The Coal-Scuttle Brigade

by Alexander McKee

  One week later, the Channel lay deserted. The harbours, great and small, were stilled, the docks silent; ocean convoys bound for London were either diverted to west coast ports or went round Scotland to reach the Thames. Nothing moved, that summer, in the Channel except the essential coastal traffic — a few small colliers — some minesweepers, destroyers and patrol vessels.

  Then at half past one on 10th July, with the sun high, 20 black bombers streamed out from Calais towards a convoy passing Dover. Six Hurricanes flew westward above the ships. They met the 40 fighters of the German escort — outnumbered nearly 7 to 1 by their own kind, 10 to 1 in all. No victory was won, or claimed, but they upset the attackers and one ship only was sunk.

  On 11th July, the attack switched 200 miles to Lyme Bay, where ten Ju 87s went for an eastbound convoy, covered by 20 Me 109s. Three Hurricanes and six Spitfires engaged them, losing a third of their number in a few minutes, but again they upset the bombers and this time no ship was sunk. A few hours later, another attack came in. It was reported as a single German aircraft and six Hurricanes were sent to meet it. But the radar was unreliable in this respect — and what they met was a formation of more than fifty Germans. They got two of the Ju 87s and one ship only was damaged.

  On 14th July another convoy was attacked in the Straits — photographs show the colliers Betswood and Bovey Tracey, and other ships not identifiable, vanishing in the thunderous uprush of smoke and water from the bombs. One coaster was towed into Dover with her stern blown off, two others and an escort destroyer were damaged. The Germans were beginning to get their eye in.

  From that day onwards, the R.A.F. were under orders from the War Cabinet to shoot down all German Red Cross planes hanging about near the convoys — and they sent a Heinkel 59 ambulance plane of the German Air-Sea Rescue service into the Channel off Walmer Castle. The Luftwaffe then sank the Folkestone Gate Lightship, in daylight, in clear view of Dover. The fighting spirit of both sides was not fanatical, merely stubborn. The Germans were determined to blast the British out of the Straits and sweep the Channel clear; the British had dug their toes in, and it was going to take a good deal to shift them. Inevitably, some of the crockery got broken.

  As the destroyer Brazen went down in the Channel, there were wounded men, still at their posts, shooting back; and three bombers went into the Channel to join her on the bottom. On the 19th, there was a fiasco — a Defiant squadron brought down from Scotland to help the hard-pressed squadrons over the Straits was so badly mauled in its first action that it was sent straight back. The two-seater fighters — the British Defiant and the Me 110 — could now be discounted as inefficient and ineffectual. The pace was growing hot. On the 21st, came the turn of the Cherbourg squadrons — they struck at a convoy near the Isle of Wight, and all that day destroyers and tugs were going out of Portsmouth to rescue survivors and tow in disabled ships. And on the 25th, came ‘Black Thursday’ — the shattering in the Straits of convoy C.W.8.

  Of the 21 colliers and coasters which sailed that day from Southend, only 11 passed Dungeness — and of these, only two reached their destination undamaged. So heavy and so continuous was the dive-bombing that no one knows how many attacks were made — the official history can say only, ‘at least four’. And two days later, on the 27th, the Dover destroyers lost their Flotilla Leader, H.M.S. Codrington, and had H.M.S. Walpole damaged. Dover, as a base for anti-invasion destroyers, was abandoned. The ‘flying artillery’ of the Luftwaffe had virtually cleared the way across for their Army — in daylight.

  A breathless silence settled down on the invasion coast. In front, the beaches were hedged with scaffolding, concrete blocks, barbed wire, and mines; behind, it was sealed off by checkpoints on the roads, through which no one was allowed to pass unless he lived on the coast. It was a genuine front-line feeling — of silence and desertion and barbed tension, broken suddenly by violent action, which stopped as suddenly as it began, leaving only the frightened screaming of the sea-gulls to die away gradually.

  On the 29th, the Luftwaffe began, ominously, to push inland. They struck now at Dover itself. But as the stukas began to pour down, the first Hurricanes were already turning in at 8,000 feet to the attack. The British pilots saw great fountains of spray explode in the harbour around the few ships left there, and they saw, stepped up in the sky, two more squadrons of stukas waiting their turn to dive. And then they were in among them. The Ju 87s were so slow that when pursued they seemed almost to come sliding backwards into the sights.

