This story was published in todays edition of the Saint John Telegraph Journal Newspaper.
SAINT JOHN - At 96, Merrill Rumson pulls out the keyboard to his computer and scans through his pictures, looking for the image of the bell rope he made for a competition marking the 100th anniversary of the Canadian Navy.
Enlarge Photo Matthew Sherwood/Telegraph-JournalNaval veteran Merrill Rumson, 96, holds up one of the bell ropes he made. He was born in 1913 and the navy was formed in 1910, so he has been around almost as long.
"Bells mark time and give warnings. They are an important part of the ship," he said.
As part of the navy's centennial celebration this year, metal from the past 100 years was collected and melted down to cast a commemorative bell that will be unveiled in Ottawa in May. A new bell needs a new bell rope, Rumson said.
"I was asked to submit two ropes and they got honourable mention."
The decorative bell ropes go back to the time of sailing ships, when the crews had time on their hands during long voyages, so they developed intricate rope braiding patterns, he said.
"Ringing the bell is very important in the life of a ship," he said. "In the olden days it told the time, it gave warnings, passed messages through the ship. It was a means of communication."
Rumson was invited to a ceremony aboard HMCS Protecteur at CFB Esquimalt in Victoria, B.C., on Feb. 24 to receive a certificate for his participation, but has decided not to go because travelling with a wheelchair is too difficult.
After his ropes are shown in Victoria later this month they will be returned to him. He plans to donate one to HMCS Brunswicker to be used on a bell in Saint John. The other bell ropes in the competition were produced by veterans of the navy who joined after 1945, but Rumson was the only Second World War veteran.
The braiding of bell ropes is part of a naval tradition that Rumson first learned in 1931, when he joined the naval reserve in Saint John. He was there four years until 1935 and then went to work for the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company.
When the Second World War broke out, he was in Montreal and was asked to rejoin the navy as an instructor.
"I was an instructor for a couple of years and then I went to sea on a minesweeper, and then I went to a frigate," he said.
He crossed the North Atlantic several times protecting convoys supplying Britain with materials to fight the war and was on HMCS Chebogue when she was torpedoed off Ireland in 1944, killing seven of his shipmates. The frigate didn't sink but was so badly damaged she was broken up for scrap when they towed her back to Britain.
"I didn't see a thing, I was in the magazine (where the ammunition is kept), a room with no windows," he said.
The survivors were taken off and transported to Newfoundland. After the war he returned to work for the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company, retiring as office manager in Quebec City in 1973.
"I worked for them for 40 years. I went from the office boy to the manager," he said.
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