German Submarines in the St. Lawrence
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- Medium: Video
- Owner: Veterans Affairs Canada
- Duration: 3:21
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German Submarines in the St. Lawrence
Canadian boats had sunk in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the German submarines reached as far as Rimouski.
Gilles Gauthier
Mr. Gauthier grew up in Cap-de-la-Madeleine, near the port. His father had a restaurant where he often heard sailors talk of what was going on during the war and on the ships. Interested, he went to the HMCS Montcalm offices in Québec City to enlist, to no avail. He was 17 years old at the time and was called up when he turned 18. After his basic training, he took a telegraphy course in Saint-Hyacinthe. After the course, he was sent to Halifax to sail for Bermuda to work as a telegrapher. Back in Halifax, he set sail on the HMCS Springhill to escort convoys. After the war he was in the Régiment de Trois-Rivières, the 12th Armoured, until 1953.
Transcription
German submarines in the St. Lawrence
Well, we were in the Gulf for a good six months. We lost several ships there. And there was a ship like ours, the Shawinigan, that was with us in our group . . . it left one night at midnight and we never heard from them again; and the following morning we left for the area where it had been, and all we found were bodies and…parts of long boats and…we never did see a single living soul. And sometimes we would lose ships in the Gulf. Some were even lost as far down as Rimouski. When the convoys sailed down from Montréal, Québec, and Trois-Rivières, it was in the Rimouski region that they lost the most. And right between Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island, we lost several ships too. So that meant that the German submarines had arrived at our doorsteps. When I left the navy, I worked for the National Harbours Board and there were several skippers of little schooners who transported wood from the Gaspé Peninsula to all the ports on the St. Lawrence River down to Trois-Rivières for the paper mills and they talked about how the submarines operated. They came up next to them. They didn't fire on them, but they came on board, took the food, took whatever oil there was and then left them enough to get to the next port. And there was one especially, a skipper, that's what I was told, it happened during the war in ‘43, ‘44, something like that, it was the skipper of a barge, and the submarine came up right next to him; he was so scared he never boarded his boat again [laughter]. He quit that job. But they weren't looking to destroy anything; all they wanted was food and oil. So they emptied the boats of fuel, then they took the food, and that's all that they wanted. Apparently, it happened often. It's something that nobody ever talks about, but this is what I was told several times because I was dealing with schooner captains when I was working for the national ports. When they found out that I was in the navy, that's when they told me those things.
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