, Lt. Cuthbert fired a diamond pattern of six depth charges. Gräf, meanwhile, headed for the sounds of the sinking Caribou, knowing that the survivors left floating on the surface would inhibit Grandmere from launching another attack. However, U-69’s manoeuvre went unnoticed by Grandmere and Cuthbert dropped another pattern of three charges set for 500 feet. Gräf fired a Bold, an asdic decoy, and slowly left the area.
At 6:30 a.m. Grandmere gave up the hunt and started to pick up survivors. They were too few. Of the 237 people aboard the Caribou when she left North Sydney, 136 had perished. Fifty-seven were military personnel and 49 were civilians. Fifteen-month-old Leonard Shiers of Halifax was the only one of 11 children to survive the sinking. Of the 46-man crew, mostly Newfoundlanders, only 15 remained. Five families suffered particularly heavy losses: the Tappers (5 dead), the Toppers (4), the Allens (3), the Tavernors (the captain and his two sons), and the Skinners (3). The press truthfully reported that “Many Families [were] Wiped Out.”
Survivors of the SS Caribou, 14 October 1942
Unidentified survivors of the SS Caribou, which sank off the coast of Newfoundland on 14 October 1942.
Photographer unknown. Reproduced by permission of the Archives and Manuscripts Division (Coll. 115 16.07.034), Queen Elizabeth II Library, Memorial University, St. John’s, NL.
with more information(30 kb) News of the sinking sparked much outrage as victims’ friends and families, and the populace at large, condemned the Nazis for targeting a passenger ferry. An editorialist with The Royalist newspaper in St. John’s wrote that the sinking “was such a useless crime from the point of view of warfare. It will have no effect upon the course of the war except to steel our resolve that the Nazi blot on humanity must be eliminated from our world.” As bodies were recovered, the burials started. The Channel/Port aux Basques area was the worst hit as many crewmembers of the Caribou were local men. A funeral on October 18 for six victims was attended by hundreds of mourners, and a procession that followed the bodies to the grave sites reportedly measured two kilometres long.
The Burgeo took over the Caribou’s former route after the sinking, but eliminated night time sailings. To further reduce any possibility of attack, the Canadian navy ordered the ferry’s escort to navigate a zig-zag path in front of the vessel rather than follow from behind.
The U-69, meanwhile, remained hidden in Newfoundland waters, and on October 20, attacked the ore carrier Rose Castle traveling to Bell Island from Sydney. This time the torpedo did not explode and the vessel escaped unharmed. The U-boat, out of torpedoes, headed for home and was eventually sunk the next February by the British destroyer HMS Viscount while attacking a convoy east of Newfoundland. All 46 of the U-69’s crew were killed in the attack.
Article by Paul Collins. ©2006, Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage Web Site
See also: