The Tattie Lads

by Ian Dear

  Eventually the fire petered out, allowing the crew to reboard the ship and begin the long task of making her seaworthy again. Meanwhile, a general signal had been received to weigh anchor and leave the harbour to avoid the blazing oil on the water’s surface. ‘The east end of the harbour was then almost completely covered with oil,’ Gall reported, and when ships from that end had left the harbour, ‘we proceeded to the west end but apparently the vessels there being on the weather side, and unwilling to risk the passage through the burning oil, had decided to remain.’24

  One ship was still anchored in mid-harbour. Her master refused assistance, but as it was not in a very safe berth, the Brigand decided to remain nearby, and when burning wreckage began to drift down on both ships, Brigand took up position ahead of her ‘and by means of jets and sprays succeeded in breaking up the larger patches and extinguishing the smaller ones. The merchant ship was then able to keep her sides clear with her own hoses.’24

  As all the remaining ships in the harbour were clear of the burning oil, Gall decided to moor up for the night, but found the rescue tug was unable to move as the engine’s inlets were choked with debris. His report ended:

  The anchor was dropped, engines rung off and fire hoses placed round the sides. Signal was made then to NOIC reporting defect and requesting services of diver. Nothing could be done for the two bombed merchantmen.24

  Temporary repairs on the Derwent were completed on 21 April. She was towed to Malta where, after further repairs, the St Day took her in tow for Gibraltar in convoy MKS-15. The convoy ran into bad weather, which was too much for the St Day. She was forced into Bône and then had to hand over the Derwent to the more powerful Restive, which took her to Gibraltar. The destroyer was strengthened for the passage to Britain, and on 23 July she was taken in tow by the rescue tug Allegiance, as part of convoy MKS-18.

  Focke-Wulf Condors attacked the convoy west of Cape Finisterre, but Derwent’s commanding officer said the worst enemy was the weather. It deteriorated steadily as the convoy moved north, reaching a climax around midnight on 31 July when two hundred miles west of southern Ireland. The destroyer’s commanding officer wrote in his report:

  A very unpleasant night was spent with the Tug hove-to in a North-westerly heading, with Derwent lying helpless and yawing forty degrees either side of the tow… So great was the force of the wind and sea, that the centre-line bollards, round which the tow was secured with two complete round turns, were buckled and wrenched together.26

  The bollards held, but the Allegiance made little progress and it was not until the morning of 2 August that the Derwent could be turned on to her correct course, and speed slowly increased. By now the convoy was out of sight, though one of its corvette escorts had been detached and was standing by, and on the evening of 4 August the rescue tug entered Devonport with her tow. However, despite the effort involved in getting her to Britain, the destroyer was past repairing, although again the effort had not been totally in vain, as after the war her machinery was sent to the Royal Naval Engineering College, Manadon, for training Royal Navy engineer officers.

  More successful was the outcome of returning the destroyer HMS Marne to Britain after she was torpedoed on 12 November 1942, one hundred and eighty miles west of Gibraltar, and had most of her stern blown off. At the time, she was escorting the destroyer depot ship HMS Hecla and the cruiser HMS Vindictive when a U-boat torpedoed Hecla. The Marne went alongside to assist, but she, too, was torpedoed, causing extensive damage to her stern. She was initially towed by another of the destroyer escorts before the Salvonia, with Jaunty’s help, took her to Gibraltar where temporary repairs were carried out. She was then towed to Britain by the newly commissioned Lend-Lease rescue tug Eminent, a story later covered by Lloyd’s List and Shipping Gazette:

  The weather was bad during most of the voyage, with high seas running, and there were times when the Eminent lost sight of the Marne wallowing in the trough of huge waves. After a week the weather became worse and as the towing wire was chafing badly, the Eminent’s Commanding Officer, Lt W.A. Phillips RNR of Liverpool, decided to heave to. They lost touch with the convoy but a few days later the Eminent and the Marne reached harbour safely, and Marne’s Commanding Officer signalled: ‘Many thanks Eminent for a very good tow in.’27

  Permanent repairs to the Marne, undertaken at the Swan Hunter shipyard on the Tyne, took nearly a year. A new stern was fitted, her turbine machinery was overhauled, a Type 272 radar installed, and other improvements made, and on 23 March 1944, after the usual sea trials, she joined the Third Destroyer Flotilla for operational service, and was then employed escorting Arctic convoys. After the war, she was sold to Turkey and remained in service with the Turkish Navy until 1971.

