大象传媒

My father, Herbert Geoffrey Hall - Geoff Hall 鈥� was born in Macclesfield, Cheshire, in 1911, and died in retirement in North Wales in 2002, aged 90. During the Second World War he served in the Merchant Navy. He kept a diary of his experiences from which he later prepared accounts of some of the more memorable and important of these. This is his account of his time on 鈥淎tlantic Tow鈥� duties.

Val Myers (nee Hall)

ATLANTIC TOW

On 15th October 1945 the tug, Empire Mary set off for Montreal. She was a large coastal tug with a powerful 2500 hp engine, driving a single screw, 2 oil-fired boilers, and our accommodation was commodious and placed amidships.
After a couple of good days the weather went round ahead and worsened and worsened. I have a newspaper cutting saying 'Queen Mary held up by bad weather' so conditions on our small craft can be imagined. Everything loose piled up in a corner of one's room, poor meals, badly served but not much interest in food anyway. I was only sick once but felt miserable for days. One evening when things were at their worst 'Orry asked me to help him. We struggled to the bow and there secured two 5-gallon drums of linseed oil, which was allowed to dribble alongside the hull to break the force of the waves. And it did. Now I knew the meaning of 'oil on troubled waters!'
All things come to an end, even bad ones, and on the 25th October we ran into the mouth of the St. Lawrence and a flat calm. The run up the river to Sorel was beautiful as it was the time of the 'fall' and the maples were in splendid colour.
Sorel was a small town of about 20,000 inhabitants, but it had a good street of shops, stuffed with all sorts of luxuries which we hadn't seen for years. No rationing! Better still was a trip by bus up to Montreal one day, where the big stores were even better stocked. Prices seemed high and our few dollars didn't go very far. However, I was able to buy a pair of fur gloves for Norah(Geoff鈥檚 wife) and, unavailable in Europe, some nylon stockings.
There were 3 dredgers to be brought over so the Company had sent 3 tugs. The Turmoil was a proper deep sea tug, 3,200 HP Diesel, and towing on a winch which is the proper way for long tows; the Salvonia similar to the Mary but built pre-war, and ourselves. We were not so powerful, having steam engines of 2,500 HP with oil fired boilers, and towing on a hook which meant the rope could not be adjusted at sea. We were supposed to leave Sorel during the last week of October and the Turmoil got away on time. She could do about 7 knts with the tow, and as she struck some reasonable weather I believe she had an uneventful crossing.
Our dredger wasn't ready so it was 1st November when we set off down river, calling at Sydney, Cape Breton to take bunkers for the long haul across the Atlantic. The weather turned nasty and we had to go half speed as, being in congested waters, we dare not risk breaking our shortened rope. As our tow was leaking somewhat there was further delay whilst that was fixed.
Eventually on 12th November we set off from Sydney in good weather, which let us settle down nicely. Just as well, because next day the sea got up, the wind howled and we continued our wallowing way. The dredger weighed about 2,000 tons and was not a good shape to tow, so we paid out 300 fathoms of 16" rope and 350 fathoms of 5" wire. Between rope and wire we hung 2 very heavy shackles, about 2 cwt each, so the rope, now nearly 戮 of a mile long, hung in a great arc which acted as a shock absorber when tug and wreck fell apart on the opposite sides of big waves.
'Orry was in charge of the towing but as he did not have a deep sea ticket we had taken on a young Welshman, called Jones (what else) of whom I remember nothing, and we also signed on a Mate, again with a Master's Ticket. This man, a Mr. Dunn, I think, was quite remarkable. A quiet, suave, sophisticated, educated man of the kind you would expect to find in command of a P & O Cruise liner or similar. A man more used to entertaining guests at the Captain's table than one keeping the 4 to 8 watch on an unsuitable tug on a long tow. Conversation with him elicited that he had lived the life I have described. I wondered just what had befallen him, but I was to find out.
As the latitude of Sydney, Cape Breton is much the same as St. Nazaire in France we intended to follow the great circle but after a week of bad weather, when our speed rarely exceeded 3 knts, it was decided to head for the Azores in order to replenish fuel, stores and more particularly water. We were in radio touch with the dredger and learned that her crew were mainly seasick and also were short of fresh water.
So we changed course and headed for the Azores, where we arrived in fairly good weather after 20 days at sea, having covered some 1,700 miles.
