大象传媒

This story was told to me by my godfather Patrick French. who lives in Bury, Lancashire. The story is about a trip to North Africa on the SS Fort McLOUGHLIN, a 7 thousand ton merchant ship.Pat sailed on this ship along with my father, Frank Mortimer who is Pats cousin.

26th December 1942 -We loaded our cargo of war materials in Barry, South Wales and joined a convoy at Gourock heading for Gibraltar.

The first few days were quite peaceful until we were east of the Azores when submarines were reported in the area and the escorts were chasing around like mad, dropping their depth charges. They sank one submarine, then all was quiet until we reached Gibraltar.

12th January 1943 - We left Gibraltar in a convoy of 31 ships heading out into the Med. Speed 4 knots. We passed Oran at 3.a.m. At 3p.m. