M/V North Gaspe served Nassau from West Palm Beach FL 1946-1948

 

 

An excerpt from my upcoming book, “St Lawrence Saga: The Clarke Steamship Story” follows below.  Clarke operated the 3,445-ton New Northland between Miami and Nassau in 1927-31 and again in 1935-39, plus the much smaller 640-ton Jean Brillant in 1942-46. Their 888-ton North Gaspé and 1,205-ton North Shore also operated between West Palm Beach and Nassau for the West India Fruit & Steamship Company in 1946-48. This excerpt is from the chapter on World War II. Comments and corrections are always welcome. The full manuscript can be found here:

http://clarkesteamship.wordpress.com/

 

The North Gaspe survived a German U-boat torpedo attack, according to www.uboat.net:

 

“At 18.43 hours on 21 Jan 1942, U-203 fired a spread of four torpedoes at steamer of estimated 8000 tons, heard a detonation after 6 minutes 52 seconds and thought that the ship sank. Apparently, the North Gaspe (Master Alphonse Bégin), a Canadian ship under charter by the US Army Transport Service, was slightly damaged by the explosion of a torpedo close to the ship about 44 miles south of Cape Race, but managed to reach port safely. On board was a US Army gun crew and a communication unit.”

 

Source: http://www.uboat.net/allies/merchants/ships/1273.html