Living
Sex: M
Parents
Father: Capt. Thomas Hallett Goodyear 149,4538,4867 Mother: Jessie Henderson Windsor 168
Spouses and Children
1. LivingCapt. Thomas Hallett Goodyear
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth Date: 17 Mar 1920 - St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada 4866,4868 Christening: Death: 21 Nov 2014 - St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada ( at age 94) 4866,4868 Cremation: 24 Nov 2014 - St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada 4868 Cause of Death:Events
• Occupation: Merchant Marine and Harbour Pilot, Between 1936 and 1970.
• Military: Merchant Navy, Between 1939 and 1945.
• Occupation: Certificate as 2nd Mate on Ocean Going Ships, 5 Jul 1943, St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.
• Living: 2006, St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.
• Living: 18 Aug 2010, St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.
• Residence: 32 Long Pond Rd., Bef 21 Nov 2014, St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.
Parents
Father: Living Mother: Living
Spouses and Children
1. *Jessie Henderson Windsor 168 Marriage: Apr 1943 - St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada 4538 Children: 1. Living 2. Living 3. Living
Notes
General:
Email from Helen Steinke 10/07/01:
Tom Goodyear is married to Jesse Henderson Windsor daughter of Stanley Charles Windsor and Mary Dixon Farries. You know who Stanley Charles Windsor is? Son of Henry Windsor and Judith Cross and this Henry is son of Peter and Anna. There you have it.
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Exerpt from "Voices of World War II: A Collection of Oral Histories. 2006. By Gene Quigley. Jesperson Publishing, St. John?s, NL, Canada. ISBN: 1-894377-21-4:
"THOMAS H. GOODYEAR
CAMPAIGNS: Battle of the Atlantic
DECORATIONS: Newfoundland Volunteer Service Medal, Victory Medal, Africa Star, Atlantic Star, Mediterranean Star, 1939-1945 Star, Norway Medal
SHIPS: Queen of Bermuda, Northern Prince, RMS Nova Scotia, Fort Amherst, Britanic, Baltrover
I was born on March 17, 1920, on Welsh's Square overlooking the harbour of St. John's, to Valentine and Elsie Goodyear. My father was a Royal Navy Reservist in World War I. I had some education in the capital city but I went to sea early at the age of sixteen. In the summertime I sailed on various schooners and after three years of this, my mind was made up I was going to sea.
In 1939 I joined the Queen of Bermuda where I eventually became a quartermaster. On August 28, 1939, we came in from Havana and received orders to pay off the crew, sign on a skeleton crew and take the ship back to England. She was to be taken into the Royal Navy, which was in their plans when she was built. She was big, fast, and strengthened in many ways, particularly to carry guns. On September 1, we left New York for Belfast, Ireland. Two days later, when the war started, we were mid-Atlantic bound for Belfast. Upon arrival, we had two options. We could remain with the ship to familiarize the new sailors with the working of the ship or to go home. I chose to leave as I had been away for over a year, and I thought it was time to see my parents again. I left Liverpool on one of the Furness Withy passenger ships in a convoy,and on the second day out, one of our ships was torpedoed. This was the first ship that was torpedoed in convoy during the war. Eventually we arrived in St. John's, where I checked into Bishop Feild College to get some tutoring.
In early December, I received a phone call from Furness Withy to inform me that one of their ships, the Northern Prince, was in New York and fully loaded with munitions. The deck crew had moved off because they did not want to go to England. As a result, I rounded up the necessary crew and we left St. John's in December aboard the Fort Amherst to pick up the Northern Prince. Once we arrived in New York, we sailed immediately for England. When we arrived, we were in London about a month. During this time we were discharging cargo, but we could not work at night because of the bombing and the blackout. We also had two guns installed on the Northern Prince, one a 4.7 anti-submarine gun and the other was a 3-inch anti-aircraft gun. We were given a gunnery course, and when we sailed, they put on board two naval gunners to help those of us who were selected to operate the guns.
