by H J Weaver
Apart from the Daisy, there were now only two vessels in the vicinity, Royal Oak’s picket boat and Rear-Admiral Henry Blagrove’s gig, which, still with its cover on, had floated off the quarter-deck. With more than a hundred men on board, double the number it was designed to take, the picket boat turned turtle, trapping some of Royal Oak’s crew inside it. Those thrown into the water tried to clamber back onto the upturned hull, which eventually sank under their weight and was not seen again. A few made for the waterlogged gig, which kept turning over and over, but nobody occupied this precarious sanctuary for long: it was warmer in the sea than out of it.
One who came to that conclusion was Chief ERA Wilson. When all the lights went out on Royal Oak, he and about 40 other men had managed to find their way up a ladder with the aid of the torch which some vague feeling of unease had impelled him to buy in Kirkwall a few hours earlier. He first sought refuge in the picket boat, was thrown into the sea when it capsized, and, in the ensuing confusion, with men trying to grab each other for support, lost all his clothing except a waistbelt and one leg of his pyjamas. He managed to break free and, fearing he would be unwittingly drowned by his own shipmates, made for the gig. But, after climbing onto its keel, he decided he would freeze to death there, lowered himself back into the sea and clung on. Even then, he said later, he was so cold ‘I could feel every bone of my body.’ The Daisy eventually found him.
Of Skipper Gatt, ‘Taffy’ Davies says admiringly: ‘He was as calm as if he was on a milk round, just giving a little touch of the engine every now and again and hauling anyone aboard who came paddling past. The injured and the ones who were coughing their guts up with fuel oil we put down in the fish hold. The deck also grew more and more crowded with people taking turns to get near the cowling and the warmth of the engine. Many were close to tears and asking: “Why doesn’t somebody come and help us? They must know by now that the ship has gone.” I was one of the most popular blokes because I still had my packet of Craven A in my pocket. In 1967, when we had our first reunion at Portsmouth, a fellow came up to me and said: “Do you know a corporal named Davies?” I said I did. He said: “I want to meet him. He saved my life. I was dying for a smoke and he was the only bloke with a packet of fags.” ’
In the meantime, Vincent Marchant, having dived over the side of the threatened launch, had decided to make for the cliffs which he could just make out, a dark shadow against the night sky a thousand yards away. ‘The oil was like treacle and I was covered in it,’ he says, ‘but I kept plugging away. I had another bloke with me. I kept encouraging him, but halfway to the shore he disappeared. Once I was out of the water I scrambled up the cliff face. I suppose it was about 40 feet. Then about 50 yards inland, I came to a barbed wire fence, but I just didn’t have the strength to climb it. I was knackered. I lay there I don’t know how long before I heard a voice. Some cutters with signal lamps had appeared below the cliff. I shouted down to them and they shouted back: “Hang on, don’t move.” About half an hour later a stretcher party appeared with a bottle of brandy, gave me a tot and carried me off to the cottage hospital at Kirkwall. I was in there a week.’
George White, who had also struck out for the shore, had been swimming for 30 minutes or more when he bumped into a dead body, face down in the water. ‘It was clad in a watch coat,’ he told me. ‘I can well remember hanging on to the short belt these coats have at the back. I don’t know how long I stayed clutching the belt, but I’m sure the rest from swimming played a great part in saving my life. Next I heard cries for help and saw someone swimming towards me. I was scared of having anyone come too close. I pushed the body towards him and told him to hold on to it. Then I started swimming for the shore again. I could faintly make out the dark silhouette of the cliffs against the sky, and I tried to make for a beach where the boys on board, including myself, had been making a stone jetty. I ended up instead on some rocks. As soon as I pulled myself onto a rock, I passed out. Some time later I have a faint recollection of being roughly handled into the bows of a small boat. Then I lost consciousness again.’
The badly-burned Dick Kerr was another of the men thrown into the sea when the picket boat capsized. He, too, decided to make for the shore, but with the north-east wind making a slight chop he kept getting facefuls of water. He turned parallel to the shore, heading towards Scapa Pier, and perhaps as much as two hours later he came upon two dimmed and stationary lights. Despite his injuries he had swum the 1,500 yards to Pegasus.
Tom Blundell, too, headed for the cliffs, using a cautious breast stroke. ‘I had done a bit of life-saving and reckoned I could make it in my own time,’ he explained. ‘The oil was thick, but it helped to keep me warm and I had the sense to keep my nose out of it. I eventually came upon a Carley float. There were quite a few men on it and others holding the side, kicking with their feet and trying to propel it towards land. I remember bumping up against one of the men in the water. He must have been hurt because he said: “Mind my bloody arm.” When lights came on aboard the Daisy there was an argument about whether we should change course for the drifter or continue to make for the shore. Finally we decided the shore was nearer.
‘I looked back at the ship. She was practically submerged and I could just make out the blister. Pegasus switched on what looked like a signal lantern and swept the water. We still kept kicking, but the float tended to go round in circles. I was still thinking about the baby and my wife. Suddenly, a whaler appeared out of the night and hauled us aboard. All I could say was: “Thank Christ.” ’ The whaler took them to Pegasus where, he thinks, they arrived ‘some time around 2.15 or 2.30’.
The water which ‘Lofty’ Bendell swallowed in the pantry of the POs mess in the hope of bringing death as quickly and painlessly as possible was contaminated with oil and simply made him sick. He retched, vomited, thrashed about – and to his astonishment suddenly found himself shooting to the surface of Scapa Flow. Exactly how it came about is still something of a mystery to him. Sitting in his office in the Radiography Department of Bexhill Hospital he explained: ‘I can only think that the bubble of air escaped from the pantry and sucked me out with it.’ Up on the surface, shocked by his experience and the close proximity of death, he just swam and swam, almost mechanically. ‘I can vaguely remember a light from somewhere sweeping the water and shining on the cliffs,’ he said. ‘I saw men trying to climb them, only to fall back.’ He was eventually picked up by a whaler. Somebody told him he must have been in the water for four hours.
‘Gillie’ Potter, injured after being hurled out of his hammock and badly lacerated by barnacles, hit the water like a high diver. ‘You know how it is,’ he said. ‘You go down and down and down and then you come up and up and up. The ship was clearly going over and I wanted to get away before she sank. My right arm wasn’t helping much – I think I must have torn a muscle – and, as I pulled away, I saw another explosion between the guns of Y turret. The flames went up 40 or 50 feet in the air.’
After this explosion, which is generally thought to have come from a small arms’ magazine, he settled down to the task of survival: ‘I had the good luck to come across a piece of wreckage. I don’t know what it was, but I got my right arm over it and it kept me going. I’m not sure who picked me up in the end, but it was a drifter of some sort. I was completely exhausted. All I could hear was a voice calling: “There’s someone over there.” They must have heard me splashing. The bows came straight towards me and I saw the tyres on the side, grabbed one of them and hung on. They pulled me out of the water and wiped the oil from my face. Somebody said: “It’s old Gillie Potter. Well done, Gillie.” They put me up in the bow, alongside a fellow lying on the deck, and when I’d recovered a bit I started talking to him. After a while I realised I was talking to a corpse.’
Aboard the Daisy the rescue work went on until there was a grave danger that the overloaded drifter would capsize if an attempt were made to pull any more men out of the water. ‘It isn’t easy to pull somebody out of clean
water if he’s on his last legs,’ ‘Taffy’ Davies explained, ‘and it becomes a hell of a job when he’s all fouled up with oil. When we found anyone there was a rush to one side and the Daisy listed heavily. The poor old skipper had 300 or more aboard, some of them badly injured. Some other boats appeared and he decided he had done all he could and set course for the Pegasus. There were still voices in the water shouting: “Don’t go, Daisy.” That’s the sort of thing you can still remember when you wake out of a bad dream, those voices calling for the Daisy not to go.’