  *

  On 7th August, 25 merchant ships lay off Southend, cradled between the shores of Kent and Essex; all of them coasters, most of them colliers. They lay low in the water, heavy with grimy cargo from the coal ports of the north; their crews, for the most part, came from the same places as the cargoes — they were ‘Geordies’.

  There was tension among them now, that tight feeling at the back of the skull that you get when you know you’re going into action — and they knew that now, for a certainty.

  They were no longer serving their owners — the ships had been requisitioned by the Admiralty; they were no longer colliers trading to the south coast — they were part of a naval operation. They were going to force the Straits of Dover.

  After they had settled down for a conference in the dance-hall on Southend pier, the Commodore had stood up. He wore the three stripes of a Commander, R.N.R., and he would be sailing in the leading ship of the port division. He looked like a man used to commanding ocean liners — 20,000 tons and 20 knots — and some of them had wondered what he was doing in a coasting job. The Captains of the two destroyers which would escort them were there, too.

  Behind him, on a blackboard, was a diagram of the formation which the convoy would keep: they would be formed in two divisions, once they got outside the estuary; a destroyer would lead each division, keeping station slightly outside of it, so that a glance from her bridge would take in all the ships of that division; and for the same reason the larger ships would be at the head of the line, if possible. But some of the ships were not bound as far as the convoy dispersal point inside the Isle of Wight; they would leave the convoy and take their cargoes into ports which it passed on the way; and these ships would be on the tail end of the lines, to avoid having to turn and cross the course of the others in leaving.

  From the diagram, they could see their own station in the convoy; this, and their own destination, as well as other technical details were confirmed by a ‘flimsy’, copies of which had been handed round. They sat there, clutching them, as the Commodore rose to speak.

  ‘Haw-Haw is saying that the Germans have closed the Channel. That it’s no longer the English Channel — it’s part of the German Ocean. We’re here to prove him wrong.’

  There was a shuffle of feet, and a bout of coughing.

  ‘We don’t give a damn for your coal.’

  A quick muttering round the room, indignant and angry.

  ‘We’d send you through empty, if we had to. It’s a matter of prestige. Field Marshal Göring has told the world: “The Channel is in German hands”. We’re going to prove him wrong, even if we have to give you battleships to get you through; you’ll run — “light or lame”.’

  The room was dead quiet now. The Commodore went on to explain that what was intended was a combined naval and air operation to force a passage through the Straits. There would be a close escort, part of the way, of one trawler and two destroyers; other destroyers would be on call, at Portsmouth. No. 145 Squadron of Hurricanes would be standing by, at ‘immediate readiness’, during all the hours of daylight. But there would be very little daylight — they would be passing the Straits at night. They would be off Dover at midnight.

  They would stop, on no account whatever; there would be rescue ships with them, to pick up survivors, and tugs to take charge of the cripples. And they would be surrounded by balloon ships.

  In the afternoon of 7th August, convoy C.W.9 sailed from the Thames. They went out singly, because
of the narrow channel, and took up convoy formation outside. It was noticeable, even at this early date, that they showed better discipline than the northbound convoys. There was a ‘Gate’ in the boom defences that stretched from the Isle of Grain to Shoeburyness, protecting the entrance to the Thames; and there was always a tendency for the independent-minded merchant ships to weigh anchor together, in a rush, and dash for it — like children tumbling out of school. No such disorder marked the ‘Coal-Scuttle Brigade’ and, as they gained experience, they got better and better, going out like rows of Guardsmen.

  At two o’clock precisely, the signal flying from the Commodore’s ship became executive; that is, it came fluttering down — meaning: ‘Proceed’. And then, precisely, one after the other — and not in a gaggle — the ‘Coal-Scuttle Brigade’ hauled up their anchors, and sailed for the ‘Gate’. Once outside, they took up station in two divisions — that is, in two long parallel lines, with the Commodore flying his flag at the head of the port division and the Vice-Commodore flying his at the head of the starboard division. A naval operation was under weigh.

