SAILING FROM NEW YORK TO LIVERPOOL IN CONVOY 1944
  
Some memories from a traveller who was nearly six years old at the time.

With my mother and sister, we had been in Montreal – my mother’s birthplace - since August 1940. About the return journey, there are obviously lots of gaps but some things that stick in the mind, and it is these facts that I am writing about. 

I think we were due to leave on the convoy departing in April 1944, but my sister got mumps or German measles or something and we had to delay the departure. So it could have been June 1944 when we left. There is something in my mind about having three weeks notice initially, and then finally 24 hours notice to leave. All of mother’s family came down to the main station to see us off.  We had a sleeper because it was to be an overnight journey from Montreal to New York. 

The name of the boat we travelled on was the Rangitiki. This name sticks in my mind very clearly. I wander if it was because my mother had such a poor opinion of her. I have nothing in my mind about boarding or leaving the harbour. But I do remember seeing the lines of ships that made up the convoy once we were out at sea, either behind us or to the side.  The latter was always associated with “boat drill”, which we seemed to do fairly often, if not every day.  We had to line up in ranks on the deck with our life jackets on in front of the life boat to which we were allocated.  Facing us were ships of the Royal Navy.  Did I really see a battle ship or cruiser (it was large) firing its guns? There great flashes of flame, red and gold, as I remember. Did I hear that one ship in the convoy was lost. 

The other aspect of the voyage that I recall well was the accommodation. The children with their mothers were lodged in a big space well-down in the ship. I say it was well-down, because mother said that if we struck by a torpedo we would never get out!  It was like a sort of hall with a white ceiling and lots of pipes running through it. In this space there were lines of metal bunks, nose to tail. We had two bunks; that means four beds for the three of us. There were some nights when over the tannoy system would come the instruction that we had to sleep in our clothes. There was some sort of matron-type looking after us. I remember that one evening there was something sited – an iceberg? A whale? And a number of us rushed out and up the stairs to see. We were unceremoniously shooed back to our beds by this female figure. 

I have no recollection of food or the dining room. I do know that the monotony of the voyage (was it 11 or 13 days from one port to another?) was lessened by the bag of presents that our Canadian great-aunts had presented us with. There was a small present for each day, all done up in a small blue bag made of cloth. I remember well arriving in Liverpool, and feeling free to wander all over the ship. I eventually found some high grade bathrooms, and treated myself to a bath which I had the opportunity. I also managed to get into the hold where the luggage was being extracted in a large net. Did I try and help, little though I was?  Maybe there is something of that in my memories. 

I can say nothing about getting off the boat, though I do remember the vast hall where our baggage was collected underneath a large “W”.   As far as I know we couldn’t find a place to stay in Liverpool that first night, so the journey was made across the Mersey to Chester. We stayed, all in one room, at the Queen’s Hotel just opposite the station. It was here that my father on a quick leave from London arrived in the middle of the night. I can still remember the scratch of his beard when I climbed on to my parents' bed in the morning.   

Of course I should have questioned my mother about all this long ago. But re-living even these brief memories makes me think of all the anxiety and fear she must have experienced bringing two young children safely back to England. 

The funny thing is that when we went back to Canada in 1948 on the Aquitania to see the relations, I thought I saw the Rangitiki moored up looking desolate somewhere in Southampton water, or nearby. But I believe it was in service until 1952 so may be I was mistaken.  Later on, much later, I tried to get some information about the convoy. I went to the Guildhall Library in London where I obtained the dates for the ship:  out of New York 6 April 1944 with convoy CU 020 and out of New York 16 June 1944 with convoy TCU 028.

David Wilson

February 2007