Name: Burns Williams Rank: Oiler Service: SS Liverpool Packet (Liverpool, Nova Scotia) Canadian Merchant Navy Date of Birth: June 2, 1919 Place of Birth: West Green Harbour, Shelburne Co., NS Date of Death: May 30, 1942 Age at Death: 22 Memorial: Halifax Memorial Panel 222 Commemorated on Page 248 of the Merchant Navy Book of Remembrance Displayed in the Memorial Chamber of the Peace Tower in Ottawa on May 16, October 13, and December 18 Commemorated on the Markland Shipping Company Monument, Brooklyn NS, Waterfront Park Burns Williams was the son of Elisha Williams (1891-1982) and Josephine (Robertson) Williams (1893- 1988), of Lockeport, Nova Scotia. On the night of May 30, 1942, the unescorted SS Liverpool Packet, under the command of Captain Norman Emmons Smith was 15 miles west of Seal Island off the coast of Yarmouth County, Nova Scotia. The ship was on a return trip from New York to Halifax carrying military supplies for an American military base in Newfoundland. The German U-boat U-432 spotted the ship shortly before 9:00 pm on May 30 and fired a torpedo sinking the ship in three minutes. Nineteen members of the crew survived and managed to get into lifeboats. Two crew died, Burns Williams and Norman Burnell Atwood. Nineteen survivors were eventually rescued. The German captain of the U-boat, Heinz-Otto Shaultz, allowed the men to make their way toward the Nova Scotia shore. After twenty hours in the lifeboats, they encountered a lobster fisherman and his sons who took the men to Seal Island. Twelve of the nineteen survivors were from the south shore area of Nova Scotia. The body of Burns Williams was not recovered. He is remembered on the Halifax Memorial along with 3,256 Canadian men and women who were buried or lost at sea.