Our first job, approaching land, was to shorten the very long rope. With a winch one simple winds it in, but the way we were, we had to make a small rope fast to the big one, just over the stern, then the small rope was hauled in by our windlass as far as possible, gaining about 100 ft. This process was then repeated time and time again. Because ropes twist when stretched and there was no swivel in the set up, the big ropes curled and twisted like a box of snakes as soon as it was relieved of the load. 300 fathoms of 16" rope takes up a lot of room and we hadn't much.
We shortened up until we were able to get into the harbour at Ponta Delgarda and get both of us alongside the quay. Next day we stretched our ropes out on the quayside and took the twists out so that they could be stored out of the way. Fortunately we had a spare rope as the big one was showing signs of heavy wear where it passed over our counter. My photograph shows everybody, bar the cook, involved in this process: sailors, firemen, engineers and wireless operator, but there is no sign of either Jones or Dunn, the two deep sea men shipped for this run.
Three days in port gave us a bit of a rest and a chance to do some shopping, spending my last escudos on bananas and pineapples in the hope that my youngsters might enjoy these as, so far, they had never seen such fruits. As time went by, and even though I kept them in the coolest place, the bananas began to ripen. I ate the riper ones and gave away others, but was eventually beaten by sheer numbers - the bunch had consisted of about 300 but I'm afraid the last hundred had to be dumped.
Once clear of the islands and again the weather deteriorated. I suppose one can't expect much in the Atlantic in winter, but we seemed to get more than our share.
To add to our problems we now learned why Mr. Dunn was not lording it in some big passenger liner. Whilst ashore he had laid in a stock of alcoholic liquor and as we left he was rotten drunk. From being a very pleasant gentleman he became a perfect swine. He insisted in coming into our rooms and arguing at the top of his voice, over and over again about the most trivial matters. He was quite incapable of keeping his watch on the bridge, and in the end we had to lock him in his room for the rest of us to get any peace. We took the precaution of removing his private stock of liquor which we dumped over the side, but even so it was a couple of days before he once more became the polished gentleman worthy of better things.
After battling against easterlies for some days when one day we only covered 36 miles in 24 hours, the winds swung round to the west. This helped us along nicely but greatly increased the pounding of the big rope on the counter. Where the rope passed over the rail we lashed special hardwood boards some 3" thick. After a few hours these boards were smashed. We wrapped all sorts of cloth around this point of wear, even to the extent of taking the canvas covers off the lifeboats to wrap round the rubbing point and in spite of all this we were still worried that the rope would part before we reached our destination of St. Nazaire.
In the engine room I had two problems, the first being that a few days out from Ponta Delgarda the H.P. gland on the main engine developed a blow, which meant that, on every up-stroke of the piston, a jet of steam was discharged. I wasn't worried abut the loss of fresh water as we had plenty, but because of the weather, with seas sweeping over the decks, we had to keep the engine room skylights closed. This meant that the atmosphere below was damp and uncomfortable. Worse still, everything made of steel in the engine room began to show signs of rust. This was particularly annoying, as I prided myself on keeping things clean and, as this was probably my last voyage I had hoped to leave things in good order. There was nothing I could do about it, as firstly, we dare not stop, and secondly, the gland was mechanically packed which required special packing which we did not have. So we trundled on, and though I wasn't watchkeeping, having promoted the donkeyman to be 4th Engineer, I sympathised with those who had to spend 8 hours a day in that atmosphere.
My other problem was more serious. Whilst the ship had been built on the Tyne, the boilers were of American make and I found that one boiler had the habit of breaking gauge glasses far too frequently. (I later discovered that both sets of attachments to the boiler were slightly out of line.)
Knowing of this propensity, when taking stores I had ordered about 3 dozen gauge glasses. The standard marine gauge glass in Britain is 16" long. Looking in the order book I saw that 16" glasses had been ordered previously so I repeated this. Imagine my horror when, nearing the end of the voyage, I found that the gauge glasses were actually 18" long, and I only had two left of that size and about 6 dozen 16" glasses which were useless.
