In the fall of 2019 I booked a passage on a container ship on a voyage across the Atlantic Ocean from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Liverpool, United Kingdom. I wanted to experience the ocean crossing and follow the same route that the convoys took during the Second World War some 80 years earlier. My father participated in at least four trans-Atlantic convoys during the early part of the war when escort ships were few and ill prepared for the U-Boat threat. His convoys were attacked by U-Boats and enemy aircraft. My ship, the Atlantic Sea was over twice as long and ten times the gross weight of my father’s ship, the M.V. Corbis. We made the crossing in just 6 1/2 days, compared with the 13-15 days required to cross the Atlantic Ocean by the much smaller and slower merchant ships during the war.
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