by Ian Dear
In March 1941, he was promoted to the acting rank of commander, with the title Commander-in-Charge Rescue Tug Base, Campbeltown (CRTB, Campbeltown, for short). However, where appropriate, he continued to be addressed, and to sign himself, as the Maintenance Officer. Although the CCRT was responsible for recruitment, in practice Martin was in charge of recruiting ratings and the deputy CCRT recruited officers.
Martin remained at Campbeltown until the autumn of 1944, when the doctors judged his health too poor for him to spend another winter in the north. However, they said he was fit enough to take another appointment in the south, and he wrote to a friend that he would accept the post of CCRT if it were offered him – the present incumbent being ‘a nice man personally, but in service matters an idiot. Quite hopeless as an organiser which is his job’5 – but knew this was unlikely. He was right, and in October 1944 he took retirement when it was offered him. He died of a heart attack in April 1945, worn out, no doubt, as so many were, by overwork and the stress of a long and tedious conflict.
In private correspondence Martin wrote how he had been initially received at Campbeltown, and what his work during the previous three-and-a-half years had involved:
As an Admiralty officer, there was a lot of antagonism to my particular department: this has been gradually lived down and I, as one of the oldest naval people here, am taken as a matter of course… Almost the whole of my work here [is] dealing with hundreds of men from all our coasts: the Shetland and the Hebrides to the Scillies; big seaports like Hull, Tyneside and Glasgow; fishing ports like Lowestoft and Brixham; lightermen and bargemen from the Thames – taking them, unused to any discipline and helping them to find their feet in the Navy, and, so far as one can, in their personal troubles – and I think I may say that it has been successful.6
Even Martin could not have foreseen the importance the Rescue Tug Service was to attain, and its rapid expansion. It became so much part of the war at sea that in 1944 an American war correspondent was prompted to write of ‘a new type of naval vessel – the British fighting escort tug’, adding that no naval action or landing operation would have been attempted without it, and that it was ‘as much a factor in winning the Battle of the Atlantic as the corvette or escort carrier’.7
Although Martin’s plans for a Rescue Tug Service had taken wing, much had changed since he had started to develop it. By 1939, steam propulsion (coal- and oil-fired) was giving way to diesel, though the first British diesel-powered rescue tug was not launched until 1942 after diesel engines became available. This gave them greater endurance and increased power, so necessary with the Battle of the Atlantic being waged across the whole width of that ocean. Extra power was also needed, because the average size of merchant ships had doubled in twenty years, from 2300 tons to 5250,8 though the average size of those in Atlantic convoys must have been much larger.
The conflict also became truly global, with rescue tugs being based wherever convoy routes attracted U-boats. By 1945, they were stationed in places as far apart as Newfoundland, Iceland, Gibraltar, South and West Africa, and the West Indies, and were part of the British naval contribution to the Pacific War. The geographical scene had changed, too. Most of Ireland had gained independence in 1922 and remained strictly neutral during the war, denying bases for rescue tugs. And once the Germans had overrun France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway, the coastlines of these countries became the springboard for not only U-boats, but for hostile aircraft and the fast German torpedo boats, or Schnellboote, which the British called E-boats.
Schnellboote harassed the coastal convoys up Britain’s east coast so frequently that the area became known as ‘E-boat Alley’. The English Channel was even more dangerous, and commercial traffic ceased to transit it after a convoy passing through it in July 1940 was heavily bombed. From then on, all Atlantic convoys were routed to the north of Ireland, which was why Campbeltown was chosen as the rescue tugs’ main base.
