Neville recalls that during the First World War, while still a British subject, he sailed on a schooner from Barbados down to what is now called the Virgin Islands -- then Danish territory -- to bring back cattle, since Barbados raised none of its own and needed the meat. On the return voyage the ship was becalmed off Martinique, out of sight of land, with no radio and no way to call for rescue.
Date (happened)
1916
stated · probable · preferred
Reasoning
Neville names the year twice in his own telling of the becalming, and it is internally consistent with his stated age ('I was only eleven years old') against the corpus birth anchor (hist_event 950, 1905-02-19). Kept at probable rather than certain because it is a single decades-later platform recollection with no independent documentary corroboration.
between 1914 and 1918
stated · probable
Why
He also says 'then they were owned by Denmark... We bought them during the war, that is, we in America bought them, but then I was a British subject' -- since the US purchase of the Danish West Indies concluded 31 March 1917, and he speaks of the islands as still Danish-owned at the time of his own voyage, a careful reader may narrow this to 1914-08..1917-03 rather than the full war; left as the wider, directly-attested WWI range since the tense is ambiguous.
Reasoning
Neville directly names 'the First World War' as when the voyage took place, which fixes the year range to 1914-1918 even though no month or day is given.
Told / reported
14 April 1967
estimated · possible
Reasoning
The only delivery evidence for the owning lecture is a legacy catalog backfill row, which the evidence hierarchy treats as the weakest kind of source (the corpus quoting its own earlier guess); the packet offers no chrome dateline or internal Christmas/season marker to corroborate it, so the derived told claim is capped at possible even though the source row itself is flagged certain.