The Sunday Mirror’s Woodrow Wyatt was typically forthright:
There’s more to this situation than musical comedy. Falklanders want to remain British. Whatever economies we have to make in defence, there must be no cuts in the vessels that are needed to protect them. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office have long toyed with concessions to Argentina. Such wet notions must be stopped.
Under the banner headline ‘LONE BRITISH SHIP FACES TWO PROWLING FRIGATES’ the Sunday Times leader began:
Two of Argentina’s most modern, missile-carrying frigates, the cream of the Argentine’s expanding Navy, were loose in the South Atlantic last night as tension rose over the fate of South Georgia.
C-in-C Fleet hardly needed to remind me that:
The present situation remains extremely delicate and every effort should be made to avoid any encounter which could be construed by Argentines as escalatory.
Later on Sunday afternoon Anthony Williams reported the official reaction from the Argentine Foreign Minister. Costa Mendes had told him we were making a mountain out of a molehill, as the workmen had the necessary documentation, by virtue of the 1971 agreement. Mendes had also professed ignorance about the personnel on board the Paraiso. Williams added that he had told Mendes about the marines on board Biscoe and that he would transmit Mendes’ message and the fact that he (Mendes) had withdrawn his earlier proposal, stating that it was merely one of several ideas.
Meanwhile, in London Lord Carrington had decided that it was time that General Al Haig, the US Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, be fully appraised of the situation. His message was timed at 19.30 on 28 March, 1982. In it he made it clear that the British assessment of the situation accepted that the Argentines were no longer interested in negotiations over the vexed question of sovereignty. It informed him of Endurance’s presence and that of the Argentine Naval vessels and outlined the possibilities for escalation, whilst maintaining the British Government’s resolve to seek a peaceful solution. He concluded by requesting that Al Haig intervene with the Argentines and try to persuade them to call off their Military plans.
Eventually I got through to Rex Hunt and made my proposal to him. He thought it was worth a try, but in view of the uncompromising nature of Costa Mendes’ reply to Lord Carrington he doubted whether Captain Trombetta would be given authority to negotiate, or do as I had suggested. Lord Carrington had already offered this way out and it had been ignored.
At last the MOD got back to me on the 29th and said:
Your constructive suggestion for a course of action to attempt to defuse the situation at local level is welcomed. However, the view is that proposed actions are likely to complicate a delicate issue with small chance of success due to the extent and high level of present political involvement. Optional powers cannot therefore be approved at present. Further consideration will be given and outcome signalled.
This increased the irony of what Ambassador Williams had to say the following day when he spoke to his opposite number in the US Embassy who suggested that Admiral Hayward, outgoing C-in-C US Navy, was due in the area and may be of some use. He then went on to suggest that the US intervention might not carry sufficient weight to allow for an Argentine climb-down and the removal of the workmen by a third party.
We had also intercepted a signal from the Naval Attaché to the MOD which was later relayed to us:
South Georgia deployment of Argentine Navy: two destroyers, two corvettes and one submarine despatched South Georgia. Biscoe overflown by Argentine Navy aircraft. Personnel restricted to stay within 60 km of Puerto Belgrano. US Naval Attaché confirms destroyers are Comodoro Py and Piedra Buena. La Nacion states all this as being part of routine exercise, but Le Clarin states there has been a rush to put missiles on board the Santissima Trinidad.
There could be no doubt now that the Argentines were closing in on us quickly. We were also receiving worrying signals about submarine activity off the Falklands. It was time to look after our people as best we could. Cindy and Annie, who had been on board, were flown back to St Andrew’s with Peter Stark, one of the BAS staff. It seemed a good idea to have a chap there in case the Argentines came over the hill for a social call.
A Russian tug, the Styki, which had somehow got into the middle of all this, called at Grytviken for water. They were to stay for two or three days. It was ail very odd. Why come to Grytviken at all when their fishermen were operating off Elephant Island and the Bellinghausen base was at least ten hours steaming from the fishing grounds? I had little doubt that the Russians were picking up the signals too and they wanted to have a closer look at the situation.