Iceland, a one-time Danish colony, now became an important Allied base for waging war against the U-boats and for assembling the Russian convoys to Murmansk. When the Germans occupied Denmark in May 1940, British and Canadian forces occupied the island before US Marines took over responsibility for defending it in July 1941. Stanley Butler, a rescue tug engineer officer, had some interesting comments about Iceland, and from his description it could not have been a popular place to be stationed, especially in winter:
There was only daylight from mid-morning until mid-afternoon. The seas around there were awful, with bad weather being swept by a never-ending succession of gales. In winter these gales take the form of snow-laden blizzards cutting visibility to nil. The northwest of Iceland is just inside the Arctic Circle, so additional hazards are ice floes, icebergs, pack ice, and even other shipping can give a ship’s captain some sleepless nights. To make matters even worse, compass needles could not be trusted on the approach to Reykjavik harbour, or south of the entrance to Hvalfjord. The high iron content of nearby mountains caused magnetic distortion.9
It was certainly the appalling weather and tricky navigation conditions that caused the loss of the Assurance class rescue tug Horsa in March 1943. At the time she was towing to Seydisfjord the fore part of SS Richard Bland, a Liberty ship that had been cut in half by a torpedo while in convoy RA-53. Forced to abandon the hulk, which had become almost uncontrollable, she subsequently ran aground and became a total loss. The Court of Enquiry exonerated her commanding officer, Lt Ian Taylor RNR, and more will be heard of him later. The admiral commanding Iceland commented that Taylor had ‘made a most gallant attempt’ to tow the remains of the Liberty ship. This ‘difficult operation was carried out in appalling weather conditions, but even so he hung on until he was certain that the tow would drift ashore on a beach where salvage would be possible’.10
More effective U-boats
By 1939, the U-boat had a much longer range than its First World War counterpart, and had more sophisticated weaponry and communications systems. Because of its superior range, the type VIIA and its later variants – the roman numerals defining the different types went up to XXIII – could remain on patrol much longer; and with the collapse of France in June 1940 were able to be based much closer to the Atlantic convoy routes.
U-boats also had more sophisticated help in guiding them to their targets. Aircraft could vector them on to convoys or individual ships; and ‘wolf-pack’ tactics – a number of U-boats co-ordinated by U-boat headquarters in France to attack a convoy simultaneously – were used with devastating effect. And though much has been quite rightly written about the brilliant work at the British government’s Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park in deciphering the U-boat’s Enigma signals, it should not be forgotten that B-Dienst, the German naval cryptanalysis service, also had its successes, especially early on. It broke both the British naval ciphers and the British Merchant Navy code, and this added to Allied convoy losses, and made the Battle of the Atlantic as much a battle of wits as it was of technological innovation and matériel superiority.
Although convoys were instituted immediately once the war began, stragglers and rompers – those that dropped behind a convoy, or ahead of it through failing to take evasive action with the rest of a convoy – gave the U-boats plenty of targets. So, too, did the independently routed ships, which relied on their speed, generally at least twelve knots, to keep them safe. In any case, early on there were not nearly enough convoy escorts, either in the air or at sea, and ASDIC (or sonar as the US Navy called it), a British anti-submarine device for detecting submerged submarines, did not initially produce the results expected of it.
In fact, so weak at first were the Royal Navy’s anti-submarine measures, and the toll on Allied shipping so great, that U-boat commanders called the months between April and October 1940 ‘the Happy Hour’, a description they were to use again when they attacked ships along the eastern seaboard of the United States after that country entered the war in December 1941. It was only the advent of mo
re and better escorts; the use of anti-submarine devices such as centimetric radar and ‘huff-duff’ (high-frequency direction finding);11 the efforts of Bletchley Park; and the closure of the mid-Atlantic air gap, that finally swung the battle in the Allies’ favour.
Other threats
The U-boat was the principal threat to commercial shipping but not the only one. Aircraft, rarely a direct danger in the First World War, now proved to be a constant hazard, especially before the introduction of escort carriers, catapult aircraft merchantmen (CAM) and merchant aircraft carrier (MAC) ships gave convoys some kind of air cover. But after aircraft were withdrawn to support the German invasion of the USSR (Operation barbarossa) in July 1941, those that remained never posed the same threat to Atlantic and North Sea convoys, though they sank and damaged many more ships in the Mediterranean.
