Two days after we had tied up at Aberdeen, we were sent
home on fourteen days leave; the Gem was left in the hands of
the repair gangs, and the one or two crew members who had to
stay to keep an eye on things.
When I arrived home I suppose I felt rather like a
returning hero of sorts, and enjoyed being made a fuss of by
all and sundry. I was back home again for my first leave
after some six months since my last one at Christmas 1939.
This time I had come home after seeing quite a bit of action
one way or another. On my first day home I was having tea
with my parents and thinking how good it was to be at home
with them again, when the alarm clock on the mantelpiece in
the kitchen decided to go off. As it did so, my heart all but
stopped beating. I felt myself go white, like a sheet, and
before either of my parents could say a thing, I was out of
my chair, through the door and into the back garden. Rather
sheepishly I went back into the house when I realised where I
was, feeling ridiculous, and apologised to both of them for
startling them as I had done. After explaining my reason for
dashing out as I had, they said that they understood. This
little episode proved one thing to me - that my reactions had
certainly got much quicker during the last few months and
that the will to survive was still with me.
On this leave on our return from Norway, one of the first
questions my mother asked me was, 'Is it right you were taken
prisoner in Norway?' and when I said yes, she replied that
she had known it was so; that about the second week in May,
they were having a cup of tea before going to bed, when she
suddenly said to my father, 'Our Sid has been taken
prisoner'. He told her not to be silly, but how true her
premonition had turned out to be. Did she in some way receive
some of my thoughts during the time it was all happening,
because I had thought about my home and all who were there,
and whether I should see them again, when we were transfixed
to the ground under the cross fire from the Germans and from
the fishing boat? I've tried several times to reason this
thing out but it just remains a mystery. I have read of
similar things happening to other people, but I still find it
very hard to accept.
Back at Aberdeen, I found that a number of changes had
taken place. Skipper Scarlett had gone, and in his place was
Chief Skipper Mullender. He was a short stocky man, as tough
as they come; he was an ex-trawler skipper from Lowestoft,
who had also been the skipper of a collier (a ship running
coal) between Lowestoft and Methyl for a number of years
before the war. This was brought about by the way in which
the fishing industry had deteriorated in the nineteen
thirties, resulting in so many fishermen being on the dole.
We were to find later that he was a fair man and a very good
skipper, quite unflappable, even under the most extreme and
provocative circumstances. He was to become a sort of idol to
me, and a great friend until he passed away in 1977. I would
have sailed anywhere in the world with him at any time as I
had all the confidence in the world in him. He had apparently
been one of several brothers, and had suffered some serious
illness as a child and did hardly any schooling as a result.
His parents were told that he would not live. His father was
a fisherman on a smack sailing out of Lowestoft, and 'Billy'
had asked if he could go to sea with him. His father must
have taken him out of compassion. Skipper Mullender told me
that he was too weak and too ill to help himself; he just lay
on the deck and that it seemed just a matter of time before
his young life came to an end. But fortunately he and his
father persevered, and after two or three trips, breathing in
the strong salt sea air of the North Sea into his lungs, they
suddenly realised that he was getting very much stronger. He
eventually took up the sea as his life's work, taught himself
to read and write and took examinations for first his bosun's
ticket, then his mate's, and later his skipper's. I have
never before or afterwards served under anyone like him.
The coxswain of the Gem, Chris Wilson, who was from my
home town of Hull, had contracted an illness not long after
we returned from our leave, and would not be coming back. I
was called in to the wardroom and introduced to Skipper
Mullender for the first time, and he told me that he could
not get a replacement for the coxswain, and that he had been
told to upgrade one of the crew to be acting coxswain until
such time as a replacement could be sent onboard. He said
that he had been through all the records and that he had
decided that I was to be the one, as I had more actual sea
time in than any of the others. When I mentioned that there
was a leading seaman on board, he said that until he joined
the Gem, the leading seaman had very little sea time in, and
even less experience of the sea as he had been working as a
diver on the lochs in Scotland. Of course I could not refuse
the chance; I took it with both hands. I was told to move my
gear into the berth vacated by the ex-coxswain. I could
hardly believe it, a berth of my own. I sat in this, the then
previously Holy of Holies and wondered why I should be so
lucky.
My berth was at the foot of the wooden staircase leading
down to the petty officers' quarters, just on the right as
you reached the bottom. It had a single bunk with two blue
draw curtains, and had a reading lamp fitted in to it.
Underneath the bunk there were two good sized drawers, which
could be pulled out to clear a seat locker which was covered
in a blue leather, the same colour as the draw curtains.
