Now while in Newport, Rhode Island we had our short-range gunnery practice, and after that we were ordered to go to Portsmouth, Maine, for the holiday, which was Labor Day. Anyway, they had not seen a battleship since World War I so it was a big treat for them to have us in there and also help their economy a little bit for the few days that we were going to stay there. After the holiday, we got underway and we thought we would be returning to Newport, Rhode Island, but it didn’t happen that way. Later on in the afternoon while at sea, I was down below deck for some reason, and one of my shipmates was topside and he called down the hatch for me to come on up topside and look at all the ships. I looked up at him and I said, “Haven’t you seen ships before?” He said, “Yes, but not this many.” So I went up to see what he was talking about. And horizon to horizon you could see nothing but ships. There were supply ships, transports, everything. It was a convoy of Lend Lease material that was headed for England and Russia. Well we fell in with them and we proceeded, zigzagged courses and such, and we headed north through the North Atlantic. We got up around, I think it was north of Newfoundland, and we started having submarine attacks. German U-boats were trying to get at our supplies, sinking the supply ships and what have you. It seemed to be every morning just before daybreak and every evening just at dusk, we would have these U-boats trying to get into the convoy and attack the supply ships. Fortunately, they did not fire at any combat ships, although I do remember being on deck one time and seeing a torpedo crossing our bow but that was the last I saw of it. I was sure glad it didn’t hit us. We proceeded further until we got closer to England and the English fleet came out. Not their whole fleet, just their escort ships who took the Lend Lease material that was bound for England. The Russians showed up with their escort ships, and they took the part of the convoy that was for them and took it on into Russia.
After that we proceeded into Iceland. We stayed there off and on for a while, where we would go to sea and patrol. What we were doing, much as I can determine, was hunting for the Germans pocket battleships and their other bigger ships that had been harassing the convoys and sinking as many as they could. This particular time we were patrolling at sea and we put back into Iceland. We were lying at anchor in Iceland, when a couple of English ships came in. One was a small carrier and the others were cruisers and destroyers. They had reported that one of their observation planes had spotted surface ships, pocket battleships in the straits of Denmark. They wanted us to go out and go up through the straits of Denmark and they, after refueling, would go out and come down through the straits of Denmark so we could bottle these surface ships up and be in combat with them. However, we were not even in the war at this particular time, but we still went into the straits of Denmark but the only thing we spotted were icebergs. With the hazy atmosphere there, an iceberg at a distance would look almost like a big ship with the superstructure and everything. However, we never did meet up with any of them. Later on, we returned to Iceland but we still had a few sh
