Nightmare at Scapa Flow: The Truth About the Sinking of HMS Royal Oak

by H J Weaver

  ‘Taffy’ Davies, in the Marines’ messdeck towards the stern, was worried: the explosion had seemed to him too violent not to be serious. ‘I was in my hammock in a little passage which we used to call “The Junior NCO’s Club” because about four corporals slung their hammocks in there. A corporal of the gangway I knew very well came along and I asked him: “What the hell was that, then?” “I dunno, Taff,” he said. “There’s a buzz that the CO2 machine has gone up.”

  ‘Somehow I didn’t like it. I got out of my hammock and dressed, even to putting my cap on. Royal Oak was a bastard of a ship: you weren’t allowed on the upper deck, even in wartime, without your cap on. When I got just abaft of B turret I could hear a lot of noise on the fo’c’sle, clinking and the sound of hammers, and I thought I’d better not go blundering through because they’d only say: “Bloody Marines, in the way again.” There was a screen door into the superstructure next to me. I was still a bit worried about going down below so I stepped inside the door and lit a cigarette. I couldn’t see anyone on the fo’c’sle, just hear the noises, and the Flow itself was as black as a cow’s gut.

  ‘A stoker came up to me and said: “What the hell’s going on, Royal?” I said: “I don’t know, Stokes, haven’t a clue. Someone told me the CO2 machinery had gone up.” “No fear, it hasn’t,” he said. “I’ve just come up from there.” ’

  Down in the sick bay, SBA ‘Lofty’ Bendell was officially on duty, but, tired out like everyone else after the Fair Isle trip, had taken a chance and turned in. He was awakened shortly after the first explosion by someone asking for a cut on a leg to be attended to. ‘How did you do that?’ he asked. ‘I was blown out of my hammock,’ the man explained. ‘Lofty’ Bendell dressed the wound of his unexpected patient and told him to come back in the morning to see the Medical Officer. The man looked at him in disbelief. ‘The bloody ship’s sinking’, he said. SBA Bendell said: ‘Don’t be wet’, settled back into his cot and went to sleep again.

  The explosion had been heard and felt aboard Pegasus, 1,500 yards away. Mechanician Rowley was one of the men it woke. ‘It was as if we had been struck by a huge hammer,’ he recalls. ‘Some of my messmates and I jumped out of our hammocks, hastily slipped on anything handy and went on deck. It was dark, but we could just see the outline of Royal Oak.’ John Laughton also heard the bang on shore. He was reading in bed at his home, Foveran, on the cliffs to the north of Pegasus and to the west of Scapa Pier. ‘I got up and went outside to try to see what was happening,’ he says. He was approximately 1,600 yards from Pegasus, 3,000 yards from Royal Oak. ‘I could just make out the seaplane carrier, but I couldn’t see Royal Oak at all,’ he told me.19

  Aboard the battleship, nearly 12 minutes had passed since the first explosion. A light was switched on to examine some baulks of timber floating in the sea near the starboard bow. ‘Taffy’ Davies finished his cigarette, flipped the butt over the side and thought to himself: ‘Well, I can’t think of any more excuses for stopping up here.’ He still didn’t feel very happy.

  The torpedo fired from the stern tube of U-47 also disappeared without trace. This was not an uncommon happening. At the start of the war, and for a considerable time afterwards, trackless German electrical torpedoes were extremely inefficient and prone to run too deep, run wild, explode prematurely or not explode at all. On October 30, 1939, for example, the commander of U-56 fired a salvo of three at the battleship Nelson, and the distressing consequences are recorded by Admiral Dönitz in his memoirs: ‘The crew of U-56, which, of course, was submerged at the time, clearly heard the noise of impact as the three torpedoes struck the Nelson. They all three failed to explode. The commander, who had delivered his attack with great daring when surrounded by 12 escorting destroyers, was so depressed by this failure, in which he was no way to blame, that I felt compelled to withdraw him for the time being from active operations and employ him as an instructor at home.’

