Jim Wood (Email to Nauticapedia 07/11/2022) stated "I have a picture of him and the ship's crew, presumably taken either at commissioning or end of WWI. He never told us very much about his service. I know he was a stoker/fireman and his battle station was assistant gunner. I assume it was on the 12 pounder, since there didn't seem to be any other guns on her. He told me one time they thought they had a U-Boat but it turned out to be a whale. That was the only action they saw, so he told me. Reading the ship's history, it sounds like they may have done a lot more. I don't think he went with her when she went around the Panama Canal and up to BC. But, he did say he enjoyed some fresh fruit straight from the trees on a southern island. Cuba, maybe? Never told us what island. I have a letter to his mother describing the excitement of Armistice Day in Sydney, NS. He was standing watch and couldn't join the party. I’m not sure what he did right after his Naval WWI service. I know he eventually was in the Chicago area and attended Moody Bible Institute in the 1920s. He went back to NS during the Depression and lived at the family home, but worked at something (no idea what) in Falmouth. I know he worked in the shipyards in Halifax eventually because he was on a crew that worked on the Queen Mary adding degaussing cables for her role as a troop carrier in WWII. At some point he returned to Illinois and worked as a heavy equipment operator in construction. Mostly bulldozers." |