Mines, too, had advanced technologically and were a far greater menace in the Second World War, though degaussing did help protect ships from the German magnetic mine.12 Nevertheless, mines only accounted for 6.5 per cent of Allied shipping losses and aircraft for 13.4 per cent, while U-boats were responsible for almost 70 per cent.13 German surface ships, which had some success early in the war, would have accounted for the balance.
Starting up again
On 20 September 1939, the Director of Sea Transport, a member of the TDC, spelt out in a memorandum the paucity of resources available to it. On the day Britain had entered the war, there were only five commercial tugs in British ownership powerful enough to be used as rescue tugs: Superman, Seaman, Englishman, Salvonia and Neptunia. However, Neptunia, one of the country’s most modern ocean tugs, had already been sunk by a U-boat,14 and by 1944 only Salvonia was listed as being powerful enough to operate in the open ocean in any weather (see Appendix for the three different categories). It was not much to build on, and no one could have foreseen that the number of rescue tugs would rise to eighty-five by the end of the war in Europe, and that the personnel would have increased from fifty-four officers and three hundred and eighteen ratings in 1941 to six hundred and four officers and one thousand six hundred and two ratings in 1944.15
In the same memorandum, the Director of Sea Transport ruled that two of the four surviving tugs should be reserved for heavy coastal towage. If they were allocated to rescue work, ‘it should only be on the understanding that they would be withdrawn at short notice for general towage requirements’, showing that some of the lessons that had been learnt had been forgotten, and that the director appeared to have his priorities all wrong.
Ten days later, another memorandum was circulated within the Admiralty, which announced that the Rescue Tug Service was being reformed under the Director of Trade Division (DTD); laying out the duties of the CCRT, who until August 1942 was Captain the Hon. Walter Seymour Carson RN (ret.); and announcing that rescue tugs had been stationed at Falmouth and Campbeltown, and that one would be available for rescue work in the Thames.16
The same month, as a stop-gap until the Service was properly organised, flag officers and NOICs were instructed to make arrangements for tugs in their particular area to be ready to render immediate assistance locally, but this was soon cancelled as it was uneconomical to have hired tugs standing by all the time, especially as many were of limited range and sea-going ability. Instead, a scheme was started at the main ports for tug owners to pool their resources and keep a duty tug available. By doing this, tugs were used on a commercial basis and there was no waste of public funds.
During 1940, the situation did slowly improve. On 8 February a confidential Admiralty fleet order (CAFO) announced that a number of ocean-going tugs were being taken up from various sources and would be stationed at the ports closest to the areas where enemy submarines or aircraft were most active. In addition to Falmouth and Campbeltown, these were Milford Haven, Kirkwall, Rosyth, Humber, Harwich, Dover and Portsmouth. It also announced that two inspectors of rescue tug equipment had been appointed, one of whom would have been EG Martin. One was to be based at Falmouth, who would cover Plymouth and Portsmouth Commands; the other at Hull would be responsible for the Nore and Scottish Commands. They were to forward to the Admiralty monthly reports on the state and efficiency of the equipment of rescue tugs, and report on the progress of those being built and fitted out.17
The CAFO also confirmed that rescue tugs currently under commercial management would be eventually armed and commissioned by the Admiralty – in fact, some already had been. Once commissioned, rescue tugs would act as tenders to the depot at the bases to which they were attached. As in the First World War, they were not to be used outside harbour for anything but rescue work unless Admiralty permission had been granted; and only tugs fitted with W/T would be allowed to sea for rescue work.
The problem was that following the loss of Neptunia, civilian crews had become reluctant to go to sea unless their tugs were armed and escorted. This must have hastened the Admiralty’s statement on 12 October 1939 that a proposal to start arming and commissioning suitable tugs had been approved. Escorts could not be guaranteed, but an armed trawler, equipped for anti-submarine warfare (ASW), normally accompanied a rescue tug, as they had done in the previous conflict. However, by January 1940, Englishman and Seaman had still not been armed.