  Lt. Prien, too, later claimed to have fired no fewer than eight torpedoes at a long line of overlapping transports in a Norwegian fiord on the night of April 15, 1940, without result. At about this time he also reported: ‘Sighted Warspite and two destroyers and attacked the battleship with two torpedoes at a range of 900 yards. No success. As a result of the explosion of one of them at the end of its run, I was placed in a most awkward predicament and was pursued by destroyers coming from all directions.’ On his return from this patrol, Lt. Prien protested that he could hardly be expected to ‘fight with a dummy rifle’.

  In Scapa Flow, U-47, with one torpedo still in the bow tubes, headed once again for Kirk Sound while two more torpedoes were loaded. By this time, Lt. Prien had been cruising around Scapa Flow for three quarters of an hour, he had torpedoed a battleship, yet there was still no sign of reaction in the anchorage. Off Howequoy Head, with everything still quiet, U-47 turned to starboard and made her way north again for a second attack. On this occasion, the running time given for the torpedoes indicates that U-47 went in closer, to 3,000 yards:

  . . . three torpedoes from the bow. After three tense minutes comes the detonation on the nearer ship. There is a loud explosion, roar and rumbling. Then come columns of water, columns of fire, fragments fly through the air.20

  The butt of ‘Taffy’ Davies’s cigarette had just fizzled out in the dark waters of Scapa Flow. He turned to go below. At that moment, Royal Oak shuddered under the impact of three violent explosions. ‘I think there was one, then a short space of seconds and two almost simultaneously,’ he recalls. ‘The old gal heeled over. She went over to port, then back to starboard, and almost at once there was a 20-degree slope on the deck.’ The time was 0116. Anyone who hoped to save his life had 13 minutes to escape.

  5

  Daisy, Daisy

  John Gatt, skipper of the civilian drifter Daisy II, moored on the port side of Royal Oak, had been awakened by the first explosion and came on deck. He called up to one of the watch: ‘What happened?’ Nobody could tell him. He went below, put on some clothes. When he came on deck again, somebody shouted down from Royal Oak: ‘Raise steam immediately.’ Skipper Gatt passed the order on to his engineer, one of his crew of five, and went forward. ‘The first thing I noticed was pieces of wood floating past,’ he recalled later. ‘One of the watch asked what it was. I said it might be floating stuff from the beach as it was just after high water. The battleship put on a searchlight. A minute later there were three or four explosions on the starboard side, the flames went up to the height of her mast and she gave a terrible lurch at the same time . . .’

  The first of the three explosions, roughly amidships on the starboard side, wiped out many of the boys in their messdeck above. The second, slightly further aft on the same side of the ship, caused most havoc in the stokers’ messdeck: it blew a hole in the armoured deck and cut many men down where they stood, having just leaped from their hammocks. Others were severely burned. The third explosion, slightly further aft again, created similar destruction in the Marines’ messdeck.

  The electricity supply failed, plunging Royal Oak into darkness and making it impossible either to issue orders or send a signal for help. Cordite in one of the magazines ignited and a bright orange flame swept through the ship, cremating men who stood in its path and setting fire to hammocks, clothing, tables, curtains, anything that would burn.

  For the comfort of the crew while in harbour, the normal glass scuttles in the portholes had been replaced with ventilators, held in position by two butterfly nuts, which allowed fresh air to enter but prevented any light from escaping. Royal Oak began to heel more rapidly as the sea cascaded in through the lowest ventilators, only 10 feet above the waterline. Within a minute or two of the three explosions on the far side of the ship from him, Skipper Gatt ordered Daisy to be cut adrift. When the warps were severed, however, she refused to budge: she was hard on the battleship’s anti-torpedo blister and being lifted bodily out of the sea as Royal Oak rolled to starboard.

  Down below, all was chaos as men blundere
d about in the darkness, seeking a means of escape. Some found a way out with ridiculous ease, some after a hard struggle. Others, when hope seemed gone, discovered themselves, as if by a miracle, before an exit that led to the open air and a chance, at least, to fight for their lives in the cold sea. A few escaped through portholes after unscrewing the butterfly nuts of the ventilators. By then Royal Oak had heeled over so far that they were able to walk quite easily across the near-horizontal port side of the ship and drop into the water.

