Merchant Marine

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Merchant Marine

• By Katie Sumarah, Matt Mason, Greg Dobson, and
  Mallory Baker

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The Merchant Fleet1939

• 38 ocean-going merchant ships
• Approx. 1450 Canadian seamen on each ship
• Cargo capacity - 290 000 tons
• 6000 tons DWT (Deadweight Tonnage)
• 11 cargo ships and lady boats
• 10 tankers of Imperial Oil Limited
• Captured ships during the war would be taken
  over and added to the fleet

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• 133 Lakers transferred from inland waterways to
  open ocean
• 25 crossed the Atlantic in the spring of 1940 to
  replace the hard hit British fleet
• Other Lakers carried bauxite ore (Clay like rock
  containing Aluminum) from South America to
  Canadas smelters

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• June 15th, 1940 off Lands End, England, the Erik
  Boye11 was torpedoed by the U-38 and became the
  first Canadian-flagged merchant ship to go down
  as a casualty in the Battle of the Atlantic
• Canadian flagged ships and Canadian managed
  foreign flagged ships would suffer the worst of
  the losses during the Battle of the Atlantic

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• It has been estimated that 88 of the casualties
  suffered by Canadian merchant seamen had occurred
  by the end of 1942
• When the battle started Canada soon suffered from
  large losses in ships and men
• By wars end, 72 Canadian merchant ships had been
  lost to enemy action
• The ships lost had either been torpedoed, bombed,
  mined, shelled, or lost in storms at sea

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• New merchant ships could not be replaced at the
  pace that those were being lost
• During the Battle of the Atlantic shipyards were
  used for the repair of ships

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The Merchant Crews

• The real heroes were not the ships themselves,
  but the merchant seamen who sailed them

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The Crew

• Men of every nationality
• Thousands of them with homes in the enemy
  occupied Europe
• They were without uniforms or recognition, poorly
  paid, and had to sail back and forth across
  hostile seas facing death because of freezing
  water or flaming oil
• The crews freedom was gone

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• They sailed ships that were in good and bad
  condition
• With each voyage death was more likely for the
  men
• They did not only sail the North-Atlantic route,
  they also sailed the oceans of the world
• They carried their cargo to and from parts of
  Europe, Asia, Africa, South America,
  Australia/New Zealand, and the far East

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• The cargo consisted of
• Food
• Ammunition
• Oil
• Aircraft
• Clothing
• Steel
• After Hitler invaded Russia, they sailed the
  deadly Murmansk Run

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Quote

• The Battle of the Atlantic was not won by any
  navy or Air Force, it was won by the courage,
  fortitude and determination of the British and
  Allied Merchant Navy.
• - Rear Admiral Leonard Murray,
  Commander-in-chief Canadian North Atlantic

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• A memorial for those lost at sea The Merchant
  Marines