Crews, all volunteers, were again engaged under the T.124T Agreement, but as it was drafted along the lines of the Merchant Navy form of a Ship’s Articles of Agreement, war risk money was paid on top of Merchant Navy rates of pay. This gave T.124T ratings a higher rate than RN ratings serving in the same ship or base. This caused a lot of resentment and is still remembered today for the antagonism it caused. However, it does seem that RN ratings aboard the commissioned rescue tugs – specialists such as gunners, wireless operators and signalmen – did sometimes receive preferential treatment, as in some rescue tugs they ate in the petty officers’ mess. Small compensation one would have thought, but of course if Merchant Navy rates of pay had not been offered there would have been precious few volunteers. In any case, according to the deputy CCRT in a post-war article (see below), this anomaly was later corrected.
There were other differences between the two services, insignificant in the larger scheme of things, but an irritant nonetheless. Being on Merchant Navy articles, T.124T ratings were the only branch of the Royal Navy not to carry a hammock and bedding, but were issued with bedding on joining a ship or barracks, which was returned on leaving. However, as T.124T rating Jim Williams discovered when returning to Britain in a naval troopship, there was no spare bedding for passengers; instead he had to sleep on a bare canvas bunk, using his kitbag as a pillow and his topcoat as a blanket, and once Gibraltar was reached he had to sleep fully clothed to keep warm.18
There were also complaints in the newspapers about the unfairness with which Merchant Navy personnel were treated compared with those serving in the Royal Navy. One letter writer said that though he had been in the Rescue Tug Service for nearly four years, and wore the uniform of a naval petty officer, it appeared that on his release from the Service, he would not be entitled to any of the gratuities naval ratings were entitled to. Nor did the Admiralty give a grant to buy civilian clothing, though there were so many complaints that this was later reversed. In the same newspaper, the wife of a member of the Rescue Tug Service and the mother of five children, with a sixth on the way, wrote: ‘With reference to your appeal for an extension of privileges enjoyed by the regular forces to men of the Merchant Navy, may I suggest that they be extended also to their wives?’ Her applications for a grant and child allowance had both been turned down because her husband was in the Merchant Navy, not the Royal Navy.19
There were sartorial differences, too, as Fred Radford recalled when his rescue tug went to the assistance of a Royal Navy frigate damaged by a mine:
When we arrived on the scene our skipper, Tim Bond, stood on the wing of the bridge to take stock of the situation. He had an old woolly hat on, a thick-knitted jersey and a pair of clumpers, which are cut down sea-boots. Th
is was normal for him, even though he was a Lieutenant-Commander RNR. On the bridge of the frigate the skipper, an RN lieutenant, was in full uniform plus a duffel coat and they began having a discourse about the situation; our skipper with his strong Hull accent and the RN skipper in clipped, cultured English. They were both using loud hailers and we could hear every word. There seemed to be some difference of opinion and the last thing we heard was Tim Bond saying, ‘I’m running this bloody job, not you.’ Anyway, we connected up without incident and towed her into Loch Foyle.20
A spat about an article by the commanding officer of a minesweeper, HMS Jason, also raised hackles. It appeared in the Admiralty’s Weekly Intelligence Report (WIR) of 31 January 1941 and was called ‘A Tiresome Tow’. It described the difficulties the minesweeper had had the previous September in assisting a British steamer, SS Harpenden, which had been broken in two by a torpedo some three hundred miles west of Inishtrahull, Ireland’s most northerly island. The Jason had taken part of her in tow, and when the rescue tugs that subsequently appeared refused to take over, the writer described one of them as ‘haughty’.21
When the aristocratic CCRT – he was the son of an earl – read this, he leapt to the defence of the Rescue Tug Service:
Many criticisms and gibes are made in this story at the conduct of two tugs which, it is known in the section, were HM tug Marauder and Dutch tug Schelde.
The remarks made are not borne out by official reports received and in any case it is submitted that sneering remarks on the part played by other HM ships or any commercial ship taking part in any operation are undesirable in a document such as WIR, especially when the ships concerned are Merchant Service manned and therefore may need encouragement and education towards service standards.21