Each time we went back and forth from New York to the UK there would be modifications done on the ship to help fight against various types of mines and later dive-bombers.
The next time we were in the English Channel, the evacuation of Dunkirk was taking place. There was a lot of activity there as you could see the smoke where they were firing at the ships in the channel. We were not involved in the evacuation. We were supposed to take our six lifeboats to Dunkirk, but when we got to Southend they took us off and sent us to the ship. This was done in case the Germans attacked England, we would be there to get the ships out. This did not happen and eventually our lifeboats came back. Then we made our way down the channel and went into Southampton for one purpose. We took on board 30 tons of gold bullion to purchase munitions from the United States.
On the last trip out of London following Dunkirk, we took on some Newfoundlanders and some English sailors, two in particular who were most unusual fellas. They were well educated, well spoken, not very good sailors, but good shipmates and top-notch fellas. They turned out to be communists. I did not find this out until thirty years after the war ended.
We traded back and forth all that summer of 1940, and we ran alone. There were no convoys and we did 20 knots. It was a high-speed ship with two massive diesels. On November 5, 1940, I was in the crow's nest and I wasn't there long before I spotted something on the starboard bow. I reported this to the bridge because it was unusual in those days to see anything, as she was routed in such a fashion to avoid the major shipping lanes. I reported that it looked like a battleship. The next thing, a knock came on the bottom of the crow's nest door and in came the Fourth Officer with a pair of binoculars and an identification book. He peered through the binoculars for a while and he said, "Christ, it's one of the German pocket battleships." He phoned down immediately, gave a 90-degree turn to port, and the engines that were already at full got some more speed somewhere. They sighted us but did not do anything for two reasons. First of all they could have recognized us as one of boats that [German Admiral] Doenitz said not to touch, or they did not want to disclose their own presence. They were after the Jervis Bay and her convoy.
About five or six days later, we arrived in Liverpool, and our two unusual fellas disappeared. Nobody knew what happened to them, because they left their clothes, they just went. Thirty years later there was abook written, A Man Called Intrepid. As I read through the book, I read at a point where a man had been taken off a British ship, George Thomas Armstrong. Good God, that was one of the communists. The other fella who was with him was Douglas Fraser, a New Zealander. As I read on, it said that Armstrong was hanged in prison for espionage. He was spying for the Germans.
Directly after, I found out why we had such a good summer. When these two communists came with us in the spring of 1940, word went out from Admiral Doenitz to his U-boats, "Do not touch the Northern Prince" because these two men were aboard. Now the Northern, Southern, Eastern, and Western were identical ships with the same profile. Within two months of Scotland Yard taking these two fellas off, the Northern was sunk in the Mediterranean with bombs. They torpedoed the Western to the west of Ireland, and shortly after, they got the Southern.
When these two unusual sailors disappeared, we were tied up alongsidethe Nova Scotia, which was one of Furness Withy's ships that used to run to Newfoundland. I said to myself, "This is a great chance for me to get home," and I signed on. In particular I wanted to get out to see Jessie Windsor, a girl whom I had met when I was ashore in Newfoundland.
It was decided that they were going to make a troop ship out of the Nova Scotia. Around February 1941 we left with a large convoy going out to the Mediterranean, but we could not get through because the Germans had control of it. Italy was now in the war and Germany had invaded Greece, and because of this, we had to go around the Cape. When we got north of the equator, or in that area, we were attacked by a submarine or a pack of submarines. There was great excitement. The destroyers were going like hell and sending up starshells. They were shells that go up on a parachute and slope down very slowly. I do not know what the result was, but we just carried on.
In November 1942 we brought troops up to Egypt, landed them, and went through the canal [Suez Canal] at high speed and anchored in Alexandria. While we were anchored here, the battle of El Alamein was at its height. This is where Montgomery decided to make his stand. If Rommel had succeeded in breaking through at El Alamein, our purpose was to stay in Alexandria until the Germans came through. The engineers were to bomb the bridges and we were to take the engineers, but this did not happen, as Montgomery's Eighth Army held.
