Son’s Posthumous Tribute to Father Recalls Fiery End of S.S. Princess Margeurite

Growing up in Saanich (okay, Victoria) as I did, the CPR’s fabled B.C. Steamships’ Princess ships are part of my DNA.

From the beginning I was drawn to the Inner Harbour and the comings and goings of these beautiful black and white pocket liners with their buff funnels and checker board logos.

The largest and most impressive of the marine traffic were the Princess ships which docked in front of the Parliament Buildings.

With the Black Ball Line’s Chinook and the bloated whale-looking Kalakala, they operated as ferries, with the Princesses working the famed Triangle Run between Victoria, Vancouver and Seattle.

Paul Campbell: “[This photo] taken immediately after the ship was hit by two torpedoes of the four fired...was obtained after a lot of research; it was found in the Canadian [Public] Archives.” He was amazed to learn that the B.C. Provincial Archives also has three photos of the Princess Margeurite engulfed in flames and smoke.

By that time, the fleet flagship was the S.S. Princess Margeurite II. Although I didn’t learn about her until years later, her predecessor, the Margeurite I, and her sister ship Kathleen, were legendary: the Margeurite lost while serving as a troopship, the Kathleen making it home from the war, only to go down in Alaskan waters in 1951.

I learned more about them once I started working at the Colonist and was able to rummage in the morgue during supper breaks. Those files and other research led to weekly articles in the Sunday Islander magazine and to memorable interviews with two of the Margeurite’s surviving officers.

By then Third Engineer Edward E. Stewart was retired and Capt. Anthony B. Appleyard, who’d been the Margeurite’s third officer when she was fatally struck by a torpedo, was with the B.C. Pilotage Authority.

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Built in 1925 by the famous Scottish firm, John Brown & Co., the 1875-ton younger sister of Princess Kathleen gave deluxe passenger service on the Triangle Run for 15 years and both ships became well known to travellers between Pacific Northwest ports in the years before the Second World War called them to duty far from home waters.

It was their high speed that prompted the hard-pressed Ministry of Shipping to use them in war service, fast, ocean-going ships then being at a premium.

Capt. Appleyard, as he was when I interviewed him, was Margeurite’s third mate when she and Kathleen were called to active duty. “Margeurite,” he recalled, “was converted at Yarrows [Shipyard], and the Kathleen simultaneously at Victoria Machinery Depot. At that time, they were to be used for supplying personnel and aviation Gasoline to aircraft carriers.

“The scuttles forward were moved and hatches put in for loading the petrol, and the necessary conversions made. We sailed from here November 7 [1941].”

The crews were British, having been sent to San Francisco to man two ships purchased there (the United States was still neutral). These vessels, however, hadn’t been completed so the sailors manned Marguerite and Kathleen instead. The masters, navigating officers and engineers were Canadian Pacific coastal veterans.

Among Margeurite’s officers were Victorians Third Mate Appleyard, Third Engineer E. Stewart, Sixth Engineer William B. Harris and H.J. Tumility.

Final orders were delivered to Capt. Richard Avery Leicester, Margeurite, and Capt. L.C. Barry, Kathleen, as the ships lay at anchor in Royal Roads. At 4:35, November 7, the sleek liners set course for Honolulu.

The voyage wasn’t entirely uneventful. Squalls and gales of hurricane force battered them throughout. Speed was reduced to less than the normal cruising rate and both ships suffered from heavy spray, Margeurite’s after-quarters being flooded and “necessitating moving the engine room crew to upper deck rooms”.

Beyond Honolulu, the weather moderated but trouble erupted with the British seamen who, it was said, were of low calibre. After having cautiously evaded Japanese warships after the bombing of Pearl Harbour, Capts. Leicester and Barry determined to change hands at first opportunity.

Fortunately, the company’s Empress of Russia was paying off her Chinese crew which enabled both skippers to renew theirs with long-service, trusted CPR employees. Sixteen years later, Capt. Barry confided that the night of the exchange was the first since beginning the voyage that he and his officers had slept “without clubs under our beds”.

Third Engineer Stewart remembered the Britons, too.

“We found out, on leaving Honolulu [and] Suva that this crew had an aversion to working the ship out of harbour, some of them not returning to duty until next day. Which meant the engineers had to handle all operations below, firing, oiling and handling the controls and auxiliary machinery...”