  Charlie Cartwright, in his hammock up towards the bow, remembers the series of three explosions, the lights going out, the ship heeling over rapidly, but most of the other details of that traumatic night have been obliterated by a combination of shock and the passing years. ‘I know I found myself standing under an open hatch,’ he told me. ‘I could see stars. I went up the ladder and over the side into the sea.’ That is virtually all he can recall.

  In the seamen’s mess, the three explosions started a stampede for the upper deck. ‘It was like a charge of buffaloes,’ Vincent Marchant remembers. ‘By the time we reached the deck the ship had started to heel. I went straight across to the boom on the starboard side where there was a big launch tied up. I jumped in. The ship kept rolling over towards us and the bow rope of the launch went bar-taut. Someone shouted: “Cut us adrift”, but nobody had a knife because we were all in our underpants. I could see the spotting top starting to hang over our heads so I decided the only thing to do was to dive into the sea and make a swim for it.’

  George White retains the impression of ‘huge fireballs’ hurtling past the casemate after the second explosion: ‘The lights went out and there was a lot of shouting in the darkness. I made for the ladder leading up to the galley flat and had just cleared the hatch when the third explosion occurred. A sheet of flame came through the hatch, striking the deckhead above. I can still remember the intense heat. All those on the ladders and climbing clear just fell back into the holocaust below them.’ George White clambered out, hand-over-hand, onto the starboard boom and dropped into the launch, but he, too, decided it was safer in the water as the spotting top came over. ‘I jumped into a sea of oil,’ he told me, ‘and started to strike out towards the shore. I could feel a slight suction from the ship taking water.’

  Dick Kerr was knocked flat by the explosions and, when he picked himself to his feet, tried to escape with a number of men via the officers’ bathroom and a door which led to the port battery. It wouldn’t open: the heel of the ship had jammed the handles. Flames spread behind him, but, almost overcome by fumes, he kept wrestling with the door and kicking it. Finally, it burst open. Beyond lay another inferno. He charged straight into it, stumbled, almost fell, and came out the other side with half his hair missing and severe burns to his head, neck and hands although at the time he felt no pain. Outside, the deck was almost vertical, but he pulled himself up onto the port guardrail where he took off his jacket and trousers before walking across the side of the ship and plunging into the sea. His immediate aim was to put as much distance as possible between himself and Royal Oak in case he was sucked under when she went.

  Tom Blundell had just started to dress when it seemed to him as if some immense force ‘had lifted the whole ship and shaken her’. ‘I had my jersey, socks and shoes on and was just reaching for my trousers,’ he told me. ‘There was a blast of air and a smell like explosives. The lights went out and I could hear men shouting. I did not feel any fear: I was just stupefied, shocked by the enormity of the explosions. By the time I came to my senses there was a queue of men struggling to get up the ladder and out through the manhole, one at a time.’

  The hatch at the top of the ladder was sealed off by a steel plate when Royal Oak was in action. The toggle which held the plate open had not been fastened properly and, as the ship heeled, it slid across, cutting off the escape route. Somebody shouted: ‘Let’s try the ports.’ ‘There was a rush for the shipwrights’ mess,’ Tom Blundell went on. ‘Whoever had put the ventilators in position had made a good job of it: I thought I’d never get the nuts undone. When I finally succeeded and pulled myself up into the open air, the side of the ship was horizontal. I started walking and then I tripped, fell and rolled into the sea. It was freezing cold.’ As he struck out towards the cliffs, just visible because they were blacker than the dark sky, he thought of his wife and the baby daughter he had not yet seen.

  ‘Lofty’ Bendell had just dozed off again after attending to his unexpected patient when he was hurled out of his cot and lay unconscious on the deck of the sick bay for several minutes. When he came to again, the ship was listing so much that it was no longer possible to walk. He and a companion crawled along on all fours until they found a ladder leading to a hatch, but the hatch refused to open. They crawled on in darkness to the POs’ mess, where they became separated.

