The Tripe Mutiny

A train pulled in right into the dockyards where the boats were, not a siding but there was five or six CPR tracks in there and we got off and marched out through the warehouse and incidentally that warehouse is still there. Then we got on the HMAS Awatea. It was a ship that had brought Australian and New Zealand air force personnel to Canada to train Commonwealth Air Training Team. We were packed into different areas, D-Company. We were lucky we had, right in our area was right adjacent to the poop deck on the back just above the water and hammocks, we got settled in and the first meal we had was tripe and the complaints started. Well, somebody said and I remember the story in the free press that in Halifax in the summer of 1941, the air force were on their way overseas and disliked their conditions and en masse they marched off the boat and stood on the docks and conditions were changed, they even got white sheets on their beds, we were in hammocks so we figured lets get off and let them know and we did. Captain Neil, ended up, Captain Neil Bardell, Lieutenant Bardell was our transport officer and he came down and told us that if we didn't get back on we'd be charged with desertion or mutiny or whatever. And 90 percent of us got on but the ones that had organized it, when we got off on the dock disappeared through the warehouse and that was the reason they had done it. After that little, we’ll call it a riot, that disturbance, they unhooked from the dock and pulled out into the harbor overnight and we left the next day.