by Gray, Gordon
A North Sea storm sends the seas over the bows of HMS Keppel.
‘May Day May Day May Day’ crackled faintly from the bridge VHF loudspeaker. Instantly everyone on the bridge was silent and alert. We strained to make out the details but could not. We called the Wireless Room to pick up the call and reply if the other ship could hear us. We passed the details to the coastguard. The call came from a Scottish fishing vessel, which was in serious difficulties somewhere well to the north. We, therefore, headed off in that direction to try and see if we could help in the search. Other ships were nearer but we still responded. This was almost into the wind and sea, which were coming from the northwest. Once the wind had been blowing at Force 9 for a length of time, down the length of the Norwegian Sea and the North Sea, the waves settled into a more regular rhythm and pattern but they also grew in height. We watched from the bridge as the next wave rolled towards us, its crest level with the bridge. As the ship slipped through the trough the bows dipped under the waters of the next wave, the sea rolling gently over the bows, trying to push her down. The ship then fought back as her buoyancy caught and threw off the water on her bows sending a mass of water rushing back along the fo’c’sle to smash against the front of the superstructure. She rose strongly, lifting us up to the top of the wave. The sky was an opaque mist and the horizon a mass of white spray where the crests had been blown off the wave tops and swept horizontally across the top of the sea. The wind had become a screaming, vicious roar as it tore past the ship. So the weather continued for at least another two days. Somehow we hung on. Watches were changed and we got what sleep we could, wedged hard in our bunks, knees against one side and backside against the other. Luckily, the bunks were deep-sided and we had proper bunk boards that fitted onto the front edge so we did not fall out. The galley was closed for all normal meals and we were reduced to eating ships biscuits and the occasional ‘pot mess’.
We rode the seas by steering a course at about 30 degrees off from the wind. In this way we lessened the physical impact of the waves and the motion of the ship as the 30- and 40-foot-high waves rolled by. The bridge was asking the engines for 14 knots of speed but the ship could only make good 4 or 5 knots due to the seas and weather. There was nothing we could do but keep going as by this stage turning round across the huge seas would have been very dangerous.
As the days went on there was still no positive news on the fishing boat and a search was continuing up north. Our ship gradually took more and more damage. One of the emergency sound powered telephones rang on the bridge. I picked it up. ‘Bridge.’ ‘Sir this is Leading Seaman Jones down aft, in the after seamans mess. The Forth Bridge has been knocked off its mounting and we cannot get forward.’ ‘Stay in the mess while we check it out,’ I replied. The chief shipwright went to have a look. ‘They are right. It is unsafe to use as it could go over the side at any time. We cannot do anything about it in this weather, as if I put a man out there we will lose him,’ he reported. There were two sailors’ mess decks situated right down aft. Normally, the sailors could get to the main forward area of the ship, where the galley and bridge areas were, via the open deck. In this weather that was impossible as the decks were constantly being swept by the seas as they rolled by. The alternative route, which they had been using was for them to go up onto the deckhouse roofs and come past the funnel and across a metal girder bridge, called the Forth bridge, that linked the after deckhouses to the forward part of the ship. However, the seas had smashed the securing points for the bridge and it had been shifted off its mountings and lay tilted at a crazy angle so there was no way for the seamen to get forward. So the sailors down aft were ordered to stay there for the time being. In fact they were there for about forty-eight hours surviving on whatever food they had in their mess.
The damage inflicted elsewhere on the ship was heavy. The seas broke open welded joints between the open weather deck and the vertical boiler room casing. Water flooded into the boiler room which needed constant pumping until the seas eased. The anti-submarine mortar launchers, which were normally stowed vertically, were smashed down flat, damaging their gearing in the process. The metal screens around the mortar mounts themselves were smashed and bent out of shape or broken. Then, water started to break through an emergency escape hatch on the fo’c’sle. This was at the forward end of the main passageway, at the top of an escape ladder. There was no way anyone could get out onto the fo’c’sle deck to secure it so we tried to secure it from below with rope lashings and tackles to try and keep it as tightly shut as possible. If that hatch had gone then we could have been in deep trouble as, with the ship burying her bows into the waves, she would quickly have flooded. The ship’s wireless aerials were ripped off, some of the liferafts on the port side were torn off and both of the ships wooden motor boats were badly smashed up on their davits and unusable. The full power of the sea was demonstrated by the effect it had on the paintwork. Right round the forward part of the engine room casing along the main deck, where the seas had rushed and channeled themselves when they rolled aboard, all the paint had been rubbed off by the seas constantly smashing their way along the deck. Whole areas of the bulkhead, many square feet in size, were stripped back to bare metal and left shining like silver.
