In the dark of the early morning of October 14, 1942 the Second World War struck directly at Canada, again.
In 1942, U-boats operating in Canadian waters had sunk 43 ships, many in the St Lawrence including 20 merchantmen, a troopship, two Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) ships, the corvette HMCS Charlottetown, and the armed yacht HMCS Racoon. On this night, the last ship, the 44th, would go down in Canadian waters.
A ferry, the SS Caribou was steaming on its regular passage between Sydney Nova Scotia, and Port aux Basques, Newfoundland carrying 46 crew, and 191 military and civilian passengers, along with cargo.
A Class VIIC German U-boat was nearing the end of its voyage to Canadian waters, having already sailed up the St Lawrence and torpedoed the steamship SS Corulus some 245 km downriver from Quebec City.
Although his patrol was nearing an end, Kapitän-Leutnant Ulrich Gräf, commanding U-69 still had torpedoes on board.
He was looking for a small convoy of grain loaded ships, when he spotted Caribou and her minesweeper escort.
He fired one torpedo which hid the Caribou on the starboard side at approximately 03;40 in the morning.
The SS Caribou, built in 1925, went down fairly quickly with 136 lives lost, including ten children and the majority of the crew.
Though the minesweeper attacked, the U-69 escaped, and the escort returned to pick up survivors from the cold waters.
The attack caused outrage, one editorial saying the attack on a ferry was a useless crime from the point of view of warfare with no effect on the outcome of the war except to steel resolve against the Nazis.
The U-69, still in Newfoundland waters, attacked the ore carrier Rose Castle on October 20, but it’s one remaining torpedo was a dud and the ore-carrier escaped.
The U-69 with no more torpedoes returned to base. A British destroyer sealed the fate of U-69 and all hands the following year when the U-boat was sunk hile attacking a convoy in the Atlantic east of Newfoundland.
The sinking of the SS Caribou was the end of what has become known as the battle of the St Lawrence.
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