Premonition of Trouble – William J. Lundrigan interview

This is the transcript of an interview that author Cassie Brown recorded with Corner Brook businessman William J. Lundrigan, who survived the sinking of S.S. Caribou:

“I booked passage home and arrived at North Sydney and booked passage that night across on the Caribou. But I must confess on the night I entered or embarked upon this trip on the Caribou, I had a premonition of trouble. I became concerned about the ship and the safety of the ship and all its great burden of people.

“And I walked to deck and I even went as far as to look into and think – what one would do if we were torpedoed. All these things not only passed through my mind but I seemingly found the answer to them as I thought them out, and in a practical way I did go and rehearse many of them. I attempted to go to sleep as much as three or four times during the night, and each time was restless and my mind would not rest, and so I would get up and go up on deck and pace the deck and look into the black and somber night. I recall how I would get to the deck, where the deck was, the boat deck in relation to where I was sleeping. That meant that I had to go through a certain door and go out and go off the companion way, and then go aft on the boat deck to where my boat was. I located the boat, I looked it up, I sized it up, I even ventured to look over the depth of the water from the boat deck down and rather cringed at the thought of the depth between the boat deck and the sea where one would have to go. And then I sized up the mechanics of the boat and how you would lower it down, how you would get the canvas off the boat and the obstacles that was in the way. I sized ’em all up. And I went through these things, not once nor twice but a third [time].”