  As for the Eminent, in her first year of service she steamed nearly a hundred thousand miles and never lost a ship, and her commanding officer was one of several officers in the Rescue Tug Service who was mentioned in despatches for his work during the Normandy landings in June 1944.

  Another damaged Royal Navy warship that survived to have a lengthy career with the help of the Rescue Tug Service was the minelayer HMS Manxman. On 1 December 1942, she was en route for Gibraltar when a U-boat torpedoed her off Algiers. The torpedo struck her on the port side, causing flooding in the engine room and elsewhere, and she immediately took on a twelve-degree list. Initially, she was taken in tow by one of the escort destroyers before being handed over to the Restive, which towed her to Oran. Temporary repairs were made and she was then taken to Gibraltar, arriving there on 18 December. During the next six months, work was carried out to strengthen her sufficiently to return to the UK, and on 23 June 1943 Bustler took her in tow and joined convoy SL-131/MKS-15 to Liverpool. The minelayer spent the next year being repaired, before being sent to join the British Pacific Fleet, but was too late to see any action. She remained in commission as a minelayer, a support ship and a training ship until she was paid off in September 1970.

  On one occasion, rescue tugs and their tows almost outnumbered other ships in a convoy. When XK-11 departed Gibraltar on 5 September 1943, it comprised seven merchant ships, four rescue tugs and three cripples: the minesweeper HMS Fantome, mined off Bizerta the previous May, was towed by the Dutch rescue tug Hudson; the L-class destroyer HMS Lance, badly damaged in a German air raid on Malta the previous April, was towed by the Lend-Lease rescue tug Lariat; and the 7135-ton Ministry of War Transport freighter Fort Babine, which had been damaged by an aerial torpedo, was towed by the Prosperous. The Dutch rescue tug Schelde also sailed with the convoy in case the others needed assistance. It was as well she did so, as the weather was bad, and she had to help tow both Lance and Fort Babine.

  The convoy was routed up the meridian of sixteen degrees west, and given a provisional speed of five and a half knots. This proved optimistic, as for the first five days, in a rising wind and sea, only four and a half knots was achieved. The wind soon reached gale force, and heavy seas began breaking over Fantome’s quarterdeck. This caused an unwelcome crisis, as the dockyard at Gibraltar had secured on Fantome’s quarterdeck two armour plates belonging to the aircraft carrier Indomitable, which had been damaged earlier in the year. The plates had been put there as ballast, and as a convenient means to get them to the UK. They weighed about fifteen tons each, and had been firmly lashed down and secured with wooden chocks, but the breaking seas washed the chocks away and the plates had begun to slide from side to side. Despite all efforts to keep them in place, the top plate broke away and slid over the side, luckily without doing any damage, and only then could the bottom plate be secured. Fantome’s commanding officer recorded:

  At dawn on 12 September, the convoy was not in sight and course was altered to 000 degrees. The wind was now slowly moderating and the convoy was rejoined at 1800. It was noticed that the SS Fort Babine and tugs Prosperous and Schelde were not in company.28

  The next morning, while two hundred and fifty miles south-west of Cape Finisterre, a four-engined Focke-Wulf Cond
or was sighted, and shortly afterwards a Heinkel He 111 bomber appeared. Those aboard Fantome only saw one stick of bombs being dropped, these falling between two of the escorts on the starboard wing of the convoy. But they soon heard that the Condor had bombed Fort Babine, out of sight astern with the two rescue tugs. Two near misses had caused such damage to her hull that her crew were taken off, and she was later sunk by one of the escorts. It was the last successful attack of the war by a Condor.29

  Fantome’s commanding officer concluded his report:

  It is considered that the Master of Hudson handled his ship in a seamanlike manner and showed sound judgment throughout the trip, often under difficult conditions. Hudson is an excellent seaboat.28

  You’d expect nothing less from the Dutch.