Try as I would, I could not join two 16" glasses to make a longer one. We had nothing in our meagre stores of any use at all. When we got down to our last two glasses I tried to preserve one by keeping it shut off, but eventually had to bring the last one into use. Pondering the problem in the saloon, my eye fell on the brass rail running round the top of the sideboard, designed to stop things falling off. It was the same diameter as the gauge glass. I quickly cut off 18" of this, and searching in my tool box, found the smallest drill I had, which was 1/16" in diameter. With this I managed to drill 14 holes, an inch apart, in the centre length of the brass tube. Not an easy job with a hand drill on a ship that was bucking and rolling all over the place. The next question was, would the tube stand 200 lbs pressure? Well it would, and it did, and on the last day our final glass burst and we came in using this tube. The cocks were kept shut and every 20 minutes the fireman had to open first the steam end, when he got 14 jets of steam, then the water end when some jets turned to water; as long as the change point was about the middle of the tube I was happy. If not, suitable adjustment to the feed valves could be made.
As we approached the coast of France we were hoping the easterly winds would continue as this would make it easier to get into the harbour, but, of course, a couple of days out, and the wind swung round westerly.
Nearing land then, we had to shorten the rope as the shackles began to drag on the ground and there was a danger of their becoming foul of rocks or wreckage, of which there was quite a lot. We dare not shorten too much, or the dredger could have been blown on top of us. The entrance to St. Nazaire harbour is quite narrow, and there was a submerged wreck on either side. Tides run up and down the French coast at right angles to the entrance, at up to 5 knts, and there is only about 20 minutes of slack water, during which we had to get ourselves and the tow through the gateway and into the harbour. The slack water was at about 8 in the morning, so about 6.30 am nearly all hands were engaged in all the manoeuvres necessary. As it came daylight a large French tug came out to meet us. We signalled him to make fast alongside the dredger and steer it through the narrows, to which he replied, 'Not possible. I have no ropes at all' So we brought D.M. Dredge 12 into the harbour on our own, and though it rubbed on the entrance wall, there was no damage. There was no doubt that Horace Martell was the best tugmaster I ever encountered. It was now Sunday 23rd, which was some 42 days since we left Canada, and at times it had seemed twice as long.
As soon as we had put the tow into the locks we turned tail and made our best speed out of the harbour. Christmas at home still seemed possible, but we then ran into the worst storm of the whole voyage, in spite of which we drove on. Too fast it proved, as about 4.00 am on Monday morning 24th December we hit a sea which did quite a lot of damage on our deck. It was the only time I have been completely suspended above my bunk and able to look underneath myself.
Once we turned into the Channel we were running ahead of the storm and found ourselves doing 17 knts. for a while. For our final leg I found I was short of fuel, not that we hadn't got any, but that it had fallen below the heating coils and wouldn't flow. There was only one thing to do and I was the only one available to do it. So I spent Christmas morning in the bunkers, shovelling great globs of fuel oil into the bay where were the heaters and pump suction. This kept her going, and after a while I was able to get cleaned in time for a nice Christmas dinner, as we steamed up the Needles channel heading for Southampton.
I was not able to get away immediately, but a few days later I made my way north and was able to spend New Year at home. A much anticipated event was presenting Norah with the rather nice fur gloves I had bought in Montreal. To our horror we discovered that the package contained two for left hands. I posted these back to Montreal and a month later we received a replacement pair, plus a reimbursement of the postage. Very satisfactory.

During our work on salvage operations we were paid about 25% over the standard wages, as no awards were made for war casualties. Some jobs were covered by Insurance, so an award could be made and I learned that my share was to be a little over 拢600. A not inconsiderable sum in those days, as I had just bought my house for 拢635. Unfortunately somebody had to pay for the war and as Income Tax stood at 50% I only received some 拢300. Still, very acceptable.

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