Atlantic Crossing

Boarded the ship in Halifax in March, 1944. It couldn't have been March, March ‘95 I guess, or ‘45. And I was seasick right there while the boat was tied up to the dock. It was Louis Pasteur and of course, apparently, it had been built a little bit off keel so it rolled. And of course the idea was to change course every 2 or 3 minutes so a sub couldn't get lined up on you, and every time they changed course well we rolled. Seventeen days from Halifax to Liverpool, it was a long trip. And we were in there in general just as thick as you could get people because there was, say a room like this, we had people sleeping on the floor and there was people sleeping on the tables and then there was hammocks. So there was as many people in there as you could get. Interviewer: You know the Atlantic can be pretty rough. Well especially the last two days going, getting in towards Liverpool it was, it was rough. I can remember of course one of my details was at midnight to get up and swob off all the vomit from the stairs. So here I was with a pail picking up vomit and I'm standing over it filling it up myself. The ship went with a big valoop like this and the bucket went skidding right over and into a bunch of guys that were sleeping on the floor. Well it had Lysol and stuff in it, you know, you can imagine what the smell in there all night. I just disappeared pretty quickly.

Mr. Ryder speaks of the rough time they had crossing the Atlantic aboard the Louis Pasteur.

Lloyd Ryder

Mr. Ryder was born in 1922 in Whitehorse. In his childhood the Whitehorse population was 300 in the winter and 600 in the summer. In 1939 that all changed when war was declared, in a short time after war was declared the airport in Whitehorse was expanded and the American Army arrived and started to build a highway. Mr. Ryder joined the service in 1944 following his father's footsteps from the First World War. He was hoping to join the air force but that did not happen so he joined the army.