There was also in one corner a fitted wardrobe, and on the
right as I walked in through the door, there was a mirror
fixed onto the bulk head over the top of a desk, the lid of
which lifted up to reveal a wash basin with hot and cold
water taps. These did not always work properly, but this did
not matter because just at the top of the staircase was a
petty officers' bathroom and toilets and of course these I
was now allowed to use. The whole of the cabin was lined out
with a beautiful and well-polished wooden panelled mahogany
lining.
My job as acting coxswain now consisted of everything to
do with the running of the seamen's side of the ship under
the new first lieutenant, Ordinary Skipper Jack Pooley, also
of Lowestoft. He was built a bit on the small side, a thin,
almost always worried looking man, easy to get on with, and
he did eventually leave most of the organising and working of
the ship to me; he only got on my back if there was anything
special in the wind.
I found myself ordering all of the food, and doing all of
the victualling, the issuing of the rum ration, making sure
that the ship was kept clean at all times, at sea or in
harbour, weather permitting of course; in fact I was doing
all the things that a coxswain of a ship was supposed to do,
and many others that he was not. I've heard that lots of
strange things happened on other HM trawlers that had RNR
officers in command, and ships with Wavy Navy Officers
(RNVR). The majority who at the early part of the war had
little or no authority of the sort required were I am told
sticklers for naval protocol. Some seemed to think that
trawlers were destroyers, manned throughout by three badge
Killicks,. It's surprising how when some people get a bit of
authority thrust upon them, take on the mantle of the
Almighty, and it happens just the same in peace-time.
Personally I would rather be a happy man with moderate
means, rather than have to struggle in the rat race of today.
These people today don't realise the honesty of the comradeship as we
knew it; it has gone by the board and such comradeship will
never come back, ever. I suppose there are as good lads
amongst these today, as there were amongst the RNVRs of our
wartime days for since then I have found out that there were
some jolly good ones, good fighters and damn good sailors,
who became excellent officers; others, of which I am certain
there were a minority, acted like God; yet whatever they
were, or whatever they became, many gave their lives for
their King and their country, and many of these have no known
grave but the sea. Without them all, comradeship such as ours
would not have survived.
Once the dockyard people had left the ship, the task was
to get her back to looking like a minor war vessel again. The
damage that had been done by that lone German aircraft while
on our way back from Norway had been put right, a few small
alterations had been made, and we found that we had lost our
Oerlikon gun. It had been sent down to the south to do its
duty in what was to become the Battle of Britain, though we
did not realise this at the time. A lot of other trawlers
lost armament that they had gained by one means or another.
Our stock of high explosive shells for the four-inch gun was
back to the normal amount. The twin Lewis which had been on
top of the casing aft, had been taken away, and in its place
was a new weapon, a Holman Projector, a steam-powered piece
of equipment not unlike a bit of fall pipe that comes down
from the guttering of a house to allow the rain to find its
way to the drains.
We were to find out that this was all that it was fit for.
Its crew was supposed to put down this pipe an ordinary hand
grenade which nestled in a tin; the lever from the grenade
came through a slot in the metal container and was held down
by a pin in the safe position on the outside of the
container. The drill was that when the crew were going to
fire this 'thing', first they had to make quite certain that
there was enough steam pressure on the gauge to project the
grenade out of the pipe. They then took the pin out of the
grenade, dropped the grenade still in its container down the
spout of the pipe, banging their foot down on a pedal at the
base of the pipe, and at the same time aiming the 'gun' at
the target. If the target was a plane, the grenade was
supposed to go off in the vicinity of the plane after parting
company with the container as it left the mouth of the pipe.
In theory I suppose that this was quite a legitimate
description of its action if the steam pressure applied to
the projector was correct; if it wasn't, the grenade and its
container had a nasty habit of just managing to climb out of
the end of the pipe, and dropping onto the deck where they
separated, rolling about until they either exploded where
they were, and fragmented amongst those of the crew who were
panicking to throw them over the side, or in the sea out of
harm's way if the crew had been successful in doing what they
had set out to do.
Most ships' crews found as time passed by that the best
use for the Holman Projector was for throwing potatoes or
empty cans at their 'chummy ships' as they passed by them in
a channel. To be used for the job for which it was really
intended was thought to be more dangerous to those actually
firing it than to the aircraft supposed to be at the
receiving end. Eventually, I believe, these Holmans were
taken off most if not all ships.
Before our leave from Aberdeen, the crew's bedding, bed
covers, sheets and pillow cases, had been sent ashore to be
cleaned and even repeated visits to the laundry did not get
it back onboard by the time came for the ship to leave, and
we had to sail without it. Our destination this time was on
the west coast of Scotland, Tobermory, in the Sound of Mull.
