For whom the ship’s bell tolls 🔔

An item from the Legion’s Magazine.

For whom the ship’s bell tolls

Story by Stephen J. Thorne

Ships’ bells mark the watch, sound alarms, send signals, declare a ship’s presence in foggy weather and even serve as baptismal fonts.

Usually engraved, the ship’s bell is often the primary identifying element of an historic wreck, as was the bronze bell from HMS Erebus, explorer John Franklin’s vessel that was found after 168 years beneath Arctic waters.

Bells aboard modern ships often bear the name of the shipyard that built the ship in addition to the name of the ship itself. If the ship’s name is changed, maritime tradition dictates the original bell with the original name remain with the vessel.

Attacks in the Saint Lawrence

Story by Sharon Adams

The Second World War came home to Canada with a U-boat attack in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in the spring of 1942, bringing the naval conflict to Canada’s inland waters.

Between 1942 and 1944, 23 ships were sunk by German submarines and hundreds of lives were lost.

Kapitänleutnant Karl Thurmann had dispatched five ships and damaged another during U-553’s first six missions in far-ranging patrols in the North Atlantic. His seventh mission brought him to Canadian waters.

In the late hours of May 11, 1942, off the Gaspé Peninsula, the British ship SS Nicoya, en route to join a convoy in Halifax, crossed his path. U-553 launched a torpedo. As the crew was abandoning the ship, a second torpedo sealed its fate, and that of six crew. The next morning, 111 survivors were rescued.