Port Moresby shattered an old and universal belief. Said Stewart: “A native family in an outrigger canoe came alongside to exchange souvenirs for food and clothing. The daughter, about 15, made a thing of whipping offer her bushy grass skirt and diving for money, replacing the skirt each time she came out of the water.

Clear examination of the skirt (when she wasn’t wearing, of course) revealed the fact that the Hula is not a dance, but the incessant squirming caused by the wild life harboured in the grass, “the whole action eventually set to music to give it rhythm!”

“On arrival at Alexandria,” recounted Capt. Appleyard, “the Ministry of Transport officers came aboard and found both ships totally inadequate for what they had been fitted out for, and we therefore laid at anchor for a period of three weeks [while] absolutely no use to anyone.

“Fortunately—or unfortunately, as the case may be—two cross-Channel ships came out at that time, as troop transports. On their arrival, it was found they had been cut down and were flying the White Ensign as armed merchant cruisers. Due to an Italian frogman attack in Alexandria Harbour they were employed as escort vessels, and we in turn fulfilled their role.”

Subsequently, the Princesses transported troops through the Suez Canal to reinforce General Wavell’s force.

When Rommel’s great thrust almost overran the Canal, Margeurite embarked the British and Maltese administrations’ families which had been evacuated from beleaguered Alexandria. With her precious cargo of women and children, she slipped down to Suez and lay offshore.

“Each day was better than the last,” said Stewart, “and we were plagued by flies. Every night an air raid alert would bring all our passengers out into the ship’s public spaces with lifebelts, ready for the worst. Trying to fit a life jacket onto a four- or five-year-old tot is quite a trick.

“Needless to say, at the end of the week everyone’s nerves were frayed, what with lack of sleep and constant fear of the consequences should one of the planes have a hit, although they seemed to be dropping torpedoes and mines. And, we were screened each evening by empty barges; during the day they were used for hauling troops and supplies from the convoy in the harbour to shore.”

Princess Margeurite, although she wasn’t hit during the raids, did witness the death of a minesweeper which was blown to pieces while clearing the harbour of aerially dropped bombs.

With Rommel’s retreat, the crisis passed, the Margeurite serving “various purposes” during this time. But life was far from being slack for her crew, Capt. Leicester once reporting: “As regards the Mediterranean, I have every confidence in saying that, of all theatres of war where merchant ships are employed, this is the toughest by quite a margin.”

One of the problems encountered by Leicester was convincing authorities that Margeurite’s trooping capacity was 800 men. He learned that when officials find 800 have been carried effectively, “they are inclined to put 900 on board the following occasion, and then 1000 and so on. There is no saying what the ‘ceiling’ was eventually going to be in our case...”

Many of the troop embarkations were harrowing experiences occurring “at top speed in the darkness of moonless nights”.

On the morning of Aug. 17, 1942, Marguerite took aboard her last cargo of soldiers, men of the 8th Army bound for a rest camp in Cyprus. Her escort consisted of three destroyers and the armed merchant cruiser Antwerp, formerly a fast English ferry.

Margeurite’s final voyage began on a beautiful sunny day in the Mediterranean; the kind of tropical afternoon that would have been touted in advertisements had she been on a pleasure cruise in time of peace.

It’s thought that the strong escort may have given the troops aboard a false sense of security, as many neglected to remove their heavy regulation boots as instructed. This factor accounted for several lives when the order came to abandon ship.

Escort destroyers HMS Hero, left, and HMS Kelvin, right. —Courtesy Paul Campbell

he convoy steamed in arrowhead formation, one destroyer leading, the others flanking Antwerp, with Margeurite following close behind. The official CPR history credits the unnamed submarine commander as being “an expert to be able to hit a ship zig-zagging at 18 knots”.

(As indeed, and as we shall see, he was.)

Third Mate Appleyard was lying down when the torpedo struck the 360-foot Princess. Rushing on deck, he found Margeurite was already engulfed by the flames that would destroy her.

Engineers Stewart and Harris were at their posts in the engine room Stewart having just checked the fresh water tanks, when a “terrific blast shook the ship”. The engine room was plunged into darkness and ruptured pipes filled the compartment with clouds of scalding steam.

