February 20, 2020. On the Cenotaph outside the Borden-Carleton Legion there are 3 men who lost their lives due to being on ships that were torpedoed.  Two of these stories have already been told….

In WW1, mariner James Graham FARROW (FARRAR) lost his life when the ship he was working on was torpedoed in the English Channel on March 19, 1916.  The steamer, ‘Port Dalhousie, had been ferrying needed supplies from Britain to troops in France, while using the cover of being a fishing vessel.  (See https://bordencarletonresearchproject.wordpress.com/2019/01/20/the-mariner-whose-ship-was-torpedoed-in-the-english-channel/)

In WW2, Everett Samuel FRANCIS had the misfortune of being a passenger on the ferry S.S. Caribou when it was torpedoed off the coast of Newfoundland on Wednesday, October 14, 1942.  He was on his way back to his unit in Gander, and to meet his three week old daughter Greta, after being in Ontario for weapons training. Unfortunately, he was not one of the survivors. (See https://bordencarletonresearchproject.wordpress.com/2018/03/25/the-face-of-everett-samuel-francis/)

James Emmet Hughes. (Photo credit: courtesy “Around Kinkora Area” by G.K. Farmer.  Photo colourization by Pieter Valkenburg.)

Like James Graham FARROW (FARRAR), James Emmet HUGHES was a seaman in the Canadian Merchant Navy, not in the military.  Born in Kinkora on April 7, 1911, he was the son of Emmet Hughes and Mary Ann McKenna.

After joining the Waterman Steamship Agency of Mobile, Alabama, he was a trimmer aboard the Panamanian registered S.S. Ramapo, travelling between North America and England with badly needed supplies.  A trimmer works in the engine room on a coal-fired ship, such as the steamship Ramapo, responsible for loading of coal into the ship and delivering coal to the stoker or fireman. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_trimmer)

S.S. Ramapo under her original name of Baron Wemyss. (Photo courtesy of http://www.naviearmatori.net)

Hughes made two successful runs to England but then on a routing of London-Bermuda-Philadelphia, it was torpedoed by German U-Boat 108, captained by Klaus SCHOLTZ, 180 miles north of Bermuda. While Canadian Merchant Navy records list the event as having occurred on ‘approximately February 12, 1942’, the date it had arrived in Bermuda, German records of ships torpedoed by U-boats record the date as being February 16, 1942.

According to German records, as transcribed into English on https://www.uboat.net/allies/merchants/ship/1338.html, the ship had an international crew complement of 40, none of whom survived. “At 15.56 hours on 16 February 1942 the unescorted Ramapo (Master Johan Magnus Ørn Lorentzen) was hit on port side amidships by one G7e torpedo from U-108, broke in two after a boiler explosion and sank 11 minutes later about 180 miles north of Bermuda. The U-boat surfaced and questioned 34 men in lifeboats, but the survivors were never found. The master, 37 crew members and two gunners were lost.”

Map showing location of sinking of Ramapo.  (Map courtesy of http://www.uboat.net)

As you can imagine, in that time period, it was a long time before families learned that something had gone wrong.  On March 31, 1942, six weeks after the incident, The Guardian reported that the Hughes family had received a message from the steamship company, advising that it believed the ship had been sunk and all hands lost.

Source: Page 1 article in the March 31, 1942 edition of The Guardian.

Aboard the S.S. Ramapo on February 16, 1942 were the following crew members, per www.uboat.net:

James Emmet Hughes is listed on the Halifax Memorial in Point Pleasant Park in Halifax, Nova Scotia, along with other Canadian mariners whose bodies were never recovered.

Halifax Memorial in Point Pleasant Park in Halifax, Nova Scotia. (Photo credit: Pieter Valkenburg)

Research continues on this and other stories.  If you have information or photos to share about James Emmet Hughes, the sinking of the Ramapo, or any of the crew members, please contact Pieter at dariadv@yahoo.ca or comment on the blog.

© Daria Valkenburg