大象传媒

In October 1941 I completed my stoker's training and travelled by train from Plymouth to Stranraer. A drifter took me from Stranraer to Scapa Flow. This was a terrible journey in rough seas. The drifter took me to a depot ship in Scapa Flow from which I was picked up by a motor cutter from the Prince of Wales along with only one other passenger, a petty officer gunner.

After this long, cold and tedious journey I was provided with a hot meal, after which I had lovely hot shower, then had the opportunity to get acquainted with the other men in my mess.

We raised steam the next morning and headed for Greenock to provision the ship. I was shown over the ship by my messmates and was given a first-hand account of the sinking of the Hood and the Bismarck.

We left Scotland next day and made for Gibraltar. This was my first time abroad and what an experience it was to see the Spanish girls dancing on the stages in the bars! Our next stop was Freetown in West Africa, which was very hot. Few of the crew went ashore at Freetown and we soon left for the long leg of the journey to Cape Town.

I remember three incidents from this journey. The first was that a gunner belonging to one of the 5.25 gun crews was crushed in a turret accident. There was a service on the quarter deck the next day, my first experience of a burial at sea.

My next surprise was the crossing-the-line ceremony. All crew members who had not crossed the equator were given a ducking and both officers and men took part. Discipline was relaxed and it was a great experience.

Coming round the Cape of Good Hope we hit the big rollers for which the Cape is famous. It did not affect us very much, but the two destroyers with us, Electra and Express, had a very rough time; many times their screws were right out of the water.

What a marvellous sight it is coming into Cape Town by sea; the town seems to creep up towards Table Mountain. We had a great reception by the pro-British people of South Africa. The stay there was all too short and soon we were on our way across the Indian Ocean to Madagascar and then on to Colombo (Ceylon).

This stage of the journey I can only describe as magical. There were flying fish, whales and sharks - I was seeing things that I previously I had only read about. I had settled into the ship's routine very easily and was proud to be one of the crew. Every night in the mess deck after tea, one of my mess mates would reminisce about the ship - the convoy to Malta, the trip to Iceland with Churchill to meet Roosevelt and the signing of the Atlantic Charter, but mainly of course the action against the Bismarck.

The Prince of Wales at this time was constantly in the news, so we didn't have to be too careful about what we put in our letters home. The folks at home knew our destinations sometimes before we did. The Press caused a bit of friction between the crews of the two ships because their headlines were always 'the Prince of Wales and other heavy units'.

One little story I was told was that when Churchill met Roosevelt, some of the ship's company were invited aboard the American cruisers for a meal and a cinema show. They all came back loaded with presents from the Americans, everyone was smoking Camels. You must remember that at this time the Americans were not at war. The Americans were invited back aboard the P.O.W. but it happened to be on a Sunday Night. Now Sunday Night in the Navy is cook's night off, so all the poor Yanks got from us was cheese and hard tack (ship's biscuits). I often wonder if this was done on purpose to get a bit of sympathy.

At last we reached Colombo harbour. There was no reception here except for the top brass. However, everybody who was watch ashore went ashore by motor cutter from the ship to the passenger jetty. Many of us tried the rickshaws (cost 2 rupees) to get to the other side of the island. (1 rupee = 1/6d = 7陆p).

This was really a tropical island. The jungle reached almost to the edge of the road. We walked back to the passenger jetty through the native quarter, a place called Slave Island. The natives were very servile and called you "master". Looking back, I think this made us puff our chests out a bit and to the natives we must have looked a very arrogant lot.

Most of us were now starting to get brown or red in the tropical heat but there was also prickly heat and Dobie ?????? rash to contend with. In Colombo it was like peace time, all the lights were on at night and there was no shortage of food or drink. Coming from wartime England it was like paradise.

Our next destination was Singapore. According to the older hands who had been here before this was a sailor's paradise. We raw recruits, who had never been out of England before, listened
open-mouthed to the stories of night life in Malaya.

On the way to Singapore I was given the job of bricklayer to repair the boilers. This was normally a leading hand's job but they must have noticed that I was a furnace bricklayer by trade.

