Erroll Pilkington Gillespie Letters
Letters from from Erroll Pilkington Gillespie to his family. Learn more.
*All transcriptions are provided by volunteers, and the accuracy of the transcriptions is not guaranteed. Please be sure to verify the information by viewing the image record, or visiting the BC Archives in person.
Current Page Transcription [edit] [history]
3/
detailed for the job altogether, two were on duty at a time as well as several sentries . My hours were 8 pm to 10 pm, 4 am to 6am & 12 noon to 2 pm. The early morning shift was rather an effort! We were the only ones allowed on the upper deck so we felt quite superior! I shall not forget the sight when our escort arrived to meet us, they arrived in the early morning about 2 days out, it was great to see them looming up through the dusk and one felt a great feeling of security at having the torpedo boats near us. On account of censor I'm not allowed to say how many we had. We had quite an exciting time off the Irish coast for about an hour, the subs had evidently got wind of our convoy as they got in amongst us all right, but thanks to the escort, things were made to hot for them to operate, & no damage was done. There were at least two after us, we did not actually see one from our boat, but the boat immediately in front of us did & got several depth charges at it. The T.B.s were firing away in great style too, we saw the depth charges exploding which was interesting. We quite expected that our boat drill was going
BC Archives, MS-2685 Box 17 File 3 / OLIVER, William Edgar, 1867 – 1920. Victoria; lawyer. / Erroll P. Gillespie, correspondence outward, 1917 – 1919.