  In November 1943, two other Dutch tugs, Zwarte Zee and Roode Zee, towed back cripples, as part of convoy XK-12 from Gibraltar. This divided on 25 November, probably because the rescue tugs and their tows were too slow to keep up. This part of the convoy now became XK-12S, and consisted of Zwarte Zee, towing the 11,065-ton British freighter Essex; Empire Larch towing the 1365-ton British freighter Pinzon; and Roode Zee towing the 5094-ton American freighter Cape Mohican, which had had the bad luck to be torpedoed by an Allied submarine, and each rescue tug had her own trawler escort.

  The Plymouth Command War Diary of 5 December listed convoy XK-12S as being ‘disabled’, which it certainly was, as on 3 December it had been scattered by a north-westerly gale. Zwarte Zee still had the Essex in tow, although she was hardly making any headway. But Roode Zee’s line had parted and her tow was drifting south-west by south; and the Pinzon, too, had parted from Empire Larch, and hadn’t been seen for two days.

  The C-in-C Western Approaches requested the C-in-C Plymouth to deal with the situation, and an air search was arranged for the next day to assist Empire Larch in locating the Pinzon. Zwarte Zee and her escort were ordered to proceed independently, and Roode Zee and her escort were told to do the same once she had reconnected with Cape Mohican. Zwarte Zee and her tow arrived at Falmouth on the morning of 11 December, and the same evening Roode Zee’s escort arrived there too, perhaps having had to seek shelter after being damaged by the storm. Then on the evening of 13 December Roode Zee, accompanied by a different escort, towed Cape Mohican into Milford Haven, but it wasn’t until 14 December that the Pinzon was brought into port by Empire Larch, assisted by Dexterous, which had been sent from Falmouth to assist.30

  The XK convoys continued until May 1945, but the last ones to include cripples were XK-17 and XK-18. The former, which sailed from Gibraltar on 13 June 1944, included Empire Harry and Antic, which were towing the fighter direction ship HMS Palomares, damaged at Anzio. The latter included the 8398-ton RFA tanker Derwentdale, which had been damaged by a bomb during the Salerno landings in September 1943. She was one of those hybrid vessels in which the Royal Navy seemed to specialise, as she had been converted to a landing ship gantry (LSG). She could carry and launch fifteen landing craft, medium (LCM), but could still refuel other ships taking part in the landings. She had been bombed soon after some of her landing craft had delivered US troops to the beaches,31 and had to be towed to Malta by the rescue tug Hengist and then on to Gibraltar. XK-18 left there on 7 August 1944, with Derwentdale in tow by Hesperia, and after arriving at Liverpool, the Hesperia took her to the Tyne for repairs. Later she was given engines from another RFA tanker, and returned to service in 1946.

  Not all cripples were taken to the UK. On 12 January 1942, the K-class destroyer HMS Kimberley was torpedoed and badly damaged aft while operating in support of the Tobruk garrison in Libya. The Brigand towed her into Alexandria, and she then went by stages to Bombay for repairs, and eventually returned to service in 1944.

  Aegean theatre

  By the autumn of 1943, the focus of the war in the Mediterranean an had shifted to the Aegean, where the Germans defeated British attempts to occupy the Dodecanese islands previously held by the Italians. Six destroyers were lost, and several other warships were damaged. This strained the resources of the nearest major British naval base, Alexandria, where the area’s rescue tug, Captive, was based, as were the Brigand and two First World War Resolve-class rescue tugs, Respond and Roysterer.

  In February 1944, the Respond was moved to Malta, but in May the FOIC Levant and Eastern Mediterranean complained to the C-in-C Mediterranean that the shortage of rescue tugs at Alexandria was now acute, remarking that the remaining tugs ‘are so heavily employed that it has been necessary to allow them to exceed their boiler hours to twice the normal and it had been impracticable to take in hand any but very minor defects’. The C-in-C, who had already described the situation as deplorable, strongly concurred with this complaint. He added that Captive – a German tug that had been scuttled at the start of the war and later salvaged – had, perhaps not surprisingly, ‘proved herself unreliable and unhandy’, and concluded that, ‘I am very apprehensive of conditions here during the forthcoming winter unless relief be obtained.’32

  The Treasure Ship

  It was against this background that the Brigand brought off another notable rescue operation alone. On the night of 4 August 1944, the Liberty ship Samsylarna was in convoy from New York to India, when, some thirty miles north of Benghazi, she was hit, so her cabin boy related many years later,33 by an aerial torpedo launched from a lone Italian bomber, which killed one of the ship’s gunners asleep in his hammock slung under the gun platform aft.