Tobermory was a training school under the command of a
bewhiskered old commodore, who had no qualms about sending a
whole ship's company back to their depots if they were not up
to his expectations. None of us was looking forward to this
visit, for even officers were not immune from his wrath and
could be replaced. However there was no way that a ship
could, once it had been ordered to report to the HMS Western
Isles, get out of the visit unless of course the invasion of
Britain was taking place; even then I'm not certain that it
would have constituted an excuse.
We arrived in the Sound of Mull, during the course of an
afternoon. I cannot remember now if there were any other
ships at anchor when we arrived, apart from the old
inter-island boat, the Western Isles, which was the
headquarters of Commodore Stephenson. Everything seemed
placid enough at the time, with no suggestion that it could,
and did more often than not, turn into a hive of intense
activity, with everyone feeling shattered and broken. We were
preparing to drop anchor when the signal lamp began to flash
from the base ship.
I was on the forecastle with Mr Pooley at this time, along
with one or two seamen. The CO shouted from the wheelhouse
that we were to shackle up to a buoy. None of us had ever
done this before, even Mr Pooley, but the operation had to be
carried out to the best of our ability. In the middle of it,
I was ordered to go to the seamen's messdeck on the double,
as the commodore was there and wanted to see me.
I dropped everything, and with my mind full of all sorts
of thoughts as to what he could want to see me for, I shot
down the ladder leading off the whale-back, and onto the
deck, made my way quickly to the top of the companion way,
and 'dropped' down the ladder. Here I saw that an inspection
was taking place. Our CO was talking to the commodore, and as
he saw me, motioned with his hand for me to come forward. The
commodore turned towards me, so I came to attention and
saluted him, 'You sent for me, Sir.' He looked me up and
down, walked right around me, and then said, 'Who the bloody
hell are you? I sent for the coxswain.'
I was dressed in fisherman's clothing, by now off white
thick woolly fearnoughts, a mottled grey and white abb wool
jersey, I had a red muffler around my neck and on my head an
ordinary working man's flat cap. By the way that he was
eyeing me, I thought by hell, I'm for it now', and my
heart dropped all the way down to the bottom of my
fisherman's thigh boots. I stood waiting for the terrific
blast that I was now expecting.
With his eyes staring right into mine, he said, 'Right
then, coxswain, where is the bed linen for all the bunks on
this mess deck?' Without taking his eyes off me, he listened
as I explained. He heard me out without interruption and then
said, 'At 0530 hours tomorrow morning, I want your ship's
boat alongside the gangway of my vessel; you yourself will be
in charge of it, and everyone will be in the rig of the day.
I want to see the boat handled properly, as I shall be
watching your approach from the head of the gangway, and if
the operation is not carried out in the way that I think it
should be, then heads will roll, and I do not care whose they
are. So don't forget you will arrive alongside my ship at
precisely 0530, not 0528, or 0532, do you understand? Now,
then, coxswain, how many sets of bed linen do you require?'
Of course I felt uptight about this, but fortunately I
knew just how many sets of bed linen that I required, so I
replied, 'Yes, Sir, I understand. 0530 at your gangway, and I
shall require 52 sets, that's one for each bunk, and one
spare set for each'. At that he turned away and gave a
chuckle, as he said, 'It's a good thing that you asked for
spare sets as well, coxswain. They will be ready for you to
collect in the morning.' He went up the ladder and onto the
upper deck with the CO, and I breathed a sigh of relief and
lit a cigarette to steady my nerves. We saw him often during
our ten days' stay there, but I never came into contact with
him again on a personal level.
From that moment on, every one of the crew wore rig of the
day - he was not going to catch me out again if I could help
it.
At 0500 hours the next morning the boat's crew and myself,
stood on the deck along with Skipper Mullender and the 1st
Lieutenant, waiting for the time to get into the boat, and
pull over to the HMS Western Isles. The distance between the
two ships had been seriously calculated, and the seamen had
been told what to do to make it look good, for none of us had
ever practised the art of tossing the oars upright in a boat
when approaching another ship in the proper Purser manner. We
had seen it done, but now was our chance to have a go at
doing it properly the first time. We checked our watches, and
with a shout of good luck, the skipper and Mr Pooley retired
to the top bridge as we pulled away from the ship's side, to
watch the proceedings, hoping that nothing would go wrong. As
it turned out things went well, I'm not going to say that we
were perfect, but we got ourselves into a position for the
last few yards' run in to the gangway ladder; the oars were
raised to my order, out of the water, and with just enough
way we touched at the correct time.