A Lt. Engineer was building a small furnace up on the boat deck to burn the brine off copper evaporator coils. (these are used to turn salt water to clear). I was given the job of bricking out this small furnace, which was an experiment. The normal way of cleaning the coils was by chipping the brine of with a hammer but this dented and damaged the soft copper. This job kept me on the upper deck all day and I was able to see gun's crews practising, marines drilling and everything about ship's routine that I wouldn't normally have seen.

Singapore was in sight at last, but we sailed up the straits of Johore to the Naval Base, which was 18 miles from Singapore. Four of you got together and took a taxi to Singapore. The taxis were Fords with canvas tops, like you used to see in early American films. There were no side windows and it was a good form of air-conditioning.

The main places of entertainment, other than the numerous bars, were the big show grounds, called the Great World or the New World. You paid a small admission fee in to the ground and, once inside, there were various side shows and chinese theatres. The main attraction (for the sailors anyway) was the dance hall in the centre of the showground. It cost about 2 dollars for a book of about 10 tickets and these were called taxi dances. All the Chinese and Malay girls were hostesses. You picked the girl you wanted to dance with and gave her a ticket. So you were, if you wanted, entitled to 10 dances.

The taxi ride back to the base at night was hair-raising. The drivers were mad. It was only a dirt road with the jungle right to the edge. It is hard to describe the sound of the jungle at night, every thing seems to be alive and the trees are lit up with fireflies.

Back on board, having had far too much to drink, I found it far too hot to sleep on the mess deck so I found a place on the catapult upper deck, a section allocated to stokers.

I was shaken roughly at about 5am by the chief stoker and told there was an air raid on Singapore and that the news was that the Japs had sunk the Yankee fleet at Pearl Harbour. The date was Dec. 7th 1941. There was plenty of activity and we were back to wartime routine.

On Dec 8th, the Prince of Wales, Repulse and destroyers Express, Electra, Tenedos and Vampire slipped out of Singapore at about 5pm.

As soon as we left harbour we closed up to action stations. The admiral spoke to the ship's company over the tannoy. He told us that we would most likely be going into action and that we were far superior ships to the Japs. His information was that they were old Kongo class battleships covering landing barges in North Malaya.

It was a long night and with all hatches battened down it got very hot. We had too long to think and I wondered what it was going to be like. I prayed that if I had to die, that it would be quick.
Daylight came and still nothing happened then, relief, it was announced over the tannoy to fall out of action stations to 2nd degree readiness. This meant that most people went back to normal ship's routine. Most important, the cooks went back to the galley and we were then able to have breakfast, the last one for some time as it turned out. I can't forget that breakfast, it was 2 boiled eggs with bread and butter.

After breakfast most people were on the upper deck getting some fresh air after being cooped up all night. It was a beautiful morning and somebody happened to say "look at those planes coming towards us high in the sky". Action stations sounded off almost immediately.

I ran through a doorway below the bridge to my action station, which was for'ard fire party. A petty officer was in charge of about ten of us. He told me to go back and close a steel door.
The door was dogged back on to the bulkhead and I had to step out on deck to knock the dogs off. By this time the 5.25" Oerlikons, Bofors and pom-poms were all firing and the noise was terrific.
To pull the door shut I had to have my back to the planes and in my imagination I could feel machine gun bullets going into my back. My stomach was churning.

I felt better getting back to my fire party. We kept getting little jobs to do and mostly went in pairs. Four of us were sent to the fore peak to check a report of a torpedo hit. Before we got right down we met another party (probably damage control) who informed us that we had been hit but the bulkheads were holding.

There was a bit of a lull in the firing and we heard from somebody that the Repulse had been sunk. We took a direct hit with a bomb from 15,000 ft. There was a terrific explosion and all the lights went out. Most of the glass bulbs broke and many of the ratings had no shoes on and got glass in their feet. The secondary lighting came on but the telephones were out.

