Towing Ships

When we find a ship, of course, we determine if there’s anybody alive on it and if they could take a tow. We’d pass them our wire and we’d get as close as we could to them. And then of course we’d have our rope on it as well. The rope was I guess three strands of six inch rope so that’ll give about 18 inch rope and the old ship, the other ship that we were towing was about pretty nearly a mile behind us. We took the old Neptune, which was a steaming vessel, she was a wooden one, she was built in England or Scotland and she had 500 tons of coal aboard and we’d tow. We were 18 hours towing her 18 miles. The weather was so bad, yeah, eventually she sank just outside the narrows. Yeah, about 1:00 in the morning. Just barely got through port and down she went. The old Neptune, yeah. After every tow, we had to straighten things up and straighten up the tow rope and splice it up, and this and that and, you know, maintenance of the ship and everything else. Interviewer: Did you love those ships, and you loved the crew? Yeah, I loved it yeah, it was a good experience, a good experience.

Mr Rogers gives us an idea of what it was like towing ships.

Eli Rogers

Eli Rogers was born in Newfoundland on February 16, 1919. The son of a locomotive engineer he enlisted with the Navy when he was 21 years old. Mr. Rogers served on many ships in the Navy with the Royal Navy Rescue unit.