Of the 424 officers and men saved out of a complement of more than 1,200, the vast majority were rescued by the Daisy, an achievement for which Skipper Gatt was subsequently awarded the DSC. Some doubt exists about what time the cargo of survivors reached Pegasus, however. ‘Taffy’ Davies felt certain – ‘as certain as I am that Christmas Day is December 25’ – that it was shortly after 0400 hours, early in the morning watch, when he came up the gangway of the seaplane carrier, but it must have been a good deal earlier. ACOS was in a position at 0345 to send a signal to the Admiralty saying: ‘Pegasus reports 300 survivors on board.’
The reaction set in once everybody was in the warmth and safety of the seaplane carrier. Long-service sailors and Marines found themselves shaking uncontrollably while tears coursed down their oil-streaked faces. As soon as they were given hot drinks they vomited them up again because of the fuel oil they had swallowed.
Tom Blundell, one of the earlier arrivals, was already asleep, having almost lost his precious £13. 1s. of back pay. ‘I was carried up the gangway, taken to a bathroom, stripped and washed,’ he explained. ‘They put me in a hammock and I suddenly thought of my belt. I got up and rushed to the bathroom. There was a great pile of dirty clothes lying on the deck, but I rummaged through it until I found my money belt. The money was still inside it. That was a relief, nearly as big a relief as being rescued.’
In the meantime, out in the Flow, George White had recovered consciousness to find himself in the boiler-room of a drifter with someone patting his face and saying he appeared to be dead. ‘I was covered in oil and dressed in nothing except my singlet and socks,’ he said, ‘but a coat had been placed around my shoulders. My left leg had been torn badly on the rocks. Bubbles appeared under the oil and, half-dazed, I sat there, popping the bubbles and watching the blood run down my leg.
‘One of the crew was trying to get me to drink some hot cocoa. I was terribly sick and brought up oil. That made me retch again: I never could stand the smell of oil. Eventually we reached the Pegasus where I was given a shower and medical attention. A little after that a rating asked me if I’d go with him and identify some bodies laid out on a large deck space. I was sick again when I saw them. Captain Benn came up shortly after that and said: “Get that boy out of here.” ’
Captain Benn had been one of the earliest of all the survivors to reach Pegasus and had already informed ACOS by signal, via the PWSS on Flotta, that he believed his ship had been torpedoed. When the Daisy eventually arrived, the Marine corporal of the gangway, told ‘Taffy’ Davies, who was a chum of his: ‘Your captain sounds a right bastard. He came aboard and said: “I’m Captain Benn of Royal Oak. Fetch me a British warm” Nothing about the poor troops in the water.’
To be fair, expressions about the plight of his men would have served no practical purpose. Pegasus had already taken all practical steps to assist Royal Oak. Her log reads:
0105
Explosion in Royal Oak.
0110
Sent motor boat to Royal Oak to investigate.
0115
Three more explosions in Royal Oak at intervals of about two minutes [note: the explosions were much closer together than this].
0120
Royal Oak observed to have sunk [note: the sinking was actually at 0129]. Sent away all boats to pick up survivors.
0200–0400
Boats returning with survivors.21
Pegasus had also sent a visual signal to ACOS, via the PWSS, at about 0135 saying: ‘General. Send all boats’, followed by a second signal about half an hour later: ‘Royal Oak is sinking after several internal explosions’. Nobody thought of a U-boat until Captain Benn arrived on board. How could a U-boat get into impregnable Scapa Flow?
John Laughton, who had put down his book, got out of bed and stepped outside his home on the cliffs opposite Scapa Pier after the first explosion, was standing there when the next three occurred. Although his eyes had had time to become accustomed to the dark, he still could not see Royal Oak. ‘After a while,’ he says, ‘I began to hear the shouts and cries of the men. It puzzled me, but I came to the conclusion that they must be engaged in some kind of naval manoeuvres.’ John Laughton closed his door and went back to bed.
6
Escape
After the second attack on Royal Oak, Lt. Prien decided the time had come to break off the action and make his escape. He can hardly be blamed. He had carried out two attacks resulting in the detonation of four torpedoes; he had no torpedoes in position; and it was a reasonable assumption that he could not hope that his presence would go undetected much longer.
