Clifford Brown wanted to join the Royal Canadian Navy when he was 17 years old.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t eligible as he needed to be a year older to qualify.
Brown knew if he sat around waiting, he was going to get drafted into the Army like many of his friends during the Second World War. Before that took place, he decided to join the next best thing to being in the Navy.
“I joined the Merchant Navy,” said Brown, who next year on March 31 will turn 100 years old. “I didn’t want to go in no Army, I’ll tell you that. I didn’t mind joining the Army but I wanted to go in the Navy. I needed to be 18 years old to join the Navy and I was only 17. So I entered the Merchant Navy instead.”
Brown said he was inspired to follow the footsteps of his father, a sea captain. Although he never had formal training to get certified as a seaman, Brown said, the knowledge he learned from his father was enough to land him a job on the SS Gray, where he worked as one of the quartermasters tasked with steering the ship.
“When I was a kid, I used to go with my father and he let me steer the boat and that’s how I learned,” said Brown.
Although the ship that he navigated between Vancouver and Skagway, Alaska, never travelled in conflicted areas, Brown said, some of the ships cargo included dynamite, ammunition, building materials and heavy duty trucks.
“They were for the war as the war was on,” Brown recalled.
“We had the dynamites in the hull and the caps were in a different box. We had a special room for the ammunition. It was always locked. Gunners always looked after that.”
The SS Gray, a 300-foot, multi-hull freighter, said Brown, was armed and ready for any unforeseen situation while travelling the Pacific Ocean.
“Our boat had one cannon and two machine guns,” said Brown. “We had two sailors, sometimes three. They looked after the machine guns and the cannon. We were always concerned. They didn’t torpedo a lot of boats in the Pacific but they were getting that way.”
The biggest scare Brown encountered during that time was on March 6, 1945. He was on the dock in the pier that is now known as Canada Place, when the SS Greenhill Park exploded. He thought there was an invasion.
“There were white clouds and the planes were flying and I thought we were under attack,” Brown remembered. “The ship blew up. There were two or three explosions.”
The ship, according to historical reports, was bound for Australia and had in its cargo 94 tonnes of explosive sodium chlorate, seven-and-half tonnes of signal flares and several barrels of overproof whisky. Somebody lit up a match that caused the explosion.
“They were coming down like snowflakes,” said Brown. “And this was in the summertime. I was bloody scared. You can hear the planes flying overhead and we didn’t know whose planes they were. I didn’t know what was going on. I thought they were enemy planes because we couldn’t see them. It was foggy. So I took off. There were people running down to see what was going on. It was pretty scary.”
The explosion was a Vancouver tragedy as eight people were killed and many injured.
Brown’s stint in the Merchant Navy lasted close to four years. It ended as their ship got caught in a big wave during a storm he said cut their boat in half like a knife.
They were able to steer the ship back to Victoria but it was taken out of commission as it was no longer seaworthy said Brown.
After losing his job, Brown said he had a chance to join the Canadian Navy but did not take the opportunity.
“I had enough,” said Brown, who ended up working for the Vancouver Sun in the circulation department.
They moved to Vancouver Island in the early 1960s where Brown said he distributed the newspaper all over the region.
They lived in Nanaimo, Parksville, Qualicum Beach and Deep Bay where they spent majority of their days before moving back to Qualicum Beach.
Brown is a longtime member of the Bowser Royal Canadian Legion Branch 211.
He said many veterans and members treated them really well and continue to do so. They check up on him regularly to see if he needs a doctor, medicine or to be driven some place.
“They really have been very good to me,” said Brown.
Brown observes Remembrance Day at the Legion and always looks forward to it.
He used to help sell poppies in Bowser until they moved back to Qualicum Beach.
The sea has always been a part of Brown’s life.
Since he ended his seafaring career, he found joy in his fishing boat, which eventually he had to give up.
He said he still misses sailing.