Every hatch on our ship was full of empty drums. When she got the first torpedo, all the drums started to come up through the hold and floated all over the sea. She took a good while before she went down, because the drums were keeping her up.

We were in lifeboats. You lowered the lifeboat the best way you could and then went down the lifelines. I was in a leaky lifeboat, with five or six buckets going!

It wasn't blowing but there was an awful heavy swell on.

There were a good many of us in the boat, and there was a big steward there. He weighed eighteen stone. I caught the lifeline to haul the lifeboat in so he wouldn't drop in the water. But he let go about eight feet up and he came down hard. He struck my leg and he drove my leg back. Don't say I didn't have a bad leg. I was some mad.

I said, "My son, if there were only you and me in this boat, you'd never see the shore!"

Oh my, oh my, what a night, what a night!

That happened about ten to nine on Sunday night. It was a good while before the destroyer came to pick us up. It couldn't pick us up right away, because it had to make a broad circle, around and around, to make sure the submarine wasn't there, waiting. We were picked up just at the break of day.

There were two Newfoundlanders and one Englishman lost. Roy Beverley McLeod and Francis Roche were the Newfoundlanders lost.

They brought us in to Greenoch, Scotland. When we got in there, the Salvation Army was there with clothes and everything for us. Boy, I was some grateful. They were really good people. The next boat I joined was the Prince Leopold, in combined operations for two years, doing hit and run raids. And I took part in the Dieppe raid.