The Tattie Lads

by Ian Dear

  The captain’s actions definitely prevented any chance of finding the other culprit and any stolen property and, with my own knowledge and those of my officers, I am firmly convinced that only two men entered the accommodations, the rest including the officers had far too much work to do.47

  This was a rather different version from the Dutch captain’s, who reported ‘wholesale looting’, but then he had just lost his ship and could be excused some hyperbole. The Prudent’s commanding officer concluded:

  I personally was on the decks all the time. It is an impossibility in the circumstances and conditions to keep every member of the crew under supervision and proceed with the essential job of trying to salvage the vessel. The rating in question has been punished by 14 days No. 11 and 12 [extra work and stoppage of leave] and been severely warned. His statement that the room he was in had everything of value taken from it and he thought the rest was left being, I think, the truth on account of the value of the articles on him.47

  Reports of the whole episode was sent to the Admiralty, but from the correspondence it seems their Lordships were far more concerned about the corvette captain’s irregular behaviour in forbidding the ship’s captain to return to his ship, and that he should have known that HM warships no longer claimed salvage on a vessel damaged by war risks. He was therefore acting entirely without authority and the C-in-C South Atlantic had been asked to point this out to him. ‘If this officer had been serving in the Royal Navy,’ the Admiralty informed South Africa’s High Commissioner in London, ‘he would have incurred an award of their Lordships’ displeasure.’48

  When the South African naval forces authorities received this information, they passed the buck and suggested the Admiralty take any necessary disciplinary action. So almost a year after the incident, the Admiralty wrote to the C-in-C Eastern Fleet, under whom Freesia’s commanding officer was then presumably serving, ‘to request you to convey to this officer an expression of My Lords’ displeasure’. One would have thought that the officer would not have lost any sleep over this quaint admonishment.

  Another Prudent story illustrates the naval habit of ‘acquiring’ anything that appeared to have been abandoned and could come in useful. At the time, the rescue tug was on her way home from Addu Atoll in the Maldive Islands:

  On the voyage she called in at Aden to take on fuel, water, and stores. Arriving in the morning they tied up to an oil tanker in the middle of the harbour and were set to sail in the late afternoon. In the early afternoon some of the crew were able to watch an elderly gentleman sailing about the harbour in a very smart skiff. He is reported as ‘making a very professional job of it considering he was three sheets to the wind’. He did, however, manage to pass a line to the tug and make his way onto the tanker. At sailing time the Second Mate Rolf Andreasen reported to the bridge that the sailing boat was still tied alongside and was told by the skipper (Tom Pickering) to use his own discretion about it, and the Prudent duly set off to the next port of call, Port Said. After transit of the Suez Canal they received a signal: ‘Request whereabouts of the Harbour Master’s Sailing Skiff’, and it soon transpired that the skiff had been firmly stowed on board Prudent. Fortunately another tug was in Port Said on its way to Aden so the transfer of the boat was made with suitable apologies.49

  As for mutiny, well, as will be seen, the behaviour of some of the crews of the Dutch rescue tugs could have been construed as such, but was not, probably because the Admiralty knew they were too valuable to lose. However, the incident witnessed by Cliff Hubbard, a petty officer aboard the Assurance class Assiduous, initially looked as if it might develop into something more serious than a drunken confrontation:

  We had many long slow trips, with heavy tows across the Indian Ocean and beyond, so were at sea for long boring periods. Consequently when we were able to go ashore with pay built up in our pockets and plenty of pent up energy, and we always had a good time. On one such occasion we arrived at Trincomalee, Ceylon, and off we went on shore leave. We had a good time and my pal and I were on our way back, along the long winding road to the jetty, when we were nearly mowed down by a speeding jeep driven by a Naval Patrol. We briefly described their parenthood, and carried on back to the ship.

  On arriving at the Assiduous, there was the offending jeep. It had been sent to sort out an incident involving some of our crew who in a merry state had tried to steal the local fire engine. The patrol went straight to the only officer on board, who was in his usual state soaked in gin (the others were all merrymaking ashore) and gave the patrol permission to arrest and take ashore some of our crew. The lads were having none of this, so the patrol was thrown off the ship.

