Tributes
Lorne Shouldice Remembers the Nabob
The Low Down to Hull and Back News, November 7, 1985
It seems only fitting, as Remembrance Day 1985 draws near, to recall the exploits of one veteran who, way back forty-one years ago, participated in one of the greatest sea dramas of the war.
The newspaper headline reads: "Torpedo Failed to End Career of HMS Nabob." The story went on to say, "The navy tonight announced the torpedoing of the Canadian manned aircraft carrier HMS Nabob, off Norways North Cape, and how she limped ll00 miles across subinfested seas to a British port, heavily damaged, but afloat."
Lorne Shouldice of Wakefield was on board HMS Nabob and lived to tell the tale.
But, first Lorne recalls how, at the tender age of 19, he enlisted in the Canadian Navy. "I joined in 1942 as a seaman and was sent to Vancouver, to HMS Nabob, under the command of Captain Horatio Nelson Lay, RCN. She was a converted merchant ship. The flight deck was built over the hull. We first went to Seattle to pick up our aircraft, American-built Avengers. A trip through the Panama Canal brought us to Norfolk where we picked up a deck-load of other aircraft to be ferried across the Atlantic. We eventually arrived at our home base in Scapa Flow," Lorne added.
After many support missions on the Murmansk Run, the Nabob was assigned to a task force whose sole mission was to immobilize the German battleship Terpitz which lay in Kaa Fjord, Norway. This ship, by her mere presence, constituted a potential threat to the Atlantic and North Russian convoy routes and forced the Allies to keep a heavy concentration of warships at Scapa Flow, in case she put out to sea.
Lorne will never forget August 22, 1944 at 5:16 p.nm. "As a seaman in the Flight Deck Division, I was on deck, preparing to fuel corvettes, when a torpedo struck. We will never know why it didn't blow us up - especially with all the high octane aircraft gas on board!
"We dropped everything and ran for our lifejackets, which we should have been wearing anyway. The ship keeled us over so badly that I thought it was going right over. I was crawling on my hands and knees to get up to the high side. The captain gave orders to stand by to abandon ship.
"We lowered half the early floats and life boats, but the ship listed so badly that we could only get about half of our boats away," Lorne explained. "Over 400 non-essentials left the ship," he said, "but I was one of the crew left on board to get her back to England."
"The Bickerton, a British frigate, caught a torpedo intended for us, and it exploded before our eyes. Forty men were lost," he exclaimed.
In the book A History of Canadian Naval Aviation 1918-1962 there is an interesting account of the events that Lorne described, in very official naval language, as follows:
"At 1716 there was a heavy explosion on the starboard side aft, and Nabob took a seven degree list, her draught at the stern increasing to 38 feet, and finally to 42 feet. The large between-deck hatches not being water-tight, flooding spread to the level of the galley deck where fortunately several vents allowed air to escape, and this prevented the hangar deck from bursting. Water also extended right to the engine room bulk-head forward and to the tanks in the very stern, the ship slowly coming on to an even keel, because of the absence of fore-and-aft bulk-heads in this class of vessel.
"As the hands had been closed up at Action Stations for most of the day, Up Spirits had only been piped just before the ship was torpedoed. Members of the supply staff, mess men and others were gathered outside the spirit room, and it was amongst them that most of the casualties occurred.
"The officer overseeing the run issue had a lucky escape, being carried up two decks by the flood of water after the explosion. Another fortunate man was a stoker who washed out of the shaft tunnel and landed unhurt on the quarterdeck."
The journey back to Scapa Flow under the ship's own power was one of the most dramatic in the annals of the war at sea. Dogged by submarines and facing gale-force winds which threatened to swamp the ship on many occasions, the ll00-mile journey took five days.
The eventual loss of life was 23 officers and men. At the War Memorial in Wakefield on Sunday, November 10, Lorne will remember his lost shipmates.
Lorne Shouldice returned to Canada in 1944, and for another year saw service on various ships, including the famous aircraft carrier Bonaventure. He ended up in Halifax on V.E. Day in 1945, and vividly remembers the weeklong riots that erupted when the civic and military authorities closed the bars and liquor stores.
Lorne returned to civilian life in 1946. He joined Bell Canada, where he worked for over 30 years. He took his retirement in 1978, returned to Wakefield and purchased the family homestead where he lives with his charming wife Shirley, who came from Shawville. Their three grown sons live in various parts of the country. He has served on the La Peche council for the last three years, representing the Wakefield ward.
Perhaps one of Lorne's greatest passions is his deep regard for the Canadian Legion - especially the Breadner Branch No. 214 in Wakefield. He was a founding member along with Myrrell Vaillancourt and Harold "Nobby" Clarke. "Although we have 80 members, we still need public support to make a go of it," Lorne said. "Although I don't like to see it run as a community centre, we have to undertake quite a few outside functions, such as wedding receptions, and so on."
He pointed out that the Wakefield Legion is the only branch between Hull and Maniwaki. Lorne stressed that new members are welcome, especially the sons and daughters of members of the Armed Forces. "They are now eligible for Legion membership," he said.
Incidentally, Lorne is in charge of the parade to the War Memorial on Sunday, November 10, at 11 a.m. An ecumenical service will be held at the United Church, and the Legion will host lunch following the service.
One thing that Lorne stressed was that he did not want to appear to be singled out as the only veteran from Wakefield. In fact, he could name all of the local men that served in the Army, Navy and Air Force, and he recited for this writer the names of all those from the Wakefield area who had lost their lives in the Second World War: "John Bates, Edwin McCorkell, Lawrence McGarry, Jim Reid, and Glen Stewart."
Lest we forget - Lorne won't.
