Torpedoed in the St. Lawrence (Part 1 of 2)

Heroes Remember

Torpedoed in the St. Lawrence (Part 1 of 2)

Transcript

After I finished the navigation course the Magog was being commissioned and needed a navigator. And so I joined the Magog as a navigator. Interviewer: Time frame? And we got, early ‘44. We worked the ship up. We got a convoy that we had to take up into the St. Lawrence. We didn’t normally run the St. Lawrence and some of the things that interested me in going there was why did we have, why were we running one up the St. Lawrence through the gulf. It turned out, they knew there were subs there and there was a sub lying on a bank up opposite Pointe des Monts. And she put a torpedo into our tail, blew the stern off the ship. We had just released the convoy. They had gone upstream from us and were, were safe essentially from, any attack by the sub. The other thing I discovered later was that they, I think it was the Lady Rodney, was taking some Canadian soldiers up to a base up in Labrador, and they, I understand, weren’t supposed to be off Canadian soil, and so therefore we were with other ships in presence.

Description

Mr. Stanger talks about being torpedoed while sailing up the St. Lawrence river.

Edgar Thorne (Peter) Stanger

Mr. Stanger was born on September 19, 1923 in Montréal, Québec. His father was an electrical engineer for Southern Canada Power in Montréal and also served in the First World War. His father had told him of memories of Vimy and Passchendaele when he was part of the artillery. Mr. Stanger started as a midshipman when he was 17 and from there he went to Kings College at the age of 18 and received his sub-lieutenant stripe and then went to sea. He was recommended for the navigation course in 1944. He believed they were grooming him to take over command on one of the ships, but the war had ended before his training was complete. During a convoy in early 1944, up the St. Lawrence, their ship was struck by a torpedo. As a result, they ended up spending two days waiting for a tugboat to rescue them and take them back to land.

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