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

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.