Capt. Leicester was “flung across my room when I was just about to sit down and work out an observation.

“I went to the bridge immediately, the officer on watch informed me we had been hit on the port side almost amidships. He had already signalled ‘Stop’ on the engine room telegraph and was attempting to give emergency signals on the bells and the steam whistles. These, however, had been put out of action by the explosion...”

Somehow Engineer Stewart worried his way through the blackness and debris to the emergency throttle. Reaching for it, he found Harris’s hand already there. Both men brought Margeurite to her final halt. Their prompt action saved many the lives of many of the troops who were already in the water. Had they not stopped her, she could have ringed the swimmers with burning oil.

Meanwhile, on deck, the fire was raging out of control and moving sternward where those of the ship’s officers still aboard were clustered on the boat deck. Also situated aft was the ammunition magazine.

Capt. Leicester put his classified sailing orders and documents into weight bags and dropped them over the rising rail. Defying his order to Abandon Ship, a gun crew remained at their station should the submarine surface and offer them a shot.

This is the U-83’s ‘combat sketch’ of its attack on the convoy. Only the Margeurite, which Kraus thought was an auxiliary cruiser, is unmarked. Of four torpedoes fired, two found their mark. —Courtesy Paul Campbell

Engineers Stewart and Harris had become separated in the maze of machinery below but both eventually made it to the boat deck. By then the intensity of the blaze had turned Margeurite into a massive blister; her steel plates were buckled, cabin doors had blown off their hinges and her list to port was steadily increasing.

Mate Appleyard saw to the Sikh troops. “We had a great deal of difficulty with them, even though they were well disciplined,” he said. “They had a religious abhorrence of water, even to the point of washing their hair with oils. Because of this, so many were lost…”

Previously, he’d tried lowering the port boats. But they’d held fast in their davits and only 10 of the ship’s 16 boats were launched.

Fortunately, the destroyer HMS Hero was able to maneuver close alongside to pick up survivors.

Appleyard, now on the boat deck with Stewart and Harris, helped them to lower the starboard boats and life rafts. When Harris, stripped to his underwear, dove over the side, Appleyard followed but Stewart hesitated. He later recalled, “I can still see Appleyard jumping off in whites, holding his life jacket down to keep it from ripping his ears off when he hit the water.”

Due to his poor eyesight, Stewart couldn’t abandon ship this way for fear of losing his glasses. He calmly dropped a fire hose over the rail and slid down, to safely reach the water without so much as getting his head wet.

Having lost his own life jacket in the explosion, he was wearing an “ill-fitting spare”. Luckily for Harris, who had no life jacket, he was a strong swimmer. Safely aboard the Hero, he returned to the water to aid five men having difficulties.

“But,” he said modestly, “you should have seen the men from the destroyer. They had the best water polo team in the fleet, and they went over the like flies to rescue men from our ship.” The result was that just 55 of 1200 were lost—little short of a miracle.

Stewart, Appleyard and Harris were later credited with having “helped about 100 men to safety”.

By then both the ship and the sea were an inferno, the waves having spread the leaking fuel oil. Forty minutes after the torpedo struck, Princess Margeurite went under.

Capt. Appleyard, safely beyond the flames, said the water was “quite balmy,” and he swam for about 90 minutes until rescued by the Hero which also picked up Stewart.

The U-83 in her Mediterranean colours of light grey with dark grey splotches, left. Her commander Hans Werner Kraus was awarded the Knight’s Cross and Iron Cross for eight “kills.” —Courtesy Paul Campbell

Newspaper reports, which didn’t appear until two and a-half years later because of censorship, were sketchy and inaccurate. They said Margeurite had been struck by three torpedoes; there was just one. They also reported she’d been bombed—totally false. And Capt. Appleyard refuted stories that survivors had been showered by exploding ammunition although some Oerlikon shells kept on the bridge did detonate in flames but caused no injury.

Capt. Leicester was deeply impressed by the courage and loyalty of his men. He remembered having ordered two officers over the side “somewhat peremptorily” because they’d refused to leave his side. He also commended Mate Appleyard.

By evening all survivors had been returned to Port Said. Each of Margeurite’s crew was given “size 46 pajamas, razor, soap, writing paper and pencil, and a chocolate bar...and the lot very welcome”.