We then went to Massawa in Ethiopia and took on board 700-900 Italian prisoners, civilians, and several hundred British troops. The day before we arrived in Durban, which is on the southeast coast of Africa, we were torpedoed by a German U-boat. The ship sank within six minutes. It turned out to be, if not the greatest tragedy of the war, pretty close to it. One thousand lives were lost. The ship went down very quickly and everybody was thrown into the water. In addition, there were no lifeboats that got away. We had great difficulty getting near the rafts as the Italians used to drive us away, and there were more of them than us. We finished up with hand-to-hand fighting with the Italians. When you are faced with certain things, there are things that you would do that you would not dream of otherwise.
In addition to the bitter fighting, there were sharks that took a lot of the people. "Hundreds of those in the water disappeared within a few minutes. Some fought on until overcome by exhaustion; others were choked by the slimy oil." Of the 114 of Nova Scotia's crew, only 14 survived. Somehow I survived this carnage after being in the water for 40 hours.
We were sunk by U-177, whose captain was a Robert Gysae. When he realized that he had sunk a ship with his allies on board, he swore his crew to secrecy. As a matter of fact I have a copy of his logbook.
This second version of the story about being torpedoed by a German U-boat off the southeast coast of Africa was recorded by Veterans Affairs Canada in a project called "Heroes Remember." It is used here with permission.
We loaded prisoners in Abyssinia, Italians, with no escort, and we set sail for Durban. It was a clear morning, scattered rain showers, and our ship took two torpedoes. Our ship sank in less than five minutes. Now at that time all the prisoners were on deck and had just eaten breakfast. The ship rolled over down to the head and sank before we had a chance to fire. We found ourselves in the water. I knew there were sharks around there, and the water was covered with bunker oil, which was like tar, black and thick. I said to my buddy, "I'm going to cover myself with tar, and I suggest that you do the same." He did. There were no sharks around at the time, but I was hoping it would discourage them a bit. That was 9 am, and by dark, we were still in the water. If you went near a raft, the Italian prisoners would drive you away, because they had charge of the rafts. They knew us because we had different life-jackets.
We suffered out that night and stayed awake in some fashion. By now there were sharks around, and they were taking people. By dark that night, I said to my buddy Hill, "If we don't get in one of those rafts, you'll never see another daylight." He said, "Let's take one." The thinking process was slow by then, and I did not know quite what he meant. He said, "There is a big raft there with 13 people on it. Let's take it." We go up alongside it and pull a man off and hold him under. I kind of shook my head. He said, "You look after me and I will do it. If anyone comes near me, you nail them." This was more or less the agreement. Before long, they were gone, and we had the raft. There was one fella left on board, and he had one arm. Hill left him alone. We spent a second night in the water. Sometime during the night a Portuguese Man of War, called the Alfonso something or other, came and took us aboard.
I finally found my way home and was set for a Second Mate's ticket, which I got, and within a month Jess and I were married. Once I got my ticket, I rejoined the Furness Withy Company again as a junior navigating officer on the Fort Amherst. I remained with that company until the war was over and beyond. The day before VE-Day, sometime in May, we went through the Cape Cod Canal and were approaching Point Judith. Coming in the opposite direction was another vessel, and we were going to pass close by, she on one side and us on the other. As I was on watch at the time, I could see the periscope of a submarine, but the man coming to relieve me could not see anything. He just let it go. We met the American boat at the buoy, and within twenty minutes, she was nailed. It was a periscope I had seen, and for reasons I don't know, the other fella got it and we didn't.
