Sailing date was initially set to Jan. 29 - sailed on the 30th.

Station numbers are stations upon departure Halifax; may have changed as the voyage progressed.

Crossed out ships did not sail, underlined returned to port.

MOWT = Ministry of War Transport

Ted's diary information states "36 ships were listed in this convoy, 2 were passenger vessels and went out separately, Largs Bay and Volendam (the latter 2 do not appear to have been part of this convoy). 6 were cancelled and 1 went out as an independent, D. L. Harper". (As can be seen from the table above, there were more than 6 cancelled ships).

The ships departed in the following sequence (the unnamed ships are named in the table above):
At 09:55 the British freighter Biafra, Flagship, leads convoy to sea. A few minutes later, at 09:58 the Greek Atlanticos went out followed at 10:14 by Penolver and with a few minutes between each ship - Graiglas, then a Polish freighter (this must have been Wisla), Sirehei, Tintagel (WLEW), a Norwegian freighter, then Ruth 1, Empire Leopard, Mana (IM' on stack), Empire Livingstone ('B' flag, meaning she carried explosives), Empire Zephyr, a British freighter, the Norwegian Hallanger (name on bow, grey hull, tan superstructure, with brown on top of bridge, tan stack with black border on it.), Ozark (star on narrow high stack), then Mount Taurus followed by a Norwegian freighter, Empire Beaver, then a Panamanian freighter, a British freighter, then Montreal City, Lagarfoss (with Lumber) and the last ship to leave at 14:00 was the British Loriga (GCLM).

The escorting Canadian Flower Class Corvette Spikenard was torpedoed and sunk by U136 on Febr. 11.

The Norwegian Heina was also sunk during the passage. My page about this ship has more information on her loss. There were no casualties.

Related external links:
The loss of HMCS Spikenard

Casualty list - HMCS Spikenard

Russian Convoy Series - Convoy PQ 12 is included.

Back to Convoy Index