Next day, Capt. Leicester and his officers reported aboard HMS Arethusa for the preliminary inquiry. Leicester was incensed by naval insinuations that his ship had been sabotaged rather than torpedoed due to “the lack of visual evidence...this in spite of a soldier survivor who said he saw the torpedo just before it hit the ship”.

When all reports had been taken, Leicester and company were informed another inquiry would be held shortly. But he received no further word and the second hearing never came.

One day he and Mate Appleyard, while swimming near an RCAF airfield, struck up a conversation with some airmen—and were pleased to confirm that Marguerite had indeed been torpedoed. One of the pilots they spoke to had been flying cover for their convoy and had sighted the underwater missile’s wake as it streaked towards Marguerite’s side. Hence there was no further inquiry or accusations of “sabotage.”

Finally, it was time for the CPR men to head home. Said Stewart: “After what seemed a lifetime living in assorted accommodations—hotels, ships, club rooms—we were awakened early one morning and with our very meager baggage and a handful of sandwiches, driven by taxi the 90 miles or so to the SS Oronsay.

“We eventually arrived home in Victoria—exactly one year to the day since we sailed.”

The coincidence of dates gave Capt Appleyard an uncanny experience: “We had signed for two-year hitches on the ships… My intended had visited a fortuneteller, who told her I would return in exactly one-half the time, which I did—to the very day. We left at [4:35] a.m., Nov. 7, 1941, and returned at 9 a.m., Nov. 7, 1942”

Part of their journey was by train through the U.S. Stewart remembered that “the American Customs tried to, and in one case succeeded, in charging us duty on our life jackets and tiny satchels!”

Not all of Margeurite’s British personnel were as fortunate; from the Oronsay they’d been transferred to the CPR liner Duchess of Atholl. She was torpedoed and sunk as she approached the United Kingdom.

Capt. Leicester was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE), engineers Stewart and Harris each receiving the Member of the British Empire (MBE). The engineers’ citation mentioned “Conspicuous courage, coolness and resource”.

Leicester’s read in part: “He showed great courage and presence of mind throughout. His excellent leadership minimized the loss of life.”

Stewart joined the CPR in April 1927 and served in most of its coastal vessels during his career. He retired as assistant superintendent of engineers in 1958 after suffering a serious accident during a labour strike.

At the time I wrote my article for the Colonist Harris was with the federal Dept. of Transport, serving aboard weather ships.

As noted earlier, Capt. Appleyard was then a ship’s pilot.

And a second Princess Margeurite had joined the coastal fleet in 1949.

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Fast-forward to September 2020 and an email from Paul Campbell, England, via the Cowichan Valley Citizen. He’d happened upon my condensed account of the sinking of S.S. Princess Marguerite which had appeared in the Lake Cowichan Gazette:

“...I researched the incident myself 12 years ago following the death of my father who was one of the soldiers on board at the time. I can therefore add substantial data to what ensued, in particular from the German side. I managed to obtain the log from the U-83 complete with the minute-by-minute gefechtskizze (combat sketch) and what happened afterwards…

“My father was a radio mechanic in the Royal Corps of Signals, 10th Indian Division. The division had traveled from Northern India to join up with the 8th Army in North Africa, hence the large number of Sikh soldiers on board. My long-term partner’s father was also on the ship at the time!”

He noted that I’d mentioned a single torpedo, this based upon an unpublished history of the Empress, Princess and Duchess ships provided to me by the CPR. In fact, four had been fired and two hit their mark, amidships.

Mr. Campbell then offered to share his research with me for a follow-up story—the one you’re reading now.

Perhaps his greatest find is a copy of the logbook from the U-83 that “includes the minute-by-minute operation of the submarine, attack plan and subsequent evasion. This has been translated into English, but it is in the original format and with the original stamp and signatures.”

Paul’s father Gordon Alexander Campbell, left, his long-term partner’s father Arthur Ernest Saunders, right. They remained lifelong friends until their deaths. —Courtesy Paul Campbell

He briefly describes his father Gordon Campbell’s and his partner’s father Arthur Saunders’ escapes from the stricken Margeurite: “...Gordon had just been relieved from a position in the bowels of the ship and was still below decks when the torpedoes hit and he recalled climbing up the outside of the ship only to receive the command to abandon ship.

