Tragic echo of seamen killed in the countdown to war’s end

Canadian connections with Fife are being reinforced with the commemoration of an incredible and terrible U-boat incident off the coast of Scotland in May, 1945

A Canadian government agency is commemorating the loss of the last merchant ship sunk by Germany – off the coast of Fife – just minutes before the official end of the Second World War.

Pascale Guindon, National Programs Co-ordinator at the National Celebrations & Commemorations Branch of Parks Canada, said he was researching the loss of the SS Avondale Park as part of a broader project called Home Port Heroes.

The initiative by Parks Canada – a federal agency which preserves and presents places of national cultural and ecological importance – honours the men and women who built the ships of Canada and Allied merchant navies, and those who sailed them through war zones for the cause of freedom.

Mr Guindon recently read The Courier’s article from May 2015 which reported the unveiling of a memorial in Anstruther.

He said: “The memorial is very similar to one for another torpedoed ‘Park’ merchant ship, SS Point Pleasant Park.

“The memorial is located in its namesake park in the City of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

“Halifax was a significant Allied port where merchant convoys would gather before crossing the treacherous north Atlantic and the Province of Nova Scotia is where Avondale Park was built.

“I find these kind of intercontinental links fascinating – the allied merchant navy travelling to just about every continent during the war.”

At 10.40pm on May 7, 1945, the cargo ship SS Avondale Park, built in Pictou Nova Scotia, and on passage from Hull to Belfast, was sunk in convoy 1.5 miles south-east of the May Isle in the Firth of Forth.

The torpedo was fired by the Type XX111 German submarine U2336 commanded by Kapitanleutnant Emil Klusmeier.

Another torpedo sank the Norwegian ship, Sneland 1.

Within minutes, the war in Europe ended.

U2336 was depth-charged by the convoy escort, but escaped in the early hours of VE Day, May 8, 1945.

Chief engineer George Anderson and engine room donkeyman William Harvey died when the torpedo struck the Avondale Park’s engine room.

On Sneland 1, seven men were killed— Captain Johannes Laegland, Alf Berenson, Tormod Ringstad, Otto Skaugen, Simon Johanson, Nils Konradsen and William Ellis, aged 17, of Hull.

These were the last sinkings by a U-boat in the Battle of the Atlantic.

Those lost in this attack were among the most poignant and pointless casualties of all.

The order for U-boats to cease hostilities had been given three days earlier by Reichsadmiral Doenitz.

However, Kapitanleutnant Emil Klusmeier of U2336 claimed the ceasefire order had never been received.

Some 35,000 British and allied merchant seamen lost their lives between the sinkings of the RMS Athenia in 1939, and the S.S. Avondale Park, in 1945.

Sydney Rapley who survived the Avondale sinking when he was 17 years old and, left, the Norwegian vessel Sneland 1 which was torpedoed with the loss of seven men.