The tension was increasing by the hour. In my later report of proceedings I tried to summarize the situation dispassionately:
I was well aware of the Argentine Naval build up and discussions that were taking place in the diplomatic world, but very concerned at the way that many of those involved in the discussions were underestimating the impending danger and also the determination of the Argentines. I asked to try and defuse the situation locally as I knew and liked Captain Trombetta, my opposite number in the Argentine Arctic area, but the situation was beginning to get out of hand and anyway Trombetta was getting bolder by the day, making a much better job of his relative velocity at sea and trying to head me off when we were patrolling in close proximity. He did not succeed, but we both knew he was soon to have support from frigates and destroyers.
As the Argentine Naval buildup continued, the BAS scientists became more nervous. We did our very best to placate them, for even though the ship did not exactly bristle with guns, at least we were there to manage the situation and to evacuate them if it worsened.
My main concern was to know what Argentine sub-surface forces were likely to be deployed. I asked the Embassy at Buenos Aires for clarification. After some considerable time I was rewarded with a quote from the Clarin and Prensa which ‘confirmed’ that the Argentines were carrying out Naval exercises. This again did little to instil confidence in our Intelligence resources. I began to feel sure that the FCO was never going to take a strong line over the Falklands or South Georgia. And this could all too easily mean that Endurance was to be the sacrificial lamb.
As the days had ticked by and the diplomatic exchanges continued, it had become absolutely clear that the Argentines were paying no more than lip service to overtures made by Britain and the United Nations. By now I was sure that their Naval preparations were almost complete and that an invasion of both the Falkland Islands and South Georgia was imminent. I noted in my diary:
It does seem the best source of intelligence in Argentina is Chilean. The British Naval Attaché in Buenos Aires guessing – as usual – from what he reads in the papers and the Ambassador seems to have thrown in the sponge. We were also having less than pleasant encounters with the Bahia Paraiso on our patrols.
In his book Operation Paraquat Roger Perkins begins his description of the dramatic events of 30 March like this:
Endurance made another search to seaward for the Bahia Paraiso and found her patrolling about 15 miles to the north-east of Cumberland Bay. Nick Barker did not close, but cruised back and forth trying to keep the Argentines under observation in moderate visibility.
Captain Trombetta had been pottering about in the same location for about five days. He was under orders to mark time pending further developments. The obvious implication was that he expected more Argentine ships to arrive in the near future. Nick Barker accordingly kept his two Wasps busy with constant reconnaissance flights up and down the coast, but nothing was sighted that morning. These flights pushed the total flying time of the two Wasps to a new record for any one month –107 hours.
Early in the afternoon, a signal was received from Northwood, ordering Captain Barker to return to Port Stanley with all despatch.
In the same way that Royal Marines on East Falkland gave some credibility to Great Britain’s stance for sovereignty there, a military presence was required on South Georgia. The
military personnel could also provide protection, if required, for the unarmed BAS civilians. One platoon defending an island a hundred miles in length could be nothing more than a token force but there was no alternative.
During the evening Lieutenant Mills and his men were ferried ashore with a full allocation of platoon weapons and ammunition. This was the first occasion that armed troops had ever garrisoned the island. Steve Martin, the Base Commander, was not happy with this latest development. He would have preferred not to have any troops on the island, particularly when they were billeted on him at only 30 minutes’ notice. He was the magistrate, and therefore answerable to the Falklands Islands Government for everything which happened on the island. He had received no advice from Rex Hunt, nor indeed from anyone other than Captain Nick Barker.
The base was being turned into an armed camp, with all of the implicit perils. Martin himself had no instructions as to how he and his personnel should conduct themselves in the event of serious trouble.
