Gold for War Goods

Alongside came three railway, what they call trucks, railway trucks. It's railway cars. And we took onboard thirty tonnes of gold. That was taken from the trucks up to the second officer's room where a Bobby ticked it off, ticked it off. Two men, take two men to lift it, this container, this little box of gold, and way they go to New York. So we arrived in New York and where the ship docked, I suppose half the policeman in New York were there and a national guard and god knows what else to protect this gold bullion. But it turned out that at that time, the Americans would sell munitions to anybody, cash and carry. This is what we were, we were bringing the cash and we could carry whatever they, we needed. And this was about the end of the cash and carry because at that time Churchill realized he was, the gold bullion in England was gone. They just run out. They shipped so much of it to Canada for safekeeping on another ship, but what we took the ten tonnes that we took, that was about the last of the ready cash that they had.

Mr. Goodyear describes a very high security voyage in which British gold bullion was transported to the United States in exchange for war material.

Thomas Goodyear

Thomas Goodyear was born in St. John’s, Newfoundland on March 17, 1920. He was the eldest of four children. His father had served in the First World war, and later became operating engineer in the local butter company. Mr. Goodyear left school at age 13 to learn the dry fish business, and in 1936 ran away to work at sea with provisioning coastal communities in Newfoundland, Labrador and Quebec. The outbreak of the Second World saw Mr. Goodyear join the transatlantic merchant fleet as a quartermaster. In addition to the North Atlantic, he saw service in the Indian Ocean, where he survived the torpedoing of his ship. Mr. Goodyear offers some unique experiences from his perspective as a Merchant Mariner.