As soon as we did so the sentry challenged us, and I
stated the purpose for our being there, and was told to come
onboard, the boat was made fast, and I ran up to the top of
the gangway, turned aft and saluted. There was no officer to
be seen about, but that did not mean that there was not one
there. At the top of the gangway lay several bundles for
which I signed after first checking them over. There were
fifty-two sets of bedding as the commodore had promised, and
we got them into the boat and cast off, once again going
through the right drill as we moved off. By this time in
spite of the sharp cold morning air, I was sweating profusely
as were the other lads in the boat. Theirs was brought on by
rowing the boat, but mine was from worry as to whether we
should be called back to the Western Isles for something that
I had forgotten to do, or which had not pleased the commodore
or his duty officer, neither of whom I had caught a glimpse
of the whole time, though I have no doubt that they were
keeping their eyes on us throughout the trip there and back.
Nevertheless we arrived back at the Gem with no sign of any
signals, much to our relief.
Our training programme got under way: without any warning
the Commodore would come alongside in his boat and step
aboard, have a little walk up and down the deck, and suddenly
say, 'That buoy over there! It's a U-boat surfacing after
being depth charged, she's going to scuttle herself. What are
you going to do about it?' There was a panic then to get a
small boat away with a crew in it armed to the teeth with
rifles and revolvers, and a pocket full of potatoes for use
as hand grenades. Those in the boat along with the First
Lieutenant at the helm had to pull quickly to the buoy that
he had indicated as being the U-boat, Mr Pooley, the Jimmy,
and one of the men had then to jump onto the buoy, pretend to
lift up the hatch to the conning tower and throw down
grenades to immobilise the U-boat crew and stop them
scuttling the boat. After much fiendish shouting and not a
little gymnastics, they would then pull back to the Gem, only
to be told that they were all dead and what a bloody shambles
it had been; the sub was still going to scuttle, and someone
had to go and stop it, and as they were all dead and had to
stay where they were, others had to go in their place to see
what they could do.
Guns crews and depth charge gangs had to go through their
drill time after time, discharging and reloading the depth
charge throwers. This was a back-breaking job, with
three-hundred pounds of amatol in each charge having to be
hoisted time and time again back into the thrower day after
day, until the gunnery officer from the Western Isles who had
been timing them with a stopwatch, was satisfied with their
timing.
Mock fires were fought, aircraft had to be repelled, so
had boarders as they tried to get on deck to take the ship
over; on occasions several things were timed to happen at
once. Air attack, U-boat on the verge of surfacing, fire
somewhere below or under the whale-back, it would be all hell
let loose, and woe betide any slack attempts at putting
things right. During these battles, my action station was as
always in the wheel house, steering the ship and answering
orders from the top bridge, so while I was up there I managed
to keep out of the most hectic situations that cropped up. My
main concern was whether my books were in good order; there
was a crew list to keep up to date, account books. The book
in which I kept the tally of Grog issued each day and what
stocks were still down in the spirit room was the most
important; it had to be spot on, neither too much nor too
little of the rum left in the gallon jars down there. Either
way it was a crime, and a serious one at that. I think that
it was the chief writer who came into my cabin to check up on
my ,work, but luckily apart from one or two minor things, I
was OK, and ,was in fact given a few good tips to make the
keeping of books and records much easier.
There were many times at night as well as during the day,
when we had to drop our mooring buoy and put out into the
submarine exercise area between Tyree and Iona. Then the
Asdic operators got their chance to find a real live
submarine. Even though it was only an exercise, and the crews
in the submarines were learning also, it was almost like the
real thing, except that for safety's sake those of us on the
bridge could see where the sub was because they used to tow
small metal floats called 'buffs', to indicate their
position. The Asdic operators could not see these and had to
rely on picking up the submarine on their sets, which sent
out a beam of sound. If it happened to hit the sub, then it
would rebound back to the set where the operators had to
decide quickly whether it was the sub or a shoal of fish or
even a tide rip. If it was the sub then they had to make an
'attack', guiding the ship towards the target. The officer on
the bridge would then let the CO know if it could be
confirmed as a hit, and if so we would drop a small five
pound charge over the side to let the submarine know that she
had been attacked. I don't think that I remember our reaching
that stage, but we may well have done so. Once this exercise
was finished, it was back to Tobermoray and the task of
mooring up to the buoy again, unless old 'Fiery Whiskers' had
something else for us to tackle, such as fireworks and flares
being thrown aboard while you were tying up to the buoy; this
was presumably to indicate that we were now being attacked by
some invisible E-boat. Like the submarine exercise we had to
keep going until the attack was properly repulsed, or until
the 'enemy' got fed up and went home to tea.