Further to that, as a result of another strange set of circumstances,I happened to be the pilot on the first German cruiser that came to Canada after the war. As luck would have it, the captain on board was a friend of Robert Gysae, who was by now Admiral Gysae. I told the captain that he had sunk the ship I was on. As a result of this chance conversation, when Christmas rolled around, I received a Christmas card from Admiral Gysae. For the next ten years or so we would exchange Christmas cards. Eventually he invited my wife and me to visit him at his summer home in the Black Forest. While I was in England, I went to see two other friends of mine who were on the Nova Scotia. They were horrified that I was even considering going to visit Robert Gysae. Their disapproval made me feel very uneasy about the fact. As a result of that, I never did go to meet Admiral Gysae, and I have been kicking myself ever since. He is now dead. An acquaintance of mine whose mother tongue is German made some inquiries about Robert Gysae. He survived the war, which was unusual in itself, as those who served in the U-boats got an awful pasting. He became an admiral and was attached to the German Embassy in Washington for three years. His wife is still alive in Germany, so it would be nice to speak to her.
Tom Goodyear lives in St. John's with his wife Jessie Windsor Goodyear, who is also a veteran. Her story appears on page 74."
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150115 from David Wells:
From - The Telegram, St. John's, Newfoundland. November 22, 2014
Capt. Thomas Hallett Goodyear - March 17, 1920 - November 21, 2014, Merchant Navy and retired Harbour Pilot, passed peacefully away in the presence of his family at the Caribou Veterans Pavillion on November 21, 2014. Predeceased by his wife Jessie, and brother Albert. Leaving to mourn sons Bill (Anna), Geoff (Barb) and daughter Jennifer (Joe), grandchildren Kim (Chris Day), Jennifer Kendrick (Duncan) and Allison Tucker (Matt Boland), great-grandchildren Lilly Jane, Thomas Geoffrey and Molly, brothers Bill (Lorna), Doug (Vi), sister Vic Luscombe (Bill), brothers-in-law Doug Windsor, Stan Windsor (Barb), Frank Windsor (Jeanette), sisters-in-law Sara Finn and Jean Hayre, and cousin Tom Hallett, as well as many other relatives and friends. Special thanks to the staff of the Caribou Pavillion. Cremation has taken place. Relatives and friends may visit the family at Carnell's Funeral Home 329 Freshwater Road on Saturday, November 22, 2014 from 2-4pm, Sunday, November 23, 2014 from 2-4 and 7-9pm. Funeral service to take place at St. Thomas Anglican Church on Monday, November 24, 2014 at 11am. Donations in his memory can be made to the Royal Canadian Legion, Branch 56, Poppy Trust Fund. To send a message of condolence or sign the memorial guest book, please visit www.carnells.com <http://www.carnells.com>.
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150115 -- From Globe and Mail website:
obituary
After U-boat hit, Captain Thomas Goodyear swam with the sharks
JOAN SULLIVAN
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Dec. 23 2014, 6:33 PM EST
Last updated Tuesday, Dec. 23 2014, 6:35 PM EST
In April of 1939, Thomas Goodyear left Newfoundland in the crew of the Queen of Bermuda. His girlfriend, Jessie Windsor, asked when he would be back. At a guess he said April, 1943.
Continually studying and rising up through the ranks and to the bridge, in Liverpool, England, in November, 1940, he signed on as watchman (and soon into the Merchant Navy) with the RMS Nova Scotia.
The liner had been on the Liverpool-Halifax mail run with the Furness Withy & Co. line, but with the Second World War it was converted to a troop ship, conveying South African troops and cargo to Suez, and then Italian prisoners of war to South African labour camps.
"The PoWs were treated the same as our British troops," Captain Goodyear wrote in his unpublished autobiography. "Same quarter, same food, the exception being that they were not allowed on deck at night, nor did they have the run of the ship."
In November, 1942, they sailed from Massawa, Eritrea, with 134 British and South African troops, several British women and one child, and 765 Italian prisoners of war. On Nov. 28, 1942, about 9 a.m., just as Capt. Goodyear was finishing breakfast, the German U-boat 177 hit the Nova Scotia with three torpedoes. Watch a video here <http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/video-gallery/video/10053> of Captain Goodyear describing the events.
"The ship gave a monstrous convulsion," he wrote. "The port side lifeboats were blown completely out of their lashings. A great sheet of flame and smoke came out of the main entrance on the boat deck."