At a Conference on board Endurance shortly before she sailed, Steve Martin voiced his anxieties to Captain Barker and Commander Francis Ponsonby. Captain Barker told Steve Martin that the order to leave Keith Mills and his men at King Edward Point had come from London. Steve Martin was not entirely reassured. He was a university graduate and boatman, not a soldier or diplomat. Everything was happening very quickly and he felt himself being carried along by circumstances which were totally unfamiliar to him. Who was now in charge of the island? Was he still the Base Commander or had Keith Mills taken over? As magistrate and therefore legal representative of Governor Hunt he had considerable powers, but these appear to have been in part overridden by orders coming directly from London via Captain Barker.
After some discussion his dilemma was resolved with a commonsense agreement between Martin, Nick Barker and Mills, that there would be no change to the usual administration of the base as long as the present situation continued. However, in the event of an emergency, and if fighting broke out, all BAS personnel would conduct themselves as non-combatants, keeping well out of the way and Keith Mills would subsequently command.
Martin was not alone at feeling worried; although elated at the prospect of independent command under novel circumstances Keith Mills had the anxiety of not knowing exactly what was required of him. In the phraseology of his profession, what were the rules of engagement? Nick Barker responded by spelling out the terms under which the Marines could resort to force. Mills instantly recognized the parameters as being those defined in the yellow card rules.
These yellow card rules are reasonably straightforward, but the problem was that I was as usual being back-seat driven from Whitehall and so the rules of engagement were changing by the day. I had to interpret them and didn’t want to keep breaking radio silence to inform Keith of each new interpretation. The only realistic option was to filter the information as best I could and keep Keith reasonably well informed as to what he could and could not do.
Our order to proceed immediately to Stanley had now been confirmed. I had signalled C-in-C with the suggestion that it could just be better to stay in South Georgia, where we could actually face and deal with the enemy. From the signals we had intercepted it seemed there was a strong possibility of being caught between the two tactical areas and therefore relatively useless. But Stanley it was. And we had to devise a plan to slip out without being spotted.
Once again I cannot do better than allow Roger Perkins to tell this part of the story exactly as it appeared in his book Operation Paraquat. Roger taped my account soon after I returned to England when the detail was still very fresh in my mind.
The entrance to East and West Cumberland Bays is approximately 4.5 miles in width, any ship leaving by the normal track would be spotted instantly by the Bahia Paraiso’s radar operators. The only answer would be to hug the shore line and creep away, hoping that the radar scanner would be unable to distinguish the ship against the steeply rising cliff. The surface of the sea was littered with rocks and small icebergs, and as Nick Barker told his officers, ‘We’ve got to pretend to be one of them’.
Announcing his intentions to the ship’s company he emphasized the need for secrecy. Navigation lights would be extinguished; all deadlights (those are the porthole covers) secured; the ship must be darkened as she had never been darkened before; there would be strict radio silence; the radar would be used only in brief squirts to confirm the ship’s position, otherwise pulses transmitted by Endurance would be identified in the Bahia Paraiso and by any other Argentine vessel which might be in the area. The sole navigational aid, apart from the naked eye, would be the echo sounder, but this would have limited value in such a poorly charted area. Bill Hurst was given the task of conning the ship away from King Edward Point and out to sea.
At 19.00 on 31 March Endurance weighed anchor and moved very slowly across Cumberland Bay East until she was under the high ground of the east headland. The wind was blowing from the west at about 7–8, kicking up the surface of the sea into waves three to four feet high. Although the night sky was overcast, the horizontal visibility was six miles. This was much greater than Nick Barker would have wished. It was important not to let the ship’s silhouette show against the horizon.
Bill Hurst maintained steerage way as he nursed Endurance along the black jagged shore. About 200 yards to starboard a white line of bursting waves signalled the waiting rocks. At this slow speed, with the beam wind pushing hard against her high superstructure, the Red Plum was all too ready to drift to leeward.
