I Joined The Navy

Ralph Harvey

Ralph Harvey was born at Boswarlos on the Port au Port Peninsula, in 1917. In 1939 he went to war by joining the navy. Here is his account of meeting the Wolf of the Atlantic.

THERE WASN'T MUCH WORK around here, very little. There were just a few months work at the limestone quarry. So I decided to join up and got in the navy. That was in 1939, the third draft.

I went with a horse and sleigh to Stephenville Crossing and from the Crossing went to St. John's by train. I boarded at a Mrs. Dawson's, until I got a ship and went over in convoy and landed at Liverpool.

The barracks were in Devonport. We did a good bit of training there and then we joined a ship. I joined her in Belfast, Ireland. The name of the ship was the Laurentic.

The second trip out, we were three hundred and ten miles off the northeast coast and got torpedoed. A sister ship to ours got torpedoed too, the Patroclus.

I was just turning in, undressed, and bang she went! That awful smell. I wasn't long getting out of my hammock. I grabbed an old army coat and put it on.

There was no warning whatsoever. Her gun went off and when we all rushed up on deck, there she was, right across from us, not very far. We couldn't get at it, because when we got the first torpedo our ship listed. She listed so much that we couldn't point our guns right to shoot at her. They had us alright.

The captain of the German U-boat was Otto Kretschmer. He was so successful sinking ships that he was nicknamed Wolf of the Atlantic. He was the first to get the Iron Cross, for sinking so many tons of British shipping.