He rushed to man the guns, but there was no target to hit. It quickly became apparent that they needed to abandon ship. The deck was so low he simply walked off it into the ocean. Moments later, the Nova Scotia tipped up and sank.
"We did not swim," he wrote. "There was nowhere to go. People, everywhere." Even worse, the radio operator told him they had not been able to send a distress signal.
The German U-boat surfaced and its captain, Robert Gysae, saw them in the water. "Gysae was horrified to think that it was his allies in harm's way," Capt. Goodyear said in an interview with Downhome magazine five years ago.
But German Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz had recently issued the Laconia Order, prohibiting the rescue of enemy survivors. The submarine took two of the Italians on board, then submerged and left. Capt. Gysae also radioed the BdU (Befehlshaber der U-Boote, the central command of U-boats) for aid. It ordered him to continue his patrol, but it did, in turn, notify the Portuguese about a rescue.
But no one in the water knew this \endash only that they were adrift in dangerous, shark-filled waters. Capt. Goodyear got his knife ready, and covered himself in fuel oil.
"It was not long before I saw the first shark take a man," he wrote in his autobiography. "The man just disappeared with a wave of his left arm."
Everyone clung to rafts and debris; the bosun, who survived, was entwined on a wooden ladder. After one day in the water, Capt. Goodyear had made it on to a raft.
"Whenever you would go near a raft, the Italians would drive you away," he told Downhome. But it seemed the only hope of survival.
He and a fellow crew member pushed the PoWs off the raft and into the water, but then let down grab lines. The raft was so unstable they, too, took to the water, all hands working together to steady it. It was a struggle. He lost his knife. Man after man slipped, exhausted, under the water.
Another day passed and he struggled to keep conscious. Then, he saw the Afonso de Albuquerque, a Portuguese training vessel dispatched to the rescue. But it had incorrect co-ordinates and was far away. It prowled the wrong area for 24 hours before it finally reached them. In all, 192 men, 14 of them crew members, were plucked from the water. Captain Goodyear later appeared on CBC Radio for the 70th anniversary of the sinking of the Nova Scotia. Listen here. <http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/Local+Shows/Newfoundland/ID/2311009941/>
The rescued were taken to Lourenco Marques in Mozambique, from where Capt. Goodyear took a train to Durban, South Africa. He convalesced for a few days. "I didn't know who I was," he recalled later. "I didn't know where I lived."
He did recover his memory, and his determination to return home and marry Ms. Windsor.
On March 31, 1943, he was back in Newfoundland. Ms. Windsor had enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force Women's Division and been posted to Toronto and Calgary, and then assigned to Torbay, Nfld. When they met that day, she asked when he had returned. He told her he'd just arrived. She replied he was a day early. They married that April.
In the fall of 1943, he returned to the Merchant Navy as navigating officer on the SS Fort Amherst. After the war, he became a master mariner and, by 1952, he was a harbour pilot, boarding ships and guiding them through the Narrows, the only entrance to St. John's Harbour.
He was assisting a German ship when he met a sailor who knew the now-Admiral Gysae. The sailor promised to tell Adm. Gysae he had met a survivor of the Nova Scotia. That holiday season, Capt. Goodyear received a Christmas card from the admiral. "I hope you are in good health," it read.
The holiday greetings continued for 10 years, and Adm. Gysae even invited the Goodyears to stay at his home. Capt. Goodyear accepted the invitation and they travelled to Europe, but the reaction from some of the other survivors was so negative that they returned home without making the personal visit. It was a choice Capt. Goodyear said he always regretted, as Adm. Gysae "was doing his job, as we were doing ours."
Capt. Goodyear kept those Christmas cards. When asked what he would have said to Adm. Gysae (who died in 1989), he replied: "I'd probably thank him for sending a message to Berlin, to say we were in the water."
