Max Croft (Primary Source)

Transcript

A fellow by the name of Captain Arch Publicover, had three masted vessels. So he wanted to know if I wanted to go on one and I said, yes. So finally, the captain didn’t want to take me because I was too young. But finally he did convince to take me. And we got along real good. I was very active with the sails and cross trees and all that. I used to go aloft, you know what I mean, to set sails and I was very active. And that’s the way it went and I steered, I steered the vessel all the time. We had four hours on and four hours off. That was all. So then you didn’t get much sleep. So then we couldn’t do any work on the vessel because she was loaded with lumber all over the deck and everywheres. So then we sailed out of Le Havre River, we sailed over there in October and we struck a hurricane the 10th of October, it cleaned the sails. What we couldn’t get it down, got all ripped in places, so then we had to sew canvas. We had was in the hurricane for two days and sometimes you wondered if you were going to come up or not from the sea. But finally, she did leak so bad and we had to keep the pumps going to keep her afloat. So finally, the weather calmed down and we got sails going. So we were 28 days going to Barbados, which normally takes 10 days. We was fired at a couple of times but they happened to miss us. As I was in the crow’s nest [an observation post at the top of the ship], what they called the crow’s nest, and I could see the wake [from the torpedo] come and I got on the phone to the skipper [captain] about this wake coming and he altered course and it went right by our bow. So that was it. They must have just took off somewheres. But we wasn’t allowed to pick up any survivors.