People used to gather outside the ops room by an aft facing door out onto the upper deck one deck above the main weather deck. From there you could not only get some fresh air into the ship, as the normal ventilation system had been shut down, but you could stand in safety and watch as the seas roared round the side of the superstructure and pounded aboard, raging across the open weather deck and smashing all in their path.
The search for the fishing vessel was finally called off and Keppel was told by the coast guard that she was no longer needed in the search so once the seas allowed we gingerly turned and made our way back to Rosyth. I think the captain, Richard Onslow, had spent at least forty-eight hours on the bridge through the worst of it all. It was only then as we entered the shelter of the Forth that we were able to get out on deck and view the damage. Engineers were trying to plug the broken welds and signalers were rigging temporary aerials. When we got back to Rosyth, the ship spent three weeks in dock for the damage to be repaired and a number of other alterations done to try and prevent it happening again. This was October and the ship’s next two missions over the winter were to Iceland and the Norwegian Arctic.
The Arctic
Arctic Fishery Protection is one of the oldest duties that the RN is called upon to perform. Its history can be traced back to 1586. Lord Nelson himself was a midshipman on HMS Carcass on fishery protection duties in the Arctic in 1773 and later he was captain of HMS Albermarle when she was engaged on fishery protection duties. Nelson has a great deal in common with me as I also learned how to sail on the Norfolk Broads, as did he, and we were both midshipmen in the Fishery Protection Squadron. But that, I am afraid, is where the similarity ends. In the early seventies, Arctic Fishery Protection was still a major activity not least because of the outcry that had sprung up after the loss of three Hull trawlers within one week in January and February 1968. Two were lost off north-west Iceland and one in the Norwegian Sea.
HMS Keppel running down sea off Iceland.
That week, during exceptionally bad gales, blinding snow storms and heavy icy conditions in the area, two trawlers, the Kingston Peridot and the Ross Cleveland were seeking the shelter of Isafjord, a long fjord on the north-west tip of Iceland, as excessive ice built up on their masts and rigging. Even with all hands smashing at the ice with picks and hammers it was impossible to clear such huge amounts of solid ice. Sadly, both ships were overcome by the ice to the point where they became top heavy and capsized. That same week, a third trawler, the St Romanus, disappeared without trace somewhere in the Norwegian Sea. There was only one survivor from all three ships. His name was Harry Edom and he was the mate of the Ross Cleveland. A fourth ship, the Notts County from Grimsby, nearly suffered the same fate but managed to run herself aground
on a beach in Iceland and all but one of her nineteen crew were rescued by the Icelandic coastguard ship Odinn. That week a total of fifty-seven Hull fishermen were lost, including a fifteen-year-old boy, Michael Barnes, who was on his first trip as a galley boy. This series of disasters caused a lot of questions to be asked and provisions were made to prevent it happening again. Protest groups were set up by the wives of the trawlermen. They simply wanted all fishing in the Arctic to be banned in winter. It was an understandable position to take, but it was never going to happen in spite of all the protesters’ strong feelings about the safety of the trawlers, the dock head protests and TV coverage. That same winter week, over 120 men still set sail in trawlers from Hull for the Arctic in search of fish and a good payday.
MT Portia in Isafjord in north-west Iceland. Isafjord was the scene of a double tragedy in the winter of 1967/68 when two Hull trawlers were lost due to heavy ice.