Thomas Hallett Goodyear was born on March 17, 1920, at his family home in the Battery, St. John's, to Valentine and Elsie (née Hallett). He was the eldest in a family of four boys and a girl. He left schooling at Bishop Feild at 13 to work as an office boy with the fish merchant firm of his mother's cousin, T. Hallett Ltd., and, as soon as possible, to crew with, for example, the two-masted schooner Lady Green, carrying salt to Quebec \endash which was then a foreign country.
"My developing interest in matters nautical were not encouraged," he later wrote. "My father in particular would go out of his way to paint a very bleak picture of the seafaring profession."
But Thomas Goodyear knew his own mind. He became an incredibly able seaman, a cultured and engaging man and fair-minded.
Capt. Goodyear died on Nov. 21, in St. John's, at the age of 94. Predeceased by his wife Jessie, he leaves daughter Jennifer, and sons Bill and Geoff.
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200124
Canadian Headstones Index Transcription
First name(s)Thomas
Last nameGoodyear
Birth year1920
Death year2014
Age at death94
PlaceSt. John's City & St. John's West
CountryCanada
CemeteryForest Road Anglican, St. John's City & St. John's West, Newfoundland & Labrador
Cemetery Identification12066
Person Identification1948817
ProvinceNewfoundland and Labrador
Province codeNL
Inscription
JESSIE
GOODYEAR
1920 - 2010
THOMAS
GOODYEAR
1920 - 2014
Canadian Headstones Website ImageView record
Record setCanadian Headstones Index
CategoryBirth, Marriage & Death (Parish Registers)
SubcategoryCivil Deaths & Burials
Collections fromAmericas, Canada
Index copyright CanadianHeadstones.com
And obituary from the NGB website:
GOODYEAR, Capt. Thomas Hallett
Passed on: November 21st, 2014
March 17, 1920 - November 21, 2014, Merchant Navy and retired Harbour Pilot, passed peacefully away in the presence of his family at the Caribou Veterans Pavillion on November 21, 2014. Predeceased by his wife Jessie, and brother Albert. Leaving to mourn sons Bill (Anna), Geoff (Barb) and daughter Jennifer (Joe), grandchildren Kim (Chris Day), Jennifer Kendrick (Duncan) and Allison Tucker (Matt Boland), great-grandchildren Lilly Jane, Thomas Geoffrey and Molly, brothers Bill (Lorna), Doug (Vi), sister Vic Luscombe (Bill), brothers-in-law Doug Windsor, Stan Windsor (Barb), Frank Windsor (Jeanette), sisters-in-law Sara Finn and Jean Hayre, and cousin Tom Hallett, as well as many other relatives and friends. Special thanks to the staff of the Caribou Pavillion. Cremation has taken place. Relatives and friends may visit the family at Carnell's Funeral Home 329 Freshwater Road on Saturday, November 22, 2014 from 2-4pm, Sunday, November 23, 2014 from 2-4 and 7-9pm. Funeral service to take place at St. Thomas Anglican Church on Monday, November 24, 2014 at 11am. Donations in his memory can be made to the Royal Canadian Legion, Branch 56, Poppy Trust Fund. To send a message of condolence or sign the memorial guest book, please visit www.carnells.com
Living
Sex: M
Spouses and Children
1. Living Children: 1. Living 2. Living 3. Living 4. Albert Goodyear 5. Capt. Thomas Hallett GoodyearLiving
Sex: F
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Father: Living Mother: Living
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1. Living Children: 1. LivingLiving
Sex: M
Parents
Father: Living Mother: Living
Spouses and Children
1. LivingLiving
Sex: M
Parents
Father: Capt. Thomas Hallett Goodyear 149,4538,4867 Mother: Jessie Henderson Windsor 168
Spouses and Children
1. LivingLiving
Sex: M
Spouses and Children
1. LivingLiving
Sex: F
Spouses and Children
1. Living Children: 1. Living 2. Living 3. Living 4. LivingLiving
Sex: F
Parents
Father: Kenneth Joseph Gora 149 Mother: LivingLiving
Sex: M
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Father: Living Mother: Living
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