  Bendell found himself in the mess pantry, looking at an open porthole which others had already used to make their escape. He climbed into the sink and was trying to drag himself through the opening when Royal Oak gave a final lurch, turned turtle and sank. The sea gushed in through the porthole and open door of the pantry, and Bendell, who had gone tumbling backwards in a shower of crockery and kitchen equipment, floated to the surface with the deck now above his head. The water around him rose rapidly for a few seconds, then stopped, held back by a bubble of air. He could breathe but he was trapped with only one possible means of escape – the open porthole now several feet below him. He dived, failed to find it, fought his way back to the surface for another lungful of precious air, dived a second time, again without success. When he resurfaced, his head bumped the deck and there was no sign of the bubble of air. ‘I’ve had it now,’ he thought, opened his mouth and gulped down some water, anxious only to make death as swift and easy as possible.

  Marine ‘Gillie’ Potter turned out after the first explosion, but, reassured by the rumour about the CO2 bottle, climbed back into his hammock. He was balanced on the edge of it, tucking himself in, when he was blown out again, fell on a dynamo fan and was knocked semi-conscious. He staggered to his feet with blood running down his face, and an injured back, shoulder and neck. ‘As I got up,’ he says, ‘I saw this orange flame, like a great blowlamp. I wasn’t in its path, but everyone who was went down like ninepins, dead. In front of me seemed to be a mass of flame and behind me the hammock netting caught fire. Everyone was scrambling to get out. We went aft, with a couple of mates more or less dragging me, and found a door blocked by a dynamo which had fallen over, but we managed to wrench it open. We went through the officers’ cabins and up a ladder onto the upper deck.

  ‘She was tilted so far over you couldn’t walk on the upper deck: you had to crawl on your hands and knees. On the starboard side she was gunwales under and the water was full of men. We walked down the ship’s side. It was cold after coming up from the warm messdeck – I was only in my singlet – and, as I was about to make a jump into the sea, I saw the port propeller under me. I threw myself sideways and skidded down the barnacles into the water. If you want to know what it’s like not to sit down for several days, I can tell you.’

  ‘Taffy’ Davies, fortunate to find himself already on deck, was at first puzzled and could not make up his mind what to do. ‘I just stood there for a while,’ he explained. ‘I was a bit of a health-and-strength merchant in those days and could swim fairly well, but the Flow looked dark and cold. My first impulse was to run, but my old Dad always told me: “If you’re in a panic, stop and count.” So I stopped and I heard someone on the fo’c’sle say: “Make your way aft to the Daisy”, and I thought that sounded like a good idea.

  ‘When I reached the quarter-deck, the old gal must have been 25 or 30 degrees over. Dozens of men were diving into the drink and swimming to the Daisy, which struck me as a silly thing to do when the Daisy was still tied up alongside. Thinking about the generous way a grateful government treats its war widows, I climbed over the port guardrail and walked down the ship’s side to the bli
ster. Along the top of the blister was a guttering which we used to call a stringer. That gave me a bit of a grip among the barnacles and seaweed and I took a flying jump into the drifter.’

  As Royal Oak heeled farther over, her spotting top came adrift, hurtled down on the launch on the starboard side and sank it. At about the same time, the Daisy was thrown clear and sent crashing stern first into the sea. The impact started her leaking, but not too badly. Skipper Gatt backed off, began to blow a whistle to indicate his position, then lit two gas lamps. Men in the sea, who had been singing South of the Border and Run, Rabbit, Run to keep their spirits up, changed the tune to Daisy, Daisy, Give Me Your Answer Do when the lights came on.

  Aboard the drifter, ‘Taffy’ Davies was feeling guilty. ‘It seemed to me that the Oak was bound to go, but there were still people sitting on the side,’ he explained. ‘That was the old naval discipline: you didn’t do anything off your own bat, and I remember the thought running through my mind: “If she doesn’t go, they’re going to ask: ‘What the hell were you doing sitting in the Daisy?’ One of the things I recall most vividly of all was an officer – a midshipman, I imagine, from the sound of his voice – calling out in the darkness: “Wait for the order to abandon ship.” I think the silly bugger was still saying it when the Oak rolled over and sank. She went with a whoosh. You could hear the stuff breaking loose inside her and the 15-inch shells going boom-boom, boom, boom-boom.’