It certainly did us no harm, but quite a lot of good; we
were not so slow, and not so complacent, and we were much
more aware of what the enemy could and did do. Our reactions
were very much quicker, and this was what it had all been
about. I think that most of us realised this and had enjoyed
it for all the lack of sleep, and the hard work that we'd had
to put up with. But even so, when the time came for us to
leave, and we realised that we had come through it all
unscathed, the entire crew including the officers too took a
deep breath of relief and were pleased that no one had been
sent back to base.
And so we left Commodore Sir Gilbert Stephenson, the HMS
Western Isles and the Sound of Mull behind. Ever since my
meeting with him on that first day, I had felt a great
respect for the commodore. The way in which he spoke to me in
spite of how I was dressed in the garb of a deep sea
fisherman amazed me greatly, but at that time I was rather
young, and tended to be overawed at the sight of any officer
with straight rings around his arm, and had certainly not
been in a position to speak to another officer of his rank in
the Royal Navy. His understanding of us ex-fishermen must
have been first class; he knew what sort of men we had been,
and he also saw the sort of men that we could turn out to be
given half a chance. He sorted the wheat from the chaff, and
the wheat respected him for it. Since I became a member of
the Royal Naval Patrol Service some years ago, I have spoken
to captains and commanders, and one vice admiral who were
still on the active list, and it has been an honour to have
found out at least that they themselves, had some respect and
not a little admiration, for the way the trawlermen conducted
themselves during those hostile years and afterwards, when
the minefields had to be cleared to make the seas safe for
the passage of all vessels, even when peace arrived.
Once we were released from the confines of Tobermory, the
sailing orders were for us to make our way to Belfast, where
we arrived at the beginning of August 1940. We were based on
HMS Caroline, and joined the 27th A/S Group if I remember
correctly. From Belfast we were sent on a variety of jobs,
patrols, convoy escort and the like. We did several stints to
Iceland and the Faeroes to patrol the seas around these
islands, and often we found ourselves on our own in the
Denmark Straits. This was a weird place, as those who have
been there will agree, especially if you had no chummy ship
to keep you company. There was nothing to see for days on end
but the wide unfriendly ocean, that stretch of dangerous
water between Greenland and Iceland.
The sea could be calm for a day or two, and then within
minutes it could change to mountains of aquatic fury, driven
on by hurricane force winds, bringing with them snow and
sleet from the mountains and plateaux of ice-covered
Greenland. At certain times of the year huge icebergs would
drift down, shrouded in thick fogs after starting their
journeys by breaking off from some remote glacier. You got so
that you could smell them if the ship was down wind of them,
but they never failed to excite me or strike me with awe at
their majestic size, and sometimes at their breathtaking
beauty. One always had to be on the alert looking out for
them as they could be very dangerous in the darkness of the
night, and of course more so in fog. We carried no radar at
the time I was a member of her crew. It was possible to get
an echo from one on the Asdic, but in fog one had to be
certain what the echo was from as the skipper could not send
the vessel charging forward thinking the object returning the
echo was a U-boat, when in fact it could be an iceberg, for
the bottom could be ripped out of the vessel in no time. Of
course these icebergs were not the only unfriendly things in
these waters, and being on a small trawler, even though she
was one of the largest in the country at six hundred gross
tonnes, alone for days on end, did not do the nerves of those
onboard very much good whatsoever.
To illustrate my point, on one such occasion during May
1941, the German warships
Bismarck and Prinz Eugen left
Norwegian waters to break out into the Atlantic to do what
damage they could to the ships in the convoys, which were
crossing from the new world to the old and vice versa. At
about the same time the Northern Gem was acting as an escort
and rescue vessel on an outward bound convoy. It was the
practice at this stage of the war for the escorts to stay
with their convoy of merchant ships until the halfway stage
was reached, including convoys leaving America, Halifax or St
John's Newfoundland, and bound for England. At a prearranged
spot, the escorts handed their charges over to each other, in
other words changing convoys. The outward-bound escort then
became the inward one making its way back to England and once
this had been accomplished we felt that at least one part of
the job had been done, and that this second part was taking
us nearer and nearer to our home base.
On this particular trip, we on the outward bound leg had
been having a quiet time for once, but the buzzes that came
down from the bridge and wireless room told us that the
convoys we were to exchange with were having a tough old time
and that many ships had been sunk by repeated attacks from
U-boats. It was going around the ship that if it kept up in
this way there would soon be no convoy for us to take back to
the UK. The weather in their part of the Atlantic had been
pretty bad, though not severe enough to keep the U-boats
down, but it was said to be getting better. Some time later
we were ordered to leave our convoy and make for the last
reported area of the sinkings, to make a thorough search for
any survivors who might still be around in small boats or
rafts. It was a forlorn hope for one ship searching in this
way, but nevertheless it had to be carried out to the best of
our ability. The orders were that we should make our way back
along the convoy's estimated course, and make square searches
as we went along. This we learned would take us the biggest
part of the way across the Denmark Straits all on our own,
just one lone armed ex-fishing trawler, now a very small part
of the Royal Navy, the crew of which were not relishing the
next few days by any means. But we knew that it had to be
done, and that many men were probably fighting for their
lives somewhere out there in those wild wastes of water.