  Next a truckload of rifle carrying sailors had arrived and were lined up facing the Assiduous, so it must have been classed as a mutiny. The crew was in high spirits facing up to them from the ship, offering to take them all on. My pal and I in our petty officers’ uniforms now arrived on the scene and were allowed on board, where we learned all about the incident and as the officer was not available senior crew members were wondering what to do. Then a staff car arrived and some bigwig got out in his ‘Whites’ as he had come straight from an official engagement. He and his minders went without a word straight to see the officer. Shortly afterwards he returned, spotted my uniform, came to me, and said quietly: ‘Let them quieten down and encourage them to go below and get a good night’s sleep.’ The shore party finally left and the mutiny was over.50

  Notes

  1. See Mowat F. Grey Seas Under. Michael Joseph; 1959.

  2. Records of the Tug Distribution Committee meetings, 1939–45, are in MT 163/152.

  3. EG Martin’s service records, 1939–45, show that he was borne on the books of HMS President, the London base ship for RNR and RNVR officers. The Navy List lists him as being attached to the Admiralty’s Trade Division but on the establishment of HMS Nimrod, which was the address he used when he ran the Rescue Tug Office at Campbeltown. See also correspondence of CCRT and Second Sea Lord in ADM 199/1238, dated 13/3/41 and 20/3/41.

  4. ADM 1/16594.

  5. Letter to HE West, 16 July 1944. Courtesy of the Martin family.

  6. Ibid., 13 March and 17 April 1944. Courtesy of the Martin family.

  7. Davidson B. ‘Warships in Dungarees’, Yank (6 February 1944): 9.

  8. Van der Vat D. Stealth at Sea. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson; 1994. p.189.

  9. Butler S. Not For Davy Jones. Bound manuscript, p.22. Courtesy of Peter Butler.

  10. ADM 1/15032.

  11. ‘Huff-duff’, or HF/DF (high-frequency direction finding) equipment, could pinpoint a U-boat’s position by measuring the distance and direction of its radio transmissions, however brief.

  12. A process, known as ‘wiping’, that neutralised the magnetism of a ship’s steel hull by momentarily discharging an electric current through a copper cable wound round it. As this had to be repeated at regular intervals, cables were later wound permanently round a ship’s hull, either inside or outside it.

  13. Milner M. ‘Battle of the Atlantic’ in Dear I, editor. The Oxford Companion to World War II. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2005.

  14. The Neptunia, launched in 1938, was lost on 13 September 1939. A U-boat fired a round across the bows of the unarmed Neptunia. When she failed to stop, the U-boat began to pump shells into her. The civilian crew abandoned ship and the U-boat, after failing to torpedo the tug, sank her with gunfire. See www.uboat.net

  15. ADM 199/2165, marked ‘Rescue Tug Section of Trade Division’ and ‘Trade Division History’, and letter to Admiral Sir Eldon Manisty, 30 November 1945.

  16. Ibid., marked ‘Trade Division History’.

  17. CAFO 174 in ADM 182/137. See also ADM 1/10654.

  18. Williams J. Swinging the Lamp. Hull: Riverhead; 2013. p.77.

  19. Hull Daily Mail, 17 February 1943 and 5 November 1945.

  20. Courtesy of Fred Radford, from manuscript of his memoirs.

  21. ADM 199/1238.

  22
. Sea Breezes. Vol. 30, July–December 1960. Liverpool: Charles Birchall & Sons; 1960. pp.448–51.

  23. The Minona was owned before the war by the Coates family. In the 1960s she was acquired by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, who renamed her Kalizma.

  24. Warlow B. Shore Establishments of the Royal Navy. Liskeard: Maritime Books; 2000.

  25. AN 109/304.

  26. Letter to HE West, dated 20 March 1943. Courtesy of the Martin family.

  27. Williams J. Swinging the Lamp, op. cit. p.41.

  28. Ibid., p.69.

  29. Williams J, Gray J. HM Rescue Tugs in World War II. Privately printed. pp.18–21.

  30. From a letter written by Ed Gardner to John Wilson whose father served with Ed in HMRT Destiny. Courtesy of John Wilson.