Yet it has seemed to his critics that the log entry dealing with his escape, like the log entry dealing with his abandonment of the approach to the main Fleet anchorage, goes to excessive lengths to justify his decision. Certainly no part of his official story has caused greater controversy. The entry reads:
The harbour springs to life. Destroyers are lit up, more signalling breaks out on every side, and on land, some 200 metres from me, cars roar along the roads. A battleship has been sunk, another damaged and three torpedoes have gone to blazes. All tubes are empty. I decide to withdraw because 1) With my periscopes I cannot conduct night attacks while submerged (see experience on entering), 2) On a bright night I cannot manoeuvre unobserved on a calm sea, 3) I must assume that I was observed by the driver of a car which stopped opposite us, turned around and drove off towards Scapa at high speed, 4) Nor can I go further north, for there, well hidden from my sight, lie the destroyers which were previously dimly distinguishable.
0128 At high speed both engines we withdraw. Everything is simple until we reach Skaildaquoy Point. Then we have more trouble. The tide has fallen and is against us. Engines at slow and dead slow, I attempt to get away. I must leave by the south, through the narrows, because of the depth of water. Things are again difficult. Course 058°, slow – 10 knots. I make no progress. At high speed I pass the southern blockship. The helmsman does magnificently. High speed ahead both, finally ¾ speed and full ahead all out. Free of the blockships, ahead a mole. With hard rudder, around it, and at 0215 hours we are outside again. A pity that only one was destroyed . . .22
The Royal Oak survivors take particular issue with Lt. Prien’s harbour-springs-to-life story. They say he is describing what he expected to happen, and what ought to have happened, rather than what did happen. It would, of course, hardly be human for Lt. Prien to make his exploit sound easier than it was. In addition, there was really quite a lot going on in Scapa Flow. Looking at the scene from a distance, and being under considerable pressure, and believing wrongly that the anchorage had highly sophisticated defences, Lt. Prien may well have thought that Scapa Flow was at last beginning to stir itself and U-47 would be blown out of the water if she remained any longer.
Royal Oak had switched on a light just before the second attack to examine wood drifting past the ship. After the second attack, torches were used and matches struck on the battleship’s deck. Lights of some kind were probably visible aboard Pegasus as the rescue operation was mounted. Two lamps were lit aboard the Daisy. Pegasus swept the sea with a searchlight or signal lantern and exchanged signals with the PWSS on Flotta. Signals may also have been exchanged between the PWSS and other ships in the anchorage where all hands were called in the cruiser Caledon at 0200 hours, the cruiser Colombo began raising steam at 0215 and the cruiser Delhi at 0220. As for the cars roaring about, the only point where U-47 ca
me close to a road while escaping was during the return passage through Kirk Sound. There may, once again, have been a car or cars on the shore – dances tend to go on late in the Orkneys – but the implication that they were connected in some way with the attack on Royal Oak is a false one.
As for Lt. Prien’s four reasons for making his escape, while there were no destroyers anchored to the north of Royal Oak, there had been a car on the shore as U-47 passed the village of St Mary’s on her way into the anchorage. Of the other two reasons – that he could not operate submerged because it was too dark and he could not operate on the surface because it was too bright – it has been said that they are contradictory. This seems to me to be arguing from the point of view that a statement must be wrong simply because Lt. Prien made it. He would hardly have been late from choice for his rendezvous with slack water in Kirk Sound and an encounter with a vessel provides logical reason for his being behind schedule. There is no indication of the range at which he first saw the ship’s navigation lights, but it may well have been far enough away for him to be unable to identify the ship by periscope. As for the visibility, whatever the arguments about it, there was certainly enough light to enable Lt. Prien to carry out two attacks on Royal Oak from a range in the neighbourhood of two miles.
It is not clear whether there was any connection between the activity aboard the cruisers Caledon, Colombo and Delhi and the loss of Royal Oak. What is clear is that the account in Mein Weg Nach Scapa Flow of patrol boats flitting about, the challenge by a destroyer which turned aside mysteriously, and the dropping of depth charges is a total fabrication.