On the evening of the first day's search, as it got darker
and the Northern Lights began to spin their web of beauty
across the Arctic skies to the north of us and on our
starboard side, we saw ahead of us, and in the distance, the
glow of a huge and fierce fire reflected on the clouds. The
skipper ordered the slight alteration of the Gem's course
which put the ship's head pointing straight towards it. Down
below in the bowels of the Gem, the chief engineer and his
staff of firemen were banging coal onto the fires and the
engines began to pile on the revs. We could feel her shaking
as if with excitement, as if she herself was trying to get us
to the scene as soon as was possible.
Even moving along at twelve or thirteen knots was pushing
it for the old girl, and it was almost dawn before we saw the
cause of the blaze at a distance of some six or seven miles
ahead of us. It was easy to make out that the fire was on a
tanker, and even though the flames appeared to be dying down
a bit as we closed up to it and the smoke was being blown
away over her stern, we could see that her hull was red hot,
white hot in some places, that she had been ravaged by the
fire from end to end and that there would be no hope of
finding anyone alive onboard her.
Skipper Mullender decided that he would make a wide sweep
in a big circle right around the burning vessel to see if
there were any U-boats waiting in the area, waiting to put a
torpedo into any unsuspecting ship that came along, for this
is what they used to do. We were all wide awake; there had
been no need to call all hands on deck, for they had been at
their action stations for most of the night cat napping where
they stood and keeping a good look-out by spelling each
other. I myself had taken over the wheel and throughout the
night had spelled it with Tim Coleman, until we got close to
the casualty; then I took over and stayed at the wheel for
some considerable time, which helped to keep me from thinking
too much about what could happen in a situation like the one
we were in now.
Two wide Asdic sweeps were made of the surrounding area,
with no sign of either the enemy or small boats or rafts with
survivors in, so we ran in to have a look at the derelict and
burning tanker, ostensibly to see if we could put a name to
her. But no name could be seen; all the paint had been burnt
off her and she was still red and white hot. As the ship
rolled in the swell, and the hot glowing plates touched the
water, we could hear them 'hissing' and see the steam rising
from them. There was a hole in her port side, just forward of
amidships that two double decker buses could have been driven
through side by side. It amazed us that she was still afloat,
and our thoughts were that the crew must have all died
instantly in the first blast of the scorching heat created by
the explosion of the torpedo. They must have been incinerated
without having a chance to get away in their small boats and
rafts. What a horrible death this must have been, yet a much
quicker end than the lingering one of being adrift in open
boats or rafts for days on end, dying one by one through the
cold, hunger, thirst or through the loneliness of it all. I'm
pretty sure that none of us in the Gem looking at that sight
would have swapped places with a tanker man. In our opinion
they must have had some guts to sign on for the long and ever
dangerous trips that they made. I have seen tankers carrying
aviation fuel, when they were hit by a tin fish, just vanish
in a puff of smoke, one minute a ship moving along in station
with others, then an open space with just a pall of smoke
drifting away over the sea.
The skipper was satisfied that we would learn no more
about her, and said that we would carry out a further search
for survivors, though he thought that it was unlikely that we
should find any. He used the burning tanker as a fix, and we
carried out our search by going in ever widening circles
around her. This we did during the whole of that day, until
we could see her no more and until darkness came upon us
again.
The following dawn broke out over a dull grey sea. It
looked greasy as we used to say. There was a long heavy
rolling swell, of the type that if we had another ship in our
company, would appear to swallow one of us up, while the
other looked as if it were about to be marooned on the top of
a moving mountain. This was the morning of 24th May 1941, and
unknown to the ship's company, throughout the night heading
towards us at a speed of some thirty or more knots, were
those two big ships of the German navy.
The wireless operator had known but had been told by the
skipper not to spread it around. Then after breakfast he let
it be known that the pride of the British Navy, the
HMS Hood,
while chasing the Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen through the
Denmark Straits had been sunk, and that from reports coming
in, they were being shadowed by other ships of the fleet. I
doubt if any of us would have slept so soundly if we had
known of this. I'm certain that I would not have done, but
like the others when darkness had come and many of us were
allowed to go below, I was finding it very difficult to keep
my eyes open owing to staring at the compass card for most of
the day, and the horizon through binoculars for the rest of
it on the lookout for some sign of survivors.