I don't know what happened to the rest of our fire party but there was only me and a petty officer left, standing by a phone that was dead. I stayed with the petty officer because I thought with his experience and knowledge of the ship I would be alright. We were not given the signal to abandon ship as all power was off. Everything had been quiet for some time and everywhere seemed deserted. We had a bad list to port. The petty officer then said to me "I think we'll have a look on top son and see what's going on".

We went up the port companion way and came on deck below the bridge. The ship was now much further over. The port hand rail and the 5.25" gun turret were in the water and it was impossible to stand upright on the deck. The petty officer said "Get over the side, son". I didn't argue, I dived in and kicked my shoes off. All I had on then was a boiler suit. It had all happened so quick that I hadn't had time to think.

But now I was in the water on my own and wondering what to do next. My first thoughts were to get as far from the ship as possible so I wouldn't get sucked under. I was a good swimmer and swam away as fast as I could. My next thought was about the ship coming over on me. I had dived in the water below the bridge and that was the highest part of the ship.

I changed direction and swam in line with the bows. The next thing that happened was a terrific crash behind me and I can only assume it was the top of the mast hitting the water. Something, possibly part of the wireless ariel, hit me across the bridge of my nose and made a small cut. At the same time, as the ship was capsizing, it set up a big wave which washed me away from the ship. When I came back to the surface and looked back, the ship was upside down and a few men were standing on the keel.

I swam away as fast as I could in panic. I expected to get sucked under or killed by the boilers blowing up. When nothing happened and I was pretty exhausted I stopped swimming and looked around.
I could see nothing except a small amount of wreckage floating about. I saw what looked like an orange box and swam to it. I thought my best bet was to hang on to something and save my strength.

There was a little sea running and when I was on top of the wave I could see an empty Carley float in the distance. I didn't feel like leaving the orange box but I decided I would have to swim for the float. I reached the float and dragged myself on to it. I lay on my back looking at the sky and for the first time started thinking about where I was and what would happen to me. I had no idea where I was.

I had just got my breath back when I heard an aircraft engine and my nerves were on edge again. I immediately thought it was a Jap and expected machine gunning. I rolled off the raft and tried to get my head as far down the side of the raft as possible. However when the plane came nearer, and he came in pretty low, I could see the RAF rings on the wings. I waved like mad and climbed back on the float. There were some paddles tied to the bottom of the float but I couldn't get them free.

One of the ship's motor cutters came up to me with three men in it. One was a petty officer. They asked me if I was alright and passed me a knife to cut the paddles free. Shortly after this a destroyer (the Electra) came up at speed and as she slowed down an officer on the bridge shouted through a hailer to jump on the scrambling net.

When I climbed aboard Electra I was sent down starboard side for'ard to the sick bay. I was given some towelling and told to clean the oil fuel out of my ears, eyes and nose, I think by a doctor. I was also given 20 Players and a tot of neat rum. I was sitting on the torpedo tubes with some of the other survivors when one of them mentioned that there was more rum for anybody who wanted it. I took my cup back for two more tots - it certainly is the stuff to calm your nerves. The deck of the destroyer was very hot and, without shoes, I could not put my feet down anywhere.

The rum was beginning to take effect and I wanted to lie down and sleep. The only place I could find to lie down was on a coil of rope on the deck below the cutter on the davits. The cutter also shaded me from the sun. I coiled round with the rope and put my arm around one of the handrail stanchions and slept like a baby. I woke up at midnight just as we were entering Singapore.

The Exeter was tied up alongside the dockyard wall and we tied up alongside her. With her having a higher freeboard than us we had to go up onto the foc'sle to get across Exeter and on to the dockside. Some of the crew of the Exeter helped to carry us piggy-back across a stretch of sharp gravel to some large sheds. We were given a shower, food and drink and some clothing. We were taken by bus to the naval barracks, "HMS Sultan", and told to find a place to sleep. I wandered around the barracks and eventually was offered a bed. The man whose bed it was slept on the floor on a biscuit-thin mattress.

I awoke about 10am the next morning and, looking out of the window on to the parade ground, saw the Royal Marines of the Prince of Wales and Repulse being marched up and down.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.