  Off Sheerness, the escort came to join them, the destroyers rolling in the swell; from the Navy men closed up at their guns came a brief cheer for the lumbering colliers.

  There were 25 ships in the convoy — each one with a different speed and a different turning circle; whenever they changed course, the inside ships had to slow, while the outside ships increased speed. Even keeping station on a straight course was difficult, at first, with so many types of ship and so many ships, and the inexperience of the masters in judging their exact distance from the vessel ahead. It was only a trick — done with a sextant; by measuring off the height of the next ahead, from waterline to masthead, and knowing in advance what that height was. But these were dour, independent, not very well educated men, masters of the instinctive tricks of their tricky coastal trade, and contemptuous of any unnecessary calculations that came out of a book.

  Yet station keeping was vital, for if one ship was out of position, then every vessel behind her was also out of position. They mastered the art of it very soon.

  All guns had been uncovered now; and individual gunners began to fire testing shots — tracer went streaking out over the water; it was blue and calm, with darker patches of green marking the cloud shadow. To starboard, the woods and fields of Kent sloped downwards to sandy beaches and the sea. To port, the empty sea heaved to the horizon: out there lay only the enemy. Then a helio began to wink from the senior escort vessel. They were approaching the North Foreland and would soon begin the long, slow turn to starboard that would take them into the Straits.

  This was the danger point. The evidence was all around them: the sun, low on the horizon now, cast in dark silhouette the masts of many ships, sticking jaggedly out of the water; close inshore, where some unknown collier master had tried to beach his sinking ship, part of the bridge and hull of the wreck were above water, torn and jagged. Then it was night, and they were driving into the Straits.

  Above them, the masts rolled across the night sky; beneath, the hammering engines urged them on; the Red Ensign on the stern fluttered in the wind, and the sound of bell buoys came tinkling across the sea. Surely the Germans knew they were coming. But there was no sign of alarm to seaward; and to starboard, the vague whiteness of the cliffs of Dover loomed comfortingly close. Every man who could, was on deck; and every man wore his lifejacket; the crews were still closed up around the guns; the master and his officers paced the narrow bridge, the Lewis gunner in one wing of it was directly under their eye. There would be no sleep for anyone this night.

  Steadily, slowly, stretching for miles like a many-jointed monster, convoy C.W.9, with thumping engines, steamed on for the shelter of the Isle of Wight. It was midnight — and then it was the 8th of August. Men stared out to seaward — and saw many things which were not there; night plays tricks with the eyes, and with the nerves, but certainly the enemy was over there, and certainly he knew of their coming. His planes ranged over southern England all day: he must know. The night was full of eyes, watching the black waters.

  At 3 o’clock, at the very darkest hour of the night, at the pit of man’s vitality, when he has reached the nadir of the daily cycle and sleep should be at its deepest; at that moment, the quiet thumping rhythm of the gliding ships and the wash and suck of water was suddenly drowned by a violent noise from seaward. There was a blare and snarl of high-powered engines suddenly kicking into life; then an escort destroyer fired starshell, illuminating the sea in a ghastly greenish light. Instantly, the engine noise from seaward was cut off by the slam of gunfire: escort and convoy blazing away for all they were worth, the night sprinkled with red cascades of tracer.

  It was an E-boat ambush. The Germans had known that they were coming, known too the route they must use — the narrow channel swept every 24 hours by the minesweepers. They had crept up under cover of the darkness, engines throttled down; and then had waited there, rocking in the swell, engines dead, in ambush; waiting for the thump and thud of steamship engines in the night. When they started up, they were only a few hundred yards away.

  It would be a cool man who could have remembered what happened next, in its proper sequence. Those who endured it — and survived — talk of ‘a bit of a flap’ — a confused impression of starshell-lit action and overwhelming noise; the ribbons of tracer and stabs of gunfire licking out from the hulls of the driving ships; of the streaming bow-waves of an E-boat, the splash of a torpedo loosed, and running; of ships zig-zagging to avoid torpedoes, and their engines battering away, shaking the hulls; of the dull boom — the white spray surging up the side — from a torpedo hit; of ships sinking and breaking up, of bits of ships sinking, and of ships colliding in their frantic efforts to avoid a torpedo; with men’s voices crying in the darkness and drowned by the booming roar of the wasp-like E-boats screaming across the water at 35 knots.

