At Sea on a Corvette
Corvettes were small naval vessels built early in the war to fill the urgent need for convoy escorts. Even smaller than destroyers, they were a violent ride in heavy seas. Actually designed for coastal duty, they were often pressed into the service of ocean-going convoys. Frank Curry spent much of the war on the HMCS Kamsack, a Canadian Navy corvette operating out of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. Unending days at sea aboard these little ships was a true test of human endurance. From Curry’s diary:
Now I know something of the meaning of rough seas. Mountainous seas are breaking completely over the ship, and it is turning into massive coatings of ice as it hits. We are sheathed in sixteen inches of ice and I do not know what keeps us from going to the bottom of the Atlantic as we pitch, toss, roll and everything else imaginable.
Just as we were about to head back to Sydney, we received urgent orders to proceed to the rescue of a torpedoed ship in the Gulf. So off we went into the very teeth of terrific seas. Boy, are they ever huge green ones. Going on watch at 10:00 p.m., I stood for a few minutes by the wheelhouse which is all of 20 feet above the water line, and looked straight up at mountainous seas that made our little corvette seem very insignificant indeed—I hung on for dear life as I made my way in pitch dark with the roaring gales tearing at me every foot of the way, up to the bridge. How can anyone know what a night like this is at sea who has never actually experienced it.85
Sometimes when we study history we focus on the big picture of military campaigns and strategy, and lose sight of the “little” picture: the toll on each man and woman who has to implement those strategies. The life of the corvette sailor is a reminder of the individual sacrifice and hardship endured for years by thousands during the Battle of the Atlantic. Their struggle gives special meaning to the words of the “Navy Hymn”:
Eternal Father, strong to save, whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep its own appointed limits keep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee, for those in peril on the sea!86
They saw the works of the Lord, his wonderful deeds in the deep. For he spoke and stirred up a tempest that lifted high the waves.
—Psalm 107:24–25