CPR coastal liner Princess Marguerite

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth (in the 1960s), I had the good fortune to interview and to tape two former senior officers of the CPR coastal liner Princess Marguerite.

She and her sister Princess Kathleen were requisitioned as troopships during the Second World War. The Kathleen made it home (to die on the rocks in Alaskan waters just a few years later) but Marguerite, torpedoed, went down in flames in the Mediterranean in August 1942.

Both officers survived her sinking, one earning an MBE, and provided me with more than enough great material for a two-page article in the Colonist’s Sunday magazine.

All that was long ago, as I said. But, last September, I received an email via the Cowichan Valley Citizen, from Paul Campbell, England. He wanted to contact me as he’d researched the story of the Marguerite’s dramatic end because his father had been a soldier on board her and had, thankfully, survived.

Making Mr. Campbell’s family connection with the Marguerite even more personal—and incredible—his “long-term partner’s father was also on the ship at the time”!

Mr. Campbell has researched the story of the final hours of S.S. Princess Marguerite to the point of acquiring a transcript of the U-boat’s logbook and photos.

He and I shall share them and the story of the final voyage of S.S. Marguerite with Chronicles readers next week.

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Photo caption: Smoke fills the sky as the torpedoed ex-passenger liner Princcess Marguerite nears the end.