WWII: This French Cruiser Escaped Halifax With a Belly Full of Gold

By Robert Beckhusen,War Is Boring

In June 1940, the 581-foot-long French light cruiser Émile Bertin sat docked in Halifax, when back in Europe, French officers gathered in the late Ferdinand Foch’s railway car at Compiègne to sign the humiliating armistice with Nazi Germany — sealing continental France’s subordination to German hegemony for a following four years.

Émile Bertin‘s crew and skipper found themselves in the curious situation of being docked at a country still at war with Germany after their own country had surrendered.

To complicate the situation further, the warship was on her second trip hauling gold reserves from France to shelter in Canada. Unfortunately for the Allies, the cruiser’s skipper ordered the vessel — with the gold — to dash for the Vichy-held volcanic island of Martinique in the Caribbean instead of joining the Free French Forces.

She made a successful voyage unbothered by the Royal Navy, which couldn’t catch the fast-moving cruiser.

The glamorous French steam transport ship Pasteur — another ship hauling gold — was not so lucky, and Allied troops seized her before she could make it out of port. Pasteur went on to have a productive war-time career in British service moving troops and German prisoners of war. (Pasteur‘s fate: she sank accidentally in the Indian Ocean in 1980 while being towed to a Taiwanese scrapyard.)

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                                    **Above, at top and below — ‘Emile Bertin.’** [**Photos**](https://ww2db.com/image.php?image_id=16788) **via World War II Database**

French warships like Émile Bertin, however, had fascinating, adventurous and often tragic careers.