BATTLE OF ATLANTIC

Grey River Argus, 18 March 1942, Page 5

BATTLE OF ATLANTIC

Winter Conditions

LONDON, March 16.

Twenty-nine survivors from a torpedoed Allied merchantman were landed at an eastern Canadian pori bv Canadian naval craft, after three days in While in the boats, several members of the crew were frozen to death. Twelve survivors were admitted to hosptal suffering from frost-bite. An Allied vessel struck a rocky ledge on the Nova Scotia coast, and was pounded to pieces. The entire crew of over 50 were saveu.

A picture of the terrifying severity of the Winter conditions m which Atlantic escort vessels havbrought convoys safely to Britain, has been given bv Mr. H. C. Ferrab.y the naval; commentator. . “Here is .one among many incredible adventures that men have been through in destroyers and other escort vessels in the Atlantic during the awful weather of the last Winter.” he said. “The wind was blowing a moderate gale. Seas were running up to 20 feet hign. A destroyer, battling through them, gave a violent roll to port and a huge wave broke on to the upper deck where the gun’s crew were cringing round their gun. That sea got under the heavy metal platform on which the gun stood and bent it upwards until it pinned one of the men between the upturned sheet of metal and the breach of the gun. Heavytackle had to be rigged with the shm rolling heavily before the plate could be bent back sufficiently and the injured man released. .That is the sort of thing that has been happening to convoy escorts almost continuously since last September. “In another case, a succession of unusually large seas astern swung a ship about for a minute or two almost out of control, and in one roll she lay over at an angle of 70 degrees. Her starboard propellor was actually out of the -water, and the port side of the bridge was under water. The man in the wheelhouse had a fleeting glimpse, as the signal platform was submerged, of a seaman clinging with both hands to the thin wires of th fi mast. A surge of water swept his feet from under him and held him out horizontally so that actuallv during the half-minute that the ship hung at the end of the roll he was suspended submerged outsde the ship. “Again, in a gale in which driving vain made- visibility often less than 1,000 yards, an escort vessel found herself with only two merchantmen out of a large convoy. By hard work in heaying seas in which the task of keeping their own ship safe would have been enough for most men, the captain of the escort rounded up eight more merchantmen and got them at last into an area of got them at last into an area of a 35-mile an hour gale, he shepherded them safely to the dispersal point.”