  The citation in The London Gazette for the award of the OBE to Samsylarna’s captain for saving his ship, recorded:

  [The] torpedo struck the after-peak tank and the steering gear was put out of action. The engine-room flooded and the ship settled rapidly by the stern. Orders were given to abandon ship, the crew being picked up later by an escort vessel. The following morning the Master reboarded with a skeleton crew… By his skill and determination he succeeded in saving his badly damaged ship and a valuable cargo.34

  What the citation didn’t mention was that the ship carried several tons of silver valued at £1 million, destined for an Indian bank. The story is taken up by the author David Masters:

  The wireless signals drew a quick response from the naval authorities at Alexandria. The tug Brigand put to sea at once to go to the aid of the Samsylarna and arrived three days later at the given position. She found the torpedoed ship was still afloat. Her stern and gun platform were completely submerged, but her forward compartments held her up.35

  Brigand’s commanding officer, Lt David Gall, studied the derelict as he circled round it. She had already remained afloat for three days, and seemed safe enough for another hour or two, as there was still plenty of buoyancy forward to support her, though as Masters wrote:

  There was, of course, always the chance that a bulkhead would collapse under the pressure and take her to the bottom with a rush. This was the risk that anyone boarding her would have to run.35

  The commanding officer called for volunteers to board the vessel, and Gunner JH Baldwin, Leading Seaman JC Little and Able Seaman CE Case all agreed to go. The Brigand was brought alongside the wreck, and the three men leapt aboard. ‘Their strong arms and willing hands,’ wrote Masters, ‘soon hauled a towing wire over and fixed it without much difficulty.’ Subsequently, all three received double shares when salvage money was distributed after the war.36

  But where was the Brigand to take her? Benghazi harbour, thirty-one miles to the south, was too small to accommodate the ship and was, anyway, littered with obstructions. The SNO for Cyrenaica, Commander Evans RN, was stationed at Benghazi and anticipated the rescue tug would choose to take her to Tobruk, but Gall was certain that if he attempted to tow her there, she would sink before Tobruk could be reached. The only chance was to make straight for Benghazi and, despite the rocky coastline, find a place to beach her, and those ashore began a search for a suitable spot. Eventually one was found, which had a sandy bottom that sloped at about the same angle as the ship’s keel. Just as imp
ortantly, there was enough room for the Brigand to manoeuvre the wreck on to the beach. Of course, this had to be done in daylight, but the Samsylarna was too far gone for the rescue tug to make more than three knots and they did not arrive until after midnight.

  As the Brigand approached the coast, Commander Evans boarded her and guided the wreck on to the chosen beach. ‘To find that spot and place her there,’ David Masters wrote, ‘was a fine feat for Commander Evans and the captain of the Brigand to perform. She sat there like a bird in her nest.’

  The ship was pumped out, temporary repairs made her watertight, and the silver was taken ashore under armed guard; and on 24 August the Brigand took her off the beach and started towing her to Alexandria. A storm sprang up – the Gulf of Sirte is a treacherous place for shipping – and the Samsylarna developed a leak. The rescue tug towed her into Tobruk harbour and sheltered there until more emergency repairs had been carried out. She then took her to Alexandria, arriving on 24 September, where, with the help of Roysterer, a place was found for her in the old harbour. She was beached well out of harm’s way, and stayed there for some years, too badly damaged to be worth repairing.

  Notes

  1. www.historicalrfa.org has historical notes on the rescue tugs the Royal Fleet Auxiliary acquired after the war, of which Jaunty was one.

  2. Lloyd’s List and Shipping Gazette, 10 February 1944. Clipping in ADM 199/2165.

  3. ADM 199/1242. The Navy List first shows Osburn as having been awarded the OBE in, or just before, January 1941. The London Gazette has no record of it.

  4. Vice-Admiral Syfret’s despatch on Operation pedestal. See The London Gazette supplement, 11 August 1948, p.4508.

  5. War Diary USS Almaack, 1–30 November 1942 in www.fold3.com

  6. Hull Daily Mail, 1 February 1944, p.3.