Mine Sweeping

Heroes Remember

Mine Sweeping

Transcript

You'd look back and you'd see, you'd see a mine floating, it would break at the cable that was holding it or wear it out rubbing against this big steel rope or cable that went between our ships, our 2 ships, see. It'd either wear it out or break it and then the mines come up on top and we had rifles onboard and we'd fire at it with the rifles and we'd hit one of them little - blow it up. Interviewer: That's how you disposed of the mines? That's how we disposed of most of them, yeah. Interviewer: So you'd have to be a fairly good shot? Oh... you wouldn't know who was hitting them. You wouldn't know whether it was your shot or the other fellows shot, that, that, you know... You wouldn't strike it first shot. It would be pretty lucky and besides that it would be moving a little you see. But you fired about, there was, there was 13 of us onboard. We all had a rifle and fired 13 shots, see at the same... One of them was liable to go pretty close. Interviewer: How far away would normally the mine be? Oh well, you'd have to, if you couldn't get, you'd have to steer your, if it was too far away well you could pull your ship up, see, you could get up closer... within rifle range. Interviewer: Did you come across German submarines as well? Well, we seen, we seen a few of them. Yeah, a couple, we seen a couple of them. We seen, we're out one day and we're going along and there was a big ship, a steam ship or it was a, it was a lumber. It was loaded with lumber. It was going, going across to Paris or across to France anyway for and we come we were meeting it kind of and the first thing we seen was a puff. A puff come up one side of it and cripes, we looked and so far away on one was a submarine. Of course he was going down by then and we fired at him and steamed ahead and dropped our depth charges, but we don't know whether we got him or not. I don't think we did He got away. But the ship never sank because it was loaded with lumber and it wouldn't sink. There was one man, one man killed there, one of the engineers. We had to get a way down, me and another fellow, an Irish fellow named MacKay, Johnny MacKay. We got a way down in the ship and got a hold of him and pulled him up, an engineer. Interviewer: So you fellows boarded the vessel that had been hit? Oh yeah, yeah we had we all boarded and got him out. He belonged, he was, he belonged over there. Ireland somewhere over, he lived over there. His home was there.

Description

Mr. Stevenson describes the process of mine-sweeping aboard the vessel on which he served. He remembers watching a large ship loaded with lumber torpedoed by a German submarine.

Lorne Stevenson

Lorne Stevenson was born on a farm in Wheatley River, Prince Edward Island on June 23, 1898. He received his early education at a one-room school in Wheatley River and recalls that as a 9-year-old, he worked eight hours a day during the summer in the potato fields around his home. In 1915, at the age of 17 years, he decided to join the many other Canadian young men fighting the Germans during the First World War. The interview was recorded at his home in New Glasgow, Prince Edward Island in August, 1996.

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