WW2 Cdn Army Repatriation

[David Dunlop]

I have been playing with this file a little bit more.

21 ships carrying troops arrived in New York over this two day period. The crew manifests for each ship averaged two pages per ship. There were four lead in pages and two end pages for the entire volume. Factor out these 48 pages and you are left with 1,130 listing returning Canadian military personnel (Alien Immigrants).

Taking a random sample of 10 pages, that worked out to an average of 24 names per page (range was 2 - 36). That means 27,120 Canadian personnel arrived in New York in two days. Where would they all have been housed and how the heck would they have been moved from there to Canada? That is a lot of bodies for any rail system. The larger vessels may have made a return trip back to Europe with returning POW's, but some of the smaller ones must have been used to ferry many of the troops up the East Coast to various Canadian ports along with some rail transport.

Anyone know what those coded ships might have been all about? To the best of my limited sea going knowledge, all ships typically were referenced by name.


David