I slept fully dressed as always when at sea, with the old
blown up sausage-shaped lifebelt fastened around my waist,
and in my pockets packets of cigarettes and a few bars of
chocolate. If we had to abandon and we got the chance to get
away, these things would have come in handy. I think we all
knew that if a tin fish were to hit us from some U-boat short
of a bigger target, not many of us would stand a cat in
hell's chance of getting away from the ship. Those who were
caught down below would stay there and go with her on her
last trip, that's for sure. However on this 24th May 1941, we
had the news broken to us about the loss of the Hood and that
these two ships were heading at least in our general
direction. From what the wireless operator passed on to us in
the wheel house, the Admiralty were continually sending out
coded signals as to the course and position of the Bismarck,
and this was why we were altering course every so often.
I was ordered to take the leading seaman with me and to
check over the two small boats and the rafts, put extra
blankets and water in them, as well as some more food and a
jar of rum. My thoughts at this point were that if we were
going to lose the Gem, then it was no good losing all of the
crew with her. Surely some of us would have the chance to
survive even if we saw the Bismarck in the distance though I
believed that a near miss from one of her salvos would have
turned the Gem over.
It was passed down from the top bridge that a signal had
been sent to the Gem from HMS Suffolk
(above - Navy Photos), ordering the Northern
Gem to close the Bismarck on such and such a course, and to
attack her at all costs. In spite of all that the signal
implied we all burst out laughing; to us it was like setting
a push bike against a Tiger tank. We would not have got close
enough to let off our vintage four inch gun at such a big
target. The mind boggles at the thought and yet it helped to
cheer us up no end that day.
We talked of the loss of the mighty Hood, and the
possibility that our end could be near. I think we all made
our peace with our Maker in our own individual ways. The men
of the sea are a religious lot regardless of what they say in
public. I have myself thanked God many times while at sea
both in peace and war, and believe that a prayer at the right
time of stress has brought me through many of the frightening
incidents that I have been involved in. I am not a deeply
religious man, but faith was all that we had to hang on to,
and on this occasion, I truly believe that it brought us and
the old Gem through once again, because we were told later
that the Bismarck that day passed some fifty or so miles away
to the east of us. Soon after this we were ordered to make
our lonely way back to Belfast. Apart from the burning
tanker, we did not see another vessel from leaving the
outward bound convoy, until we got near to the Irish Coast.
We had been at sea for eighteen days, twelve of these being
spent all on our own.
This had been a trip when nerves and imagination played a
big part, and strong wills had been needed to conquer the
fear that was akin to us all if the truth was spoken. Not
only on this trip but on many others during my four years on
the Gem, I have lain on the bunk in my cabin, and thought to
myself as I heard the water gurgling past the ship's plates,
what would I think or feel for the few seconds or so, before
the explosion of a torpedo that came through the ship's side
and into my berth. Would it leap in and fall across me before
it went bang? I would probably have died of fright instantly.
Then there were the mines, which were no respecter of ships
or persons; they either waited for you to come along, in
'fields' like balloons filled with gas, which floated just
below the surface of the sea and were packed with explosives,
waiting for your ship to run onto them with some part of the
hull, or they just floated partly submerged after breaking
from their moorings. If there was a bit of a lop on the
surface of the sea they were difficult to notice, and many
ships were sunk by floating mines as well as the moored ones.
These thoughts were not always on one's mind, but were
hidden away in the back somewhere, and only surfaced when you
were tired and had been at sea for a long time. After two or
three weeks out there you got to thinking that your luck
could not last much longer. Being on watch at night time was
a bad period, for you often saw things that were not there,
particularly if the ship was on a lone patrol.
During 1941, we were to do many patrols, and go on quite a
few convoy escort jobs both up to Iceland and out into the
wide open spaces of the Atlantic. The weather in the North
Atlantic could be anything, from being like a mill pond, to a
savage and ruthless killer, with huge mountainous seas,
flinging ships all over the place with no regard for their
size. They could overwhelm a large and well founded merchant
ship suddenly without warning, and without any other vessel
in the vicinity being aware of what had taken place. Even if
the calamity had been seen, nothing much could have been done
because every vessel in that area would be fighting
desperately for its own survival. If the weather moderated in
reasonable time then one rescue vessel might be sent back to
see if they could locate any of the crew, but in these sorts
of cases more often than not, nothing at all would be found,
not even a bit of floating wreckage. Yes the sea could be at
times more dangerous than the U-boats and the mines, it could
be tranquil and also treacherous - a proper Jekyll and Hyde.
