189 On 12 May 1943, the 4,819-ton Norwegian motor merchant Brand became separated from convoy HX-237 in fog and was torpedoed by U-603. Though the ship sank in seven minutes, nearly the entire crew managed to escape in lifeboats. Guided by a Swordfish aircraft, the Morden arrived the same day to pick up the survivors from the boats. The Brand: The rescue of the survivors from the Brand was reported in the Vancouver Sun, 9 June 1943: Lt. Walter Barrett-Lennard is getting used to giving up his cabin on the Canadian corvette Morden to visitors. In fact, the Morden, since her most recent exploit with a convoy to Britain, has been dubbed by naval authorities there the champion survivor-carrier of the entire United Nations navies. Her record since last September up to mid-May was 357 shipwrecked men, women and children carried to safety. Her biggest “bags” were 194 survivors on one occasion [the Winnipeg II] and 106 on another [likely the SS City of Christchurch, though I understand the number of survivors from her was 102]. And each time Lt. Barrett-Lennard and other officers gave up their cabins and the crew gave up their bunks to those rescued from the sea after a torpedoing. On the most recent job, about three weeks ago, the Morden picked up and delivered safely to a port in Northern Ireland all but three of the 43 officers and men of a Norwegian ship [the Brand] which straggled from the convey and was torpedoed and sunk. They had taken to boats and rafts and some were in the water in lifejackets when the Morden sped to their rescue. When the Morden completed her job of picking up, she got away from there in record time. As one officer said, “We almost took right off.” The reason was that just as the last of the survivors was being taken on board, the Morden picked up a submarine contact “far too close for comfort.” During the rescue her engines were stopped and “she squatted on the Atlantic like a sitting duck and as easy to hit.” Life aboard a corvette in the North Atlantic was a mix of tedium and nerve-wracking excitement. Though their maneuverability made them difficult targets for U-boat torpedoes, corvettes—as the Vancouver Sun report suggests—were vulnerable while stopped to pick up survivors at sea. They were extremely seaworthy vessels, but notorious for their pitching and rolling even in moderate swells. On one occasion, my father fell and injured his ankle while trying to negotiate a slippery deck rising and falling with the waves. His ankle would continue to bother him for years.
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