Keppel’s role was to provide support where we could, carry out checks of fishing gear on all ships in the area, not just British, and to monitor the activities of the Icelandic Coast Guard vessels. Two Ministry of Agriculture & Fisheries fishery inspectors sailed with us and we had a naval doctor on board for the trip. To accommodate these extra officers I was turned out of my cabin and sent to join Graeme in the sickbay. This was a small compartment with two bunks, and its own tiny bathroom with a ¾-length bath. This bath had a rickety temporary bunk rigged over the top of it. As one bunk had to be kept free at all times for any emergency, I took one of the two bunks and Graeme decided to take the bath bunk as he was much shorter than me. As we sailed further north, it became clear that the bathroom had no heating in it at all. This was fine in the North Sea but, once we got north, poor Graeme came out in the morning absolutely blue with cold. We tried tying the door open, extra blankets, etc., but none of them worked and Graeme spent the winter freezing.
In late November off northern Iceland there are twenty-four hours of darkness; a slight lightening of the southern sky told us it was about noon, but apart from that it was dark all the time. The inspectors spent time crossing to trawlers by rubber boat to check their nets and the ships’ engineers occasionally went off to assist with repairs if needed. On one occasion the diving team went off to help the Northern Gem free a net that they had got badly tangled round their propeller. This turned out to be a much bigger job that they anticipated and took most of the day. However, a grateful crew did send them back with a boat full of fresh cod. Fresh fish and chips for tea tonight boys!
We were patrolling the Denmark Strait and a large stationary object was reported on the radar about 20 miles away. We set off to investigate. We came up to the edge of the pack ice and could see a large iceberg frozen into the pack ice. For most of us on board it was a first. It was a dark, cloudy and gloomy day and the iceberg sat about a mile away trapped in the pack ice which itself stretched off as far as we could see.
In January, we were sent to northern Norway. As we went north we saw the fantastic beauty of the Lofoten Islands in all their winter glory. Beautiful snow-covered, pointed mountains bathed in sunshine and contrasting with the black, deep, cold waters of the fjords. We stopped in the fishing port of Harstad. It was here that I managed to get myself into trouble again. I was the Officer Of the Day (OOD) so I was not able to go ashore. That evening a cocktail party had been arranged on board for local dignitaries. After the official party, an informal one developed in the wardroom. Graeme and I were grudgingly allowed to attend these functions, but only under sufferance. One of the party guests was a rather nice young lady and I wanted to escort her home. Graeme agreed to take over the duty and the young lady and I left by taxi. I saw her back to her parent’s home just out of the town. They lived in a beautiful, wooden house, which was wrapped in the folds of the deep forest snow and lit by candles in the windows. After a pleasant ‘coffee and chat’ we agreed to meet again the next day when she would show me around Harstad.
When I arrived back on board, it was well after midnight and the quartermaster told me that the first lieutenant wanted to see me in his cabin immediately I got back on board. This could only mean trouble but I could not think of anything that I had done! Dave was sitting at his desk reading. Without looking up he said ‘And where are the OOD keys?’ A jolt ran through me and my day collapsed. I realised instantly that they were still in my pocket. These were the keys to the main keyboard on the ship. They are always kept by the OOD and are never, ever to leave the ship. I had forgotten to hand them over to Graeme in my hurry to get ashore. ‘Oh hell,’ I said ‘I am sorry, Sir, I forgot to hand them over.’ That cost me three days stoppage of leave and killed stone dead any possibility of a budding romance with the young lady. The moral here ‘Don’t let your heart rule your head!’
The next day Simon called Graeme and I down to his office. ‘The Admiralty have written to the ship telling you your next ships for the last six months of your Mids year. Gordon, you are going to HMS Puncheston.’ ‘A sweeper! Great! But where is it based?’ Simon checked some papers. ‘I am pretty sure she is based in Bahrain’, he said. ‘Bahrain! Oh Lord, that is the last place I wanted to go. The Arctic to the Gulf; who says the RN does not have a sense of humour?’ Graeme was going to a minesweeper, HMS Wooton, based in HMS Lochinvar, just across the Forth from Rosyth, so he would be able to continue with the friendships we had developed in Edinburgh and would be much nearer Edinburgh too. ‘You jammy-wot-not Graeme!’