  31. Close J. Beyond the Horizon. Hull: Riverhead; 2010. p.105.

  32. Clipping from unknown newspaper in DSRTA red file marked HRMT.

  33. Williams J, Gray J. HM Rescue Tugs, op. cit. p.115.

  34. Close J. Beyond the Horizon, op. cit. p.105.

  35. ADM 1/15548. See also Lane T. The Merchant Seaman’s War. Manchester: Manchester University Press; 1990. p.137, where he remarks: ‘Drunkenness was as common amongst officers as it was amongst ratings and it rankled that only officers were allowed alcohol at sea.’

  36. ADM 1/15548.

  37. Courtesy of Fred Radford, from manuscript of his memoirs.

  38. Williams J, Gray J. HM Rescue Tugs, op. cit. pp.95, 97, who state the information came from Lt Tom Hepworth’s memoirs Failed Sea Trials.

  39. Courtesy of Fred Radford, from manuscript of his memoirs, and unidentified newspaper clipping.

  40. German acoustic torpedo. GNAT came from the initials ‘German Naval Acoustic Torpedo’.

  41. ADM 199/2071.

  42. ADM 199/1239.

  43. ADM 1/15548.

  44. Confidential Admiralty Fleet Order in ADM 1/15548.

  45. TDC meeting 26 August 1943 in MT 63/152.

  46. ADM 1/15051.

  47. ADM 116/5301.

  48. ADM 1/15051.

  49. Williams J, Gray J. HM Rescue Tugs, op. cit. pp.65–66.

  50. Towrope; 2009 (winter issue): 14–15.

  3

  Saints and brigands go to war

  On 11 September 1939, the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, informed a meeting of the Shipping Defence Advisory Committee that the enemy had already begun to make serious inroads into British commercial shipping: ‘In the first five days of the war we lost 11,000 tons a day by sinking. Well, that is just a little more than half the [daily] losses in April, 1917, which of course was the peak month in the Great War, the month in which we were forced to envisage extremely ugly possibilities.’1

  The first British U-boat casualty was the 13,465-ton liner SS Athenia with one thousand, four hundred and sixteen passengers aboard. On 3 September 1939 she was en route for Montreal from Liverpool and was some sixty miles south of Rockall when she was torpedoed. One hundred and twenty-eight people died, including twenty-eight American citizens. The British interpreted her sinking to mean that Hitler had abandoned the 1930 London Naval Treaty that stipulated submarines had to abide by certain rules, which included safeguarding the lives of the crew. Though these had been altered in favour of the submarine – a merchant ship could now be sunk without the crew and passengers first being taken to a place of safety if it actively resisted or persistently refused to stop – this had not been the case with the Athenia as she had been attacked without warning.

  In fact, all U-boat commanders had been expressly ordered to obey the treaty’s rules. So Hitler could not have been best pleased to hear the Athenia had been sunk, and the following day he issued an order specifically barring attacks on passenger ships, even if they were escorted. At the same time the German propaganda machine accused the British of sinking the Athenia, a propaganda lie it took a year for the neutral American government to officially rebut.

  The sinking of the Athenia emphasised the urgent need for rescue tugs, but the few vessels suitable for conversion were also needed for harbour work and coastal towing, and could not be released until they could be replaced. So, in late 1939, the Admiralty co-operated with the Ministry of War Transport to institute a new building programme to produce what were essentially commercial tugs. More than a hundred were built, modelled on a dozen different types of existing harbour and coastal tugs, and they all had ‘Empire’ as a prefix to their names, but they should not be confused with the many merchant ships that had the same prefix.

  They were controlled by the Ministry of War Transport, which delegated their management to civilian companies. Because of the acute shortage, a number were commissioned as rescue tugs, and were T.124T manned and flew the White Ensign. The rest flew the Red Ensign and had civilian crews, though the masters and other officers, depending on their qualifications, were normally commissioned into the RNR or RNVR. Their complements also included naval W/T operators, gunners for their armament – mostly an Oerlikon and two Lewis guns – and fifteen-year-olds to act as deck, steward or galley boys, who would have been too young to sign a T.124T Agreement or enter the Royal Navy.