  William Dawson, master of the collier John M, steaming near the head of one line, saw Verey lights curving up from the darkness, port and starboard, from E-boats on either side of him trying to illuminate their prey; he heard a tremendous explosion astern, and saw the bow of a ship rise slowly out of the water as she began to slide slowly stern-first under. A searchlight flashed on and swung — and there was an E-boat, near, clear and startled, 300 yards away from him on the starboard beam. The John M’s Lewis gun began to hammer away at it — and the E-boat reacted like a startled horse; it heeled over in a turn of speed, with great arcs of spray sheeting from under the bows, and raced away into the darkness of the Channel.

  One master gave ‘Stand by anchors!’ because he thought he was running up on the beach; he wasn’t, he was merely steaming through hundreds of tons of floating coke from a sunken collier; the sea was covered with it.

  Another collier master had seen the two ships ahead of him go up, and two others collide; then, suddenly, ‘there was a lull in the flap’; the battle had either died down or moved away. Standing on the bridge, the Master and Mate, very wrought up, could hardly believe their luck to have survived this far.

  At dawn the Master of the John M found himself alone, with only a few specks on the horizon: the convoy was scattered over ten miles of sea.

  The Holme Force and the Fife Coast had gone to the bottom, with 30 or 40 foot holes torn in their hulls by the torpedoes; the Polly M had been hit, too, but she was still afloat, just. The Ouse, with helm hard over to avoid a torpedo racing at her, had collided with the Rye. She sank soon after, but the Rye was still afloat, damaged.

  At half past eight that morning No. 145 Squadron ‘scrambled’ from Westhampnett, on receipt of the news that a convoy south of the Isle of Wight was being attacked by dive-bombers. The weather was not suitable for it, and hampered the Germans; then the Hurricanes arrived. They got in among the Junkers 87s and broke up several of their formations, before themselves becoming mixed up with the escorting Me 109s. The scattered ships of C.W.9 could hear the battle going on, above and
in the clouds — the growl of the engines and the stutter of machine-guns; and see some of it, machines racing through the gaps or ducking down under the cloud base and booming along in clear view; but what exactly was happening they had no idea. Bombs were certainly coming down, and the sea was exploding in fury; but it was all rather aimless. A black, gull-winged shape, descending with a metallic howling whine, struck the sea in a shower of spray, and vanished — that was a Junkers 87. Then all the noise began rapidly to move out to sea, and all was quiet. The Germans had gone; and no ships had been sunk.

  At this point, officially, C.W.9 vanishes. C.W. convoys ran from Southend to Portsmouth, where most of the ships would disperse to the wharves at Southampton or Portsmouth itself. Those ships whose destination lay further west would form a new convoy, loosely described at the time as, simply, ‘westbound’, and might be joined by ships lying waiting for them in St Helen’s Roads, near Ryde. Later, these convoys ran between Portsmouth and Plymouth, under no designation, for they were small; but the larger convoys between the British Channel ports and Plymouth were to be known as PW/WP convoys. In other words, the convoys from Southend served mainly south-eastern England; the convoys from the Bristol Channel served mainly south-western England; and the exceptions which proved the rule ran a shuttle service between the two.

  So what was happening during the late morning and early afternoon of 8th August, was that some of the ships which had travelled in C.W.9 were heading westwards, south of the Isle of Wight, and being joined by ships which had lain waiting for their arrival in St Helen’s Roads. Other ships which had been part of C.W.9 were, making their way across Spithead into Portsmouth, for the coal wharves of the Camber and Rudmore, while others were going up the Solent to discharge at Southampton. But, since C.W.9 had been scattered and broken up by the E-boat attack, and never completely recovered, these movements were a good deal looser and less well-phased than they might have been. And at these movements, in much better weather, for the skies had now cleared, and with much greater numbers, for they knew that only numbers could annihilate — the Germans struck. It was a confused battle; many of the ships were caught, on their own or without escort, and had a bad time of it.