[LINK] "Battle of St-Lawrence shipwrecks found off Gaspé coast with help of fisherman"

[rfmcdonald]

CBC's Marika Wheeler notes how the memories of a Gaspé fisherman helped pinpoint the location of a German submarine destroyed in the Second World War.

On Sept. 15, 1942, teenager Guy St-Croix was out fishing off the coast of Gaspé, Que. when he found himself caught in the middle of a deadly naval battle.

The 17-year-old was watching a convoy of 30 merchant ships sailing out to sea when another fisherman turned to him and remarked, "Now would be a good time to see if there are any submarines in the Gulf."

"He didn't even finish his sentence when the first ship exploded," St-Croix said.

The boat had been hit by a torpedo launched from a German U-boat.

St-Croix saw two ships sink that day. Four people died.

Seventy-three years later in the fall of 2015, a team of wreck hunters went looking for those ships. But they weren't where the military records said they should be.

So they turned to eyewitnesses for help.