Hurricanes seemed to be abundant and prolific, especially
in the middle three years of the war, 41, 42, and 43, with
howling winds and huge rolling seas seemingly miles high
accompanied by frequent rain hail and snow which felt like
bullets as it hit you. On watch one was constantly wet
through even though you had on several layers of clothing, on
the top of which you had oilskins and sea boots and a
souwester on your head, with a towel wrapped around
your neck to keep out the water and stop it from getting down
to the inner layers. Coming off watch proved to be just as
bad. Trying to get your wet clothing off while being thrown
from one side of the cabin or mess deck to the other was a
nightmare at times, and on many of these occasions you just
could not be bothered to try. You just turned in to your bunk
as you were, oilskins and all.
When you got into your bunk fully dressed or not, it was
sometimes difficult to stay in it let alone get off to sleep;
it was a fight to wedge yourself in by jamming the knees up
on one side and the back against the other. When it came to
sleep, I was more fortunate than most due to my previous
years of experience in this type of ship. Provided I was
tired enough I could get all the sleep that I required to
recharge my batteries. Being somewhat used to the
unpredictable motions of the vessel helped, but even so it
did not make the situation any more pleasant.
On the other hand of course the weather could be very
beautiful, the sea calm and apart from the obvious dangers of
the war, it could be a grand way of life. I suppose I have
always loved the sea in my own way, and I still do to this
day, getting out in a yacht or an inshore fishing boat for
the weekend with some friends.
Of course we had a light side to our lives, like the time
when a few of us went ashore at Belfast, to celebrate some
now long forgotten event. We'd all had a few too many to
drink, and eventually staggered onboard, and it was some time
later when a wet and bedraggled Charlie Keen came down to the
mess deck. No one had missed him as he slipped into the space
between the ship's side, and the wall of the dock and into
the water. When the rest of us had gone below and it was
quiet on the deck, the sentry on the dock side, walking up
and down on his beat, heard Charlie shouting his head off
down there in the darkness. He got some help from passers by
and got the 'drowning' man onto the deck, cursing and
swearing. Charlie had apparently when he fell into the water,
grabbed hold of a wire that was hung down over the side of
the Gem, and attempted to climb up it. All that happened was
that the more he tried, the more wire was coming over the
side; this was because it was coming off a reel fixed to the
casing of the Gem, under the starboard small boat. You can
imagine what happened when everyone heard about this, they
all fell about laughing. At least he had sobered up a lot
quicker than the rest of us, and later when he realised the
predicament that he had been in and saw it in the light that
we had seen it in, he had a good laugh himself, but of course
with the Gem being the inside ship of a trot of four, it
could have had a tragic end; he could have been crushed
between the dockside and the ship very easily, and if it had
not have been for the sentry no one else would have been
aware of his very dangerous position. Charlie Keen is still
alive and kicking to this day, and I hope that if he reads
this he will remember and have a good laugh over it again.
The year of 1941 drew to a close, and we were told that
the Northern Gem on completion of this convoy that we were
now escorting would go into the dry dock at Belfast for a
boiler clean and a refit, and that all hands were to go on
leave. This cheered us up no end, we had been at sea on and
off for the whole year, with just the odd few days in either
Belfast or Londonderry between each voyage. Nerves tended to
get strained a bit after such long periods, because by being
at sea you were sort of in the front line during the whole of
the time, the enemies being not only the U-boats and the
mines, but also the vast North Atlantic and its variable
weather and moods.
And so we went on leave, and when we returned to Belfast,
we were put in digs with various families in the town. After
a month it was time for us to pack our bags and leave these
good people to return to the ship in order to get back into
the fray once more, and I must say that it was very hard to
say goodbye to people who were almost in tears at the thought
of our near departure, so close had we all become.
Several times during the last month I had been down to the
ship to have a look around to see what was happening to the
old girl. At first it was difficult to make out just what was
going on - all the men who have in the past seen a ship being
pulled to pieces during a major refit will understand. It was
a shambles of machinery, cables and wires, and parts of the
ship were laid about all over the decks and on the quayside,
where also lay the two small boats and their davits just
where they had been dropped. The inside of her looked like an
empty shell, apart from lots of junk piled up here and there;
it was enough to make one weep with despair when you thought
back as to how she looked before she was handed over to all
these perfect strangers who were clambering about, chipping
and painting, hammering and cutting pieces out of her here
and there with oxy-acetylene torches. It always has been and
always will be a mystery to me as to how they managed to
stick all the bits back together again to create order out of
such chaos, but they did, and this time was no exception as
we were to find out.