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''Up until that point we had been in touch with NEAP command. They was advising us about the comings and goings of the U-boats from their base near Sonderstrom. Then when NEAP told us a Jerry was running some sixty to seventy minutes off our stern, I curled the old girl into Lancaster Sound. I figured to lay her in the inlet, hard by Carber shallows at Choker Point.''
"Let the record show that Captain Cartwright is referring to the arctic supply barge, HMS Percifield. Go ahead, Captain."
"I was a fightin' her all the way, waves comin' across the bow was a runnin' twenty-two and sometimes nearer thirty foot. Winds was in excess of thirty-seven knotsrecorded one peak gust right on fifty. When I got her in the shallows she settled down, but in the shallows we picked up the rains, beastly things, sheets of rain and needles of ice. I ordered the men to lace her up and shut her down."
"Can you fix the time for us, Captain?"
"Aye. The ship's log shows we dropped anchor at 0741 hours on the morning of the twentieth. That would be June, sir, this year."
"Continue, Captain."
"I was takin' my breakfast in my cabin on the morning of the twenty-seventh, when the First Matethat being Hiram Bellows, sir, the one what testified before mecomes to tell me that the storms was

 
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