CHAPTER 4
HMS Rhyl
To equip me to be a junior lieutenant in HMS Rhyl, a frigate, I was sent on various specialist courses. One was a Flight Deck Officers Course, which was great fun, and I spent an enjoyable few weeks, with other trainee flight deck officers, at the Royal Naval air station at Portland learning about helicopters and their operation and how to marshal them over a pitching deck and bring them down safely. A lot of this course involved spending sunny days out on a barge that had been converted into a dummy frigate’s flight deck and was anchored out in the middle of Portland harbour. An endless series of helicopters then flew out and practiced landing on the barge under our inexpert guidance as each of us took turns to wave ping-pong-bat-shaped batons at the helicopters trying to get them to do what we wanted them to do and trying to talk to them on the radio.
I also attended the divisional officer’s course. In the Royal Navy, an officer will have a number of senior and junior ratings in his ‘Division’. The DO is responsible for giving the rating regular formal appraisals and writing his official report when he or the DO leave the ship. He also ensures that the ratings are put forward for the appropriate training courses so they get the right qualifications and experience to go before promotion boards. Equally important, the DO is the rating’s point of contact for getting help or advice of any kind; be it professional or personal. As a lot of ratings are newly married with very young families, the separation that being at sea brings can cause tensions and problems both at home and at sea. The DO is there to help the rating and his family when these and other problems occur. For a young, single officer this brings its own challenges as to how to understand and handle some of the marital problems that can arise! The DO also represents the rating if he gets into trouble and is responsible for knowing each rating well enough to be able to speak on his behalf at the captain’s disciplinary hearings on board or indeed at civil courts ashore if need be.
Joining HMS Rhyl
To join HMS Rhyl I was flown out by the RAF in a VC10 to Singapore, where the ship was undergoing a short maintenance period during a Far East deployment. HMS Rhyl’s new Flight Commander, Tim, and I went out together to join the ship. Oddly enough, both our fiancées were Wrens and both were serving in the Admiralty in London and knew each other. The two-day flight out was a long one as we went via Cyprus, Bahrain, and Gan, a tiny coral island Indian Ocean. Gan is a British RAF base on a tiny island and a few even smaller islands. The runway is short. When you are landing you think you will touch down in the sea but, just when y
ou are reaching for your life jacket, the wheels thump down hard onto the tarmac and immediately starts to brake hard. When the plane has stopped it’s very rapid braking and turns slowly round at the other end of the runway you are again looking straight down into the blue waters of the Indian Ocean, but on the other side of the island. It has been a staging post for flights going out to the Far East for many years but is always an interesting landing for passengers. We were allowed off the aircraft and went into a pleasant transit lounge for a while as they refueled the aircraft. Our short stop in Gan reminded me of a story that I had heard about Admiral Le Fanu when he was First Sea Lord in the 1960s. He was one of the most popular Admirals of his day and had the ‘Nelson Touch’ in terms of how well he treated others. He came to speak to us at Dartmouth and started his talk by telling us. ‘I have a carved wooden sign on my desk in Whitehall that reads “There they go and I must follow them for I am their leader”.’ He said it reminded him to keep up with what we were all doing out in the real Navy.
HMS Rhyl, a Rothesay-Class type 12 ASW frigate shown here before her refit in 1972 when a hangar and flight deck were added. (J&C McCutcheon Collection)
A story is told that on one occasion he had an urgent need to get out to the Far East quickly and sought the help of the Fleet Air Arm. They happened to be about to fly two Buccaneer aircraft out to Singapore so the Admiral, as an aviator, ‘cadged a lift’ flying in the observer’s rear seat of one of the aircraft. On arrival in Gan, the flight was met by the base CO who took the two pilots off to the officer’s mess and instructed a flight sergeant to take care of the No. 2s. In the RAF, the observer would normally be a flight sergeant rather than an officer, let alone a full Admiral. Admiral Lefanu, all done up in his flying overalls and with no real badges or rank epaulettes showing, was taken to the Sergeant’s mess for a cup of tea. A few hours later they were told that the aircraft were ready so went back out and flew on to Singapore. A week or so later, the CO of RAF Gan received a letter thanking him for the hospitality of his sergeant’s mess during the stop over and signed by the First Sea Lord. Oh, to have seen his face!
