BRISBANE STAR

Myself as a 6 months old baby plus my mother and father departed Port Melbourne ( bound for the UK )around March 1944...being the only passengers on board we sailed from Port Phillip Bay at 2.00 am for New Zealand ( empty of cargo) to pick up 10,000 tons of chilled lamb and butter. Loaded took 2 weeks when we then departed for New York via the Panama Canal to join an Atlantic Ocean crossing convoy. My father, as a highly-skilled scientist and mathematician,worked up a planned track across the Atlantic that, in his and the Brisbane Star's captain opinion, would fool any german U-boat skipper, so the decision was made not to join a relatively slow New York convoy. The ship was capable of 25+ knots and after 10 days of zigging and zagging the UK was reached safely. At least 3 attempts were made by U-boats to torpedo the ship with my mother describing the terror of watching the torpedoes wakes go very close the ship. After we disembarked I think the Brisbane Star repeated the voyage, again safely. We then spent the rest of the war 15 kilometres outside Liverpool in the small village of Willaston with my father travelling daily in an ammunitions and small arms factory in Bootle ( the industrial part of Liverpool) where he worked as a research scientist. Please contact me should you have an interest. rick@wraightgroup.com.au