Continuation of the story of my French family. This episode actually takes place mostly in the United States of America and in Canada.
The story starts here
Previous episode: Part 4
From Detroit to Boston to Brest - End of World War I
The four boats left Detroit during the fall of 1918.
While crossing Lake Erie, they got caught in a big storm. This storm is was not as memorable as the Great Lakes Storm of 1913 or the Black Friday Storm of 1916.
However, it was still a deadly storm: one of the four boats sank and there were no survivors from the crew.
Here is a short video from a recent storm on Lake Erie.
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And a picture of a recent storm on Lake Erie was taken by Canadian photographer Dave Sandford.
From Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, the three remaining boats took the Welland Canal. The current Welland Canal is the fourth. In 1918, the current canal was the third one.
Here is a picture of a section of the Welland Canal around 1918.
While navigating in the canal, Henri's boat had a problem: the engine stopped. To repair, the boat approached the shore of the canal and moored hawsers (ropes) to what was available, that is electric poles. Unfortunately, the tension on one of the poles was too strong and the pole fell down, the electric line went down with sparks on several hundred meters.
At the next lock, an inspector came aboard and asked Henri if he was responsible for the damage. Henri replied that he was indeed responsible so he was fined the big sum of $3.00 which is equivalent to a little more that $50 nowadays. Henri was happy enough to pay with his own money and he never heard again of the incident.
After crossing Lake Ontario, they continued through the Saint Lawrence River. At some point, in the province of Quebec, they needed to take a pilot. As the pilot was a French Canadian, he was happy to be on a French boat and he started to give his orders in French. His accent was so strong that Henri was not understanding anything. So, he asked the pilot to speak English. The pilot was furious; he gave the orders in English but also gave some angry comments in French, that Henri could not understand.
After the pilot left, a member of the crew who was from Normandy told Henri that he had been able to understand the pilot in French and it was better that Henri did not understand his insults.
Finally, the 3 boats arrived in Boston. However, it was already November 1918, the end of the World War I.
So, the transformation into minesweepers was never performed.
Henri and the whole crews crossed again the Atlantic Ocean and arrived in Brest.
Henri was 25 years old and decided that it was time to get married.
Continue to Part 6
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