Times of the Islands Winter 2019/20

astrolabe newsletter of the Turks & Caicos National Museum
SHERLIN WILLIAMS
of the cooks aboard the
Vineland, a man named
Hutter. The Arizas and Mr.
Hutter remained in contact
for years after the war.
During their stay
in Grand Turk, Captain
Williams managed to
get word through to the
Naval Officer in Charge
in Trinidad. Through
that channel, the British
Admiralty in Jamaica
learned that Vineland had
been lost. After thirteen
days on Grand Turk, or
about May 10, a Dutch
inter-island passenger ship
took them to Curaçao.
Their farewell was poignant
and a community
event. One of the Harriotts
recounts how “When arrangements were made for them
to return on a ship that came to pick them up, Daddy,
Cleo and I went down to the waterfront where all the survivors
had congregated, as did most of the men of the
island. They were loaded into small boats and taken out
to the ship . . . and they were returned to the United States
where they were to be assigned to another ship carrying
supplies to England.”
Despite nearly being torpedoed a second time, they
made it and were given “shaving equipment, suits, socks,
underwear, you name it. And they even gave us money
to spend,” wrote Mess Boy Ralph Kelly. The harrowing
repatriation of Vineland’s men was not over. After less
than a week in Curaçao they boarded a German-built,
Dutch-run ship laden with ammunition, bound to Halifax.
Fortunately for all involved, it was an uneventful voyage of
fourteen days during which “everybody was scared stiff”
wrote Kelly. They didn’t arrive back until early June, over
six weeks after their torpedoing.
This is the Louise Ariza boarding house in Grand Turk where survivors were put up in 1942 before being
repatriated by steamer to Haiti or Jamaica.
That autumn Ralph Kelly joined the Royal Canadian
Navy. He and his brother Captain Charlie remained
admired fixtures in the Nova Scotia maritime community.
On the same patrol, U-154 sank five ships worth 28,715
tons. Aged 34 at the time (he would live to 1992 and the
age of 84), German Commander Walther Kölle “made his
career” in a single patrol through the Bahamas. Having
earlier survived the scuttling of the Graf Spee off Uruguay,
he surrendered command of U-154 to Heinrich Shuch
after his third patrol, and moved ashore. a
Eric Wiberg has operated over 100 yachts, many of them
as captain. A licensed master since 1995, he is qualified
as a maritime lawyer, with a Master’s in Marine Affairs,
a year at Oxford, and a certificate in screenwriting. He
commercially operated nine tankers from Singapore for
three years, and worked briefly for two salvage firms.
Other jobs have included executive head-hunting, shipping
newspaper salesman,
and marketer of a tugboat
fleet. Besides U-Boats
in the Bahamas, he has
published over a dozen
other books of nautical
non-fiction. A citizen of US
and Sweden who grew up
in the Bahamas, he lives
in Boston. Contact: eric@
ericwiberg.com.
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