My Great Uncle, Fred Burt, was a crewman aboard the SS Rosecastle.........
Quote:
I was still lying awake at 3:30 a.m. when my bed was shaken by a violent explosion and I knew in an instant from the direction of the sound that it was the Rosecastle that had been hit. She was lying off "the point" about half way between Lance cove and the piers. Running to my sister's bedroom window which overlooked the eastern portion of the tickle, I arrived there before the debris flung in the air had settled back upon the water. The Rosecastle, deeply laden with her heavy cargo of iron ore was mortally wounded, but after only a few seconds she was hit by a second torpedo, tearing her apart in a blinding flash, and with bow and stern sticking almost vertically in the air she quickly vanished beneath the surface. The loss of life on board was horrendous for there was little time for the men who were sleeping below decks to escape. Those not killed instantaneously by the explosion, crushed by flying debris or drowned by the in-rushing water, would have been caught in the scalding horror of superheated steam bursting from the ruptured boilers. It's impossible to imagine how anyone could have escaped such devastation, but miraculously some of them did. Of the eight Newfoundlanders who were on board, five were lost; including one young man from Bell Island, John Fillier, who had joined the ship only that evening. Altogether, of her crew of forty three only fifteen survived.
A good story written by a guy who was there.......
Lance Cove, Nfld
CKA Uber 