Gradually the extremity of Barff Point came in sight. Here there is a narrow gap less than 400 yards wide, between the headland and the Right Whale Rocks. It is unlikely that this current-swept stretch of water, known as the Merton Passage, had ever previously been attempted by any vessel larger than a motor boat. The charts show a minimum of eight fathoms, but the seabed had never been charted in detail and only extreme necessity could tempt a ship’s Captain to hazard his vessel in such a place.
Bill Hurst quietly ordered the helm to starboard and eased the ship into the neck of the passage. Endurance had found herself in many curious places in 26 years since she was launched, but the transit of the Merton Passage on this night was by far the most perilous. The men on her silent bridge watched as the cliffs and rocky shore lines to starboard and to port passed with almost painful slowness. The echo sounder told them that the seabed was shoaling steadily closer to the surface. Soon there was a clearance of less than 20 feet between the rocky bottom and Endurance’s keel and still shoaling. Even one large outcrop would have been enough to bring total disaster. But all went well and she passed through safely.
With the passage behind them, the people aboard the Plum were now faced with the task of getting completely clear of South Georgia without their departure being reported. It was known that there were several other ships in the area, including two Russian vessels.
To avoid observation, Nick Barker chose the southerly route, heading for Cape Disappointment. Icebergs had reached the adjacent waters as the onset of the Antarctic winter carried them northward. He would move slowly down the coast, keeping close inshore and hope that any Argentine radar operators would classify his ship as just one more iceberg.
For the first hour it seemed as though the worst was behind them, then, approaching Royal Bay, the lookout saw a brightly lit ship off the port bow. It was impossible to know her nationality or reason for her presence. Captain Barker debated whether she was an Eastern Bloc ship or whether she was another Argentine vessel coming in to join the Bahia Paraiso. He ordered the course to be altered even closer to the coast, accepting the hazards of offshore reefs, Bill Hurst conned the Plum slowly past the unknown ship until she disappeared into the darkness astern. Either she had failed to spot Endurance’s blip on her radar scope or had simply not been interested. The evidence later suggested that she was a Communist fish factory ship.
By dawn on 1 April Nick Barker had cleared the southernmost tip of the islan
d and was pressing hard for the Falklands, into a Force 10 gale. In Endurance’s cavernous engine room the 5 big pistons thundered up and down making conversation impossible as the engineers coaxed maximum power from the elderly machinery. For Bill Hurst it was the end of what he subsequently labelled ‘a bloody gruesome night’.
The ship rolled like an empty barrel as she buffeted her way across the heavy south-westerly swell. Nick Barker’s usually mild temper was strained to the limit by his current frustrations. Everything which he had forecast was coming to pass. The Argentine fleet was at sea and within striking distance of the Falklands and South Georgia. Reports spoke of major units to the north of the islands with a second force approaching from the south.
Possibly two frigates armed with Exocet missiles were deployed somewhere between the Falklands and South Georgia on the Endurance’s present track – and a submarine was rumoured to be en route for the same area. To counter this display of power Rex Hunt and Nick Barker had seventy-three marines in East Falkland, twenty-two marines on South Georgia and the dear old Plum wallowing along half way between the two. The nearest support was at Gibraltar, 5,500 miles and two weeks’ steaming away. If ever there was a moment which exposed the poverty of the British Government’s policy in the South Atlantic this was it.
I still think of it as my worst nightmare. I wished those who had let us down so badly could have shared the battering of that Force Ten gale and the private fears we must surely all have experienced. And almost worse than all of this was the feeling of impotence. Our marines we had left behind on South Georgia knew what they had to do. The force on the Falklands were preparing their own response to the now almost certain invasion. But we, who could have supported either, were in the middle of nowhere bobbing around like an old tin bath that could soon be used for target practice by a gang of likely lads from the Argentine.
Beyond Endurance: An Epic of Whitehall and the South Atlantic Page 18
