Sending your email..."When I was a little girl we always loved to see the Kyle come in. We'd all go up to the wharf as a crowd and they'd let us go aboard and walk through the ship. We never seen anything like her. She was really grand compared to what we were used ...the Kyle was like a floating palace to us when she was new. Somebody aboard might give you a candy or some cake for a little treat."
Gwen Dawson, 84, of Bay Roberts, Newfoundland
"In 1939, we came up off the Labrador on the Kyle, and the captain was that long cutting around with the bad weather (and possibly maneuvering to avoid German U-boats) that we ended up running out of coal. We had to go into the whaling factory at Hawke Harbour." (Asked what he thought of the place, Jack chuckled.) "The smell was enough to poison you with the stink of the whales. We took aboard the coal in baskets (over the side of the ship). We was a long time coming home. That was the year the war started. We got up in Englee ahead of a storm and the war people directed us to stay. Anyway we got out of that after a long while, and we got up to Badgers Quay and it was a lovely day. One passenger got out on the head of the wharf and said to the crew: 'You've got a bunch of starving people aboard (because of the unusually long journey) and what are you going to do about it?"
Jack Kearley, 87, of Bay Roberts, Newfoundland
Our March cover image of the Kyle was captured by Holyrood-native and photographer John Veitch in 2006. To see more of his images, click here.