  The largest type was modelled on the 135 ft, 487-ton Englishman, which the Admiralty had requisitioned at the start of the war. Clelands of Willington and Goole Shipbuilding yards built thirteen of this type, and the earliest ones had full Englishman specifications, but later ones depended on what was available. This also applied to the other types for it was impossible to standardise the machinery or boilers and the wartime scarcity of materials meant that scantlings were reduced to a minimum, and a strict check was kept on modifications.

  The first of the Englishman type to be launched, in January 1941, was Empire Larch, followed by Empire Oak on 15 March 1941. By that time, the shortage of rescue tugs was so acute that Empire Oak was immediately equipped as one, as by the time she joined convoy OG-71 in August 1941 she was armed with a twelve-pounder gun and two Hotchkiss machine guns. The Gibraltar-bound convoy comprised twenty-two merchant ships and eight escorts. Later called the ‘Nightmare Convoy’,2 it left Liverpool on 13 August 1941 and was first attacked off the coast of Portugal six nights later by several U-boats, which had been homed in on the convoy by shadowing Focke-Wulf bombers. They torpedoed three ships and one of the escorts, and Empire Oak, at the rear of the convoy, picked up seventeen survivors. ‘We got all the men on board without mishap,’ the master, Captain FE Christian, later wrote in his report, ‘although there was a big sea running and it was a dark night. We used white cotton heaving lines to pick up these men, so that they could see them in the darkness, and they remarked later how useful this had been.’3

  Three nights later, the rescue tug was herself torpedoed, and only six of her crew of twenty, and eight of the seventeen survivors from the earlier attack, were rescued. Altogether ten ships were sunk, including two of the escorts, the rest of the convoy being ordered into Lisbon by the Admiralty, which some thought an ignominious retreat. Altogether nearly four hundred lives were lost, including twenty-two Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) personnel and a nursing sister from the liner SS Aguila, sunk on the first night. As a result of this tragedy, the Admiralty immediately reversed its orders forbidding female naval personnel from travelling aboard HM warships, and from that time they were only transported in them.

  Early losses and successes

  A possible source for purchasing large ocean-going tugs was Holland, which had a worldwide reputation for ocean salvage, but early on it was neutral and intended to remain so if it could. Instead, the TDC started negotiations to charter Dutch tugs with their civilian crews for use outside the war zone – which would have released some British tugs for war work – but these came to nothing when Holland was overrun in May 1940.

  The TDC had better luck when it scoured British shipyards, for it discovered two tugs had been laid down for the South Africa Railways and Harbour Administration Board: the 620-ton, 156 ft sister ships Theodor
Woker and TH Watermeyer. These were requisitioned with the approval of the South African government, the former after she had already started on her delivery voyage. They were given T.124T crews and flew the White Ensign, but were returned to South Africa in 1941/42.

  An early assignment for Watermeyer, as she was renamed, was to assist Lord Louis Mountbatten’s destroyer HMS Kelly, after she had been torpedoed by an E-boat in the North Sea on 9 May 1940. She was towed by another destroyer until Watermeyer arrived just after dawn on 12 May to take her to the Tyne, arriving there that evening. By then the Kelly had been towed or hove-to for ninety-one hours,4 and had been under constant air attack the entire time. For the crew of Watermeyer, it must have been an interesting introduction to rescue work.

  This was not the only time Lord Louis needed the assistance of a rescue tug – though undoubtedly brave, he was rather accident-prone. In November 1940, he was aboard the destroyer HMS Javelin as Captain ‘D’ of Fifth Destroyer Flotilla when she had her bow and stern blown off by an encounter with German destroyers in the South-Western Approaches. Forty-six of her crew were killed. Her remains – just 155 ft of her original length of 353 ft – were towed into Plymouth by the rescue tug Caroline Moller (ex-St Mabyn). The operation was also harassed from the air, and took more than thirty hours.5

  Theodor Woker had an even earlier initiation into rescue work. Launched on 25 May 1939, she answered the Athenia’s distress signals while on her way to South Africa. She helped pick up survivors, and returned with them to the Clyde, where she was promptly requisitioned and renamed Stalwart.6 She then took part in the Dunkirk evacuation of May–June 1940 and, along with two Saint class rescue tugs, St Olaves and St Clears, survived the hazards of towing lighters to the beaches to pick up troops. But German aircraft sank two others of the Saint class, St Abbs and St Fagan.