Donald Kennedy - Risks at sea

Transcript

I was never up in what they call convoys, I've made that crystal clear. When you go through the Panama Canal, you really come into the Caribbean Sea, which is part of the Atlantic Ocean. That was, for a time, a very, very dangerous area because, I don't know how it was, but they attacked a lot of ships there.

We went to the Canal, we went south to a place called Aruba where there was oil, and we were picking up oil. We were bringing it back to New Zealand, back to Australia, and we went up the Persian Gulf. Right up into the Gulf, into Iraq and Iran. They were called the Mesopotamian Persia in those days.

Took a load of oil down to South Africa and went into the Atlantic down there. But the ship that I was on did not go up into the North Atlantic where the Convoys were. To that extent, it was probably less dangerous waters than some of the people here went into.

There were many, many, many, many hundreds of ships sunk. Many thousands of seaman, Navy and Merchant Navy, lost. Many, many lost up there. But they never got us. The Japanese would have loved to have got us, but they missed. Once they fired a bunch of torpedo at our ship, but they missed.