Interview with Paul Taverner

Paul Taverner audio interview transcript:

“Paul Taverner, I was born in Port aux Basques April 24th, 1947. And I’m the grandson of the late Benjamin Taverner that went down on the SS Caribou, torpedoed by a German U-Boat.

“Captain Ben Taverner, he was the captain, of course. He was Captain on the [S.S.] Kyle, first, where he served the island, and then he started the Gulf crossing to North Sydney, he started to go with the [S.S.] Caribou. Anyway, he had two sons, his son Stan he was first mate, and his other son was Harold, Harold he was second officer.

“They [S.S. Caribou] left Sydney and when they got about halfways across the Gulf. The [H.M.C.S.] Grandmere was on the tail end, he always said the Grandmere should be on the front instead of on the tail end. He used to ask one of his mates, he said, did you see the Grandmere? She’s supposed to be on the rear, back of us, following us. And the other guy said no, I haven’t seen her. So anyway, they kept on going and were hit by a torpedo on the broadside. They didn’t have much time for lifeboats because she went down pretty fast, in a matter of five or ten minutes, I guess. So they didn’t have much time. Some of the boats didn’t get launched, a lot of people climbing onto boards and planks and whatever they could get hold to, and life jackets. And story goes on, there’s a lot of people that were saved, actually didn’t know how to swim. And my two uncles, Uncle Stan and Uncle Harold, were actually perfect swimmers. Now I don’t know if they stayed with my grandfather, because my grandfather stayed with the ship. I don’t know if they stayed with him, or what. But anyway, three of them went down with the ship. And when they found his body, they found two – Uncle Stan and Uncle Harold, they had a little problem finding my grandfather first, but they did find him. He had a pocket watch on him, and it stopped I think around four o’clock, that’s when the pocket watch stopped, in the morning. And he also had his compass, now the compass my brother got. And the pocket watch his grandson Benjamin Taverner, named after Captain Ben. So he got the pocket watch. So anyway, it got hit, news about it – it was late getting the news about it in the Channel, in Port aux Basques. They started sending fishing boats, whatever type of boat they could get, see if they could pick up survivors. The Grandmere, she was looking for the sub, she didn’t – she was told to go for the sub first before she picked up survivors. Anyway, that’s what happened to the Grandmere. She did come back after to pick up a few passengers and all that stuff.

“So, it was a very very emotional, sad day for Port aux Basques, and well, all Newfoundland, because it wasn’t only Port aux Basques that had crew members on there and loved ones. Actually, there were soldiers from the US and from Canada on the same trip. So, it concerned a lot of people.

“Well like I say, Port aux Basques had a lot of members on her – passengers and crew members on that boat, so. It was, like I said, very sad. It hit the people very very hard. It was – took a long time to get over it, just to bury so many bodies at a time, because they didn’t get all the bodies at one time, so. It stuck around for a nice while, because different days they kept burying people, and that brought on a lot of emotions. Like I say, I couldn’t imagine what it would be like if I was living at the time that happened, what way I would feel. I would probably feel really, really sad. But the people got over it, I guess, after a while. Well, you never get over a tragedy like that, but eventually they went on with their lives.”