“Arthur, a strong swimmer, is believed to have been the first to reach the destroyer. Gordon was a non-swimmer but was supported by a cork lifebelt and recalled oil burning on the water and Arthur hauling him aboard [the destroyer], saying, ‘Come on, Gordon.’

“Their division, the 10th Indian, had joined up with the 8th Army in North Africa and after the sinking of the SS Princess Margeurite they eventually made it to Cyprus and on [to] Italy where their war ended. They remained lifelong friends. Arthur died in hospital [in] May 2000, aged 84. Gordon died at home in Loxwood on 22nd November 2006, aged 87.

Paul also researched U-83’s commander Hans Werner Kraus, recipient of the Knight’s Cross and Iron Cross and a veteran of eight years with the German unterseeboote fleet with several other sinkings to his credit when he sighted and torpedoed the Margeurite. By the time the U-83 was sunk in the Mediterranean in March 1943, Kraus had transferred to the U-109 which in turned was sunk off Rio de Janeiro in July 1943. Kraus, one of only 12 survivors, was imprisoned for the duration of the war other than for a brief escape from captivity. He died, aged 75, in August 1990.

The U-83, commissioned in February 1941, took part in 12 patrols and sank or damaged eight ships.

Paul’s research also came up with a fascinating—and coincidental—link between his father and the first U-83 which was sunk by one of the famous Q-ships (armed cruisers disguised as merchant ships) in 1917 during the First World War. The commanding officer of HMS Farnborough, who was awarded the Victoria Cross for this action, went on to become a vice admiral. His name was Gordon Campbell!

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The CPR history supplemented my interviews with Third Engineer Stewart and Third mate Appleyard gives a more vivid description of what happened in those first terrifying minutes when the engine room was plunged into darkness and Stewart and Harris were thrown “on their hands and knees.

“The engine room filled with smoke and steam. The lights went out. All communication with the bridge was disrupted, even the whistle steam pipe bursting in the boiler room.

“When they recovered their feet, both groped through the inferno toward the emergency throttle. ‘I put my hand on it,’ said Mr. Stewart, ‘and found Bill Harris’ hand already there. He had remembered all I had told him about what to do in an emergency of this kind.’

“Mr. Stewart thinks that that is why both received the M.B.E.—for stopping the ship and preventing it from running down survivors or spreading fire among the lifeboats.

“Their ‘good services’ did not stop there, however.

“In the confusion, each could not be sure that the other had reached safety on deck and each made several trips back to the engine room to find his friend.

“Finally together on deck, they formed an able team and for half an hour helped launch lifeboats and rafts. They named A. Appleyard, third mate, as doing extremely fine work in this respect.

“They helped put down two boats, one of which was useless when it reached the water, and four rafts. The one boat carried about 35 or 40 men, and each raft about 20, which meant that they helped about 100 men to safety.

“It got so hot when the flames started coming around the end of the housework that they had to make their own getaway. Mr. Stewart had lost his own [life jacket] and was attired in an ill-fitting spare when he threw a fire hose over the rail and slid down the side into the water. Harris dived over the side.

“Together they spent half an hour in the water with bullets from the burning ship [sic] popping off all around them for a good part of the time. It was about a mile and a half to the destroyer.

“Harris, a strong swimmer, was without [a] life jacket but that didn’t bother him because he used to do his regular five miles ‘just for fun,’ swimming side-overarm, the “lazy man’s stroke” as he calls it. Half-way to the destroyer he kicked off his pants and shoes and reached the destroyer clad only in his shorts, all he saved from the wreckage. En route he helped about five men who were in difficulty reach rafts or the scramble nets on the destroyer. He went back overside to save one of them…”

This unpublished CPR history notes that both Stewart and Harris expressed surprise at being formally recognized for their actions: “All they know is that they have received identical letters:

“Sir, I am directed by the Minister of War Transport to inform you that he has learned with great pleasure that on his recommendation the Prime Minister has obtained the King’s approval for your appointment as a Member of the Order of the British Empire, Civil Division, for services in S.S. ‘Princess Margeurite’ when the vessel was attacked by the enemy...”

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