Both grandfathers in my adoptive family died before I came along. As a youngster I recall looking sadly at their photos, wishing I had known them.
As an adult, when I began to find my birth family, I discovered that both biological grandfathers had also died — tragically - two years apart, in the 1940s. Both men drowned in horrific events during the Second World War — one going down off the coast of Holland in a British Royal Navy sub, and the other killed when the tugboat he worked on was broadsided by a freighter. Here are their stories.
John Havelock Gillen, my father’s father, was born in 1905 and raised in the rich Maritime environment of Nova Scotia, Canada. He stood an impressive 6 feet, 4 inches tall. When he died at the age of 36, Havelock left behind his wife Estelle and three sons — Billy, 10; Larry (my dad, age 6) and Donnie, who was four years old.
As Chief Engineer aboard the 300-ton Lavaltrie, Havelock reported to the Captain and was responsible for the safe operation of all the vessel’s machinery and equipment. He would have delegated work assignments, and supervision and training of the Engine Room crew. Tugboats are small crafts, but we’ll never know exactly where he was on the vessel when it broke in half and sank.
From the June 30, 1942 Montreal Gazette:
The tug was pushing two empty barges to the northwest, towards Bedford Basin. The little harbour craft was riding between the two barges when the collision occurred. The freighter struck on the starboard side, and the tug, which was crushed between the two heavy barges, cracked and sank.
A patrolling craft rushed to the scene and picked up six survivors including the Captain, but five others were missing and presumed drowned, including J.C. Hodgson, fireman, from Ship Harbour or Goldboro Huntley McCutcheon, cook, Sonora Guysborough County. And, Havelock Gillen, 36 year old engineer of Blink Bonnie Road, Kline Heights.
The family came to Halifax last November from Sonora, where both Mr. and Mrs. Gillen were born. The young engineer had travelled to many parts of the world as a crew member of ocean going freighters before accepting a job with the CNR (Canadian National Railway) lighterage service.
Most of his life had been spent at sea.
Life wasn’t easy for Estelle and her boys after that. Larry would later tell my brother Shawn that to help make ends meet, he’d get up before dawn and slip outside to scope the neighbourhood for milk money left out on folks’ front steps. It’s tough for single parents now, but it was tougher in the 40s.
Estelle never married again and died in her 70s, in Halifax.
Henry Thomas Backwell Hobbs was an Able Seaman in the Royal Navy, having joined in July, 1917, when he was just 16 years old. He had the perfect stature for a submariner; a compact 5 foot 4. For Henry (husband of Elsie, a nurse, and father of my mother Sylvian), long periods away from his family was the status quo.
But after their young son Derek died from diphtheria, Elsie felt her husband’s absences more keenly. Sylvian was born after Derek died, and was only three years old the last time her daddy went to sea.
Oct. 17, 1940, HMS H49 (Commanding officer: Lt. Richard Evelyn Coltart) sailed from Harwich with orders to patrol off Texel, on the Dutch coast. On the following day, to the west of Texel, H49 was depth charged by the German auxiliary submarine chasers UJ-116 and UJ-118. One survivor was picked up. He was L/Sto George William Oliver. The remaining 26 crew members were lost.
One account says H-49 withstood more than two hours of depth charging. Some of the crew went down with the sub, but others were cast into the sea as the damage intensified. Henry died October 18, 1940, a few months before his 40th birthday. We’ll never know if he drowned inside the craft or died in the water.
HMS H-49 remains on the sea floor where it came to rest, and has the protected status of a War Grave. In the mid 1980s, amateur divers who had violated H49’s war grave status were prosecuted by the Dutch government.
My sister Deborah says Elsie, our Nan (I never met her) was so devastated by her husband’s death that she was never quite herself afterward. She sent my mother away to a Catholic boarding school — the only place that would take her at the age of three — and marinated in her grief. Henry’s death killed his family’s happiness in ways he likely would never have imagined.
I have always had a paralysing fear of deep water and drowning. When I learned of my grandfathers’ fate, I felt that dread rise up my spine like icewater. I have cried for Havelock and Henry, imagining the fear and pain of their last minutes.
Havelock the giant and Henry the wee lived similar lives and met similar ends in vastly different parts of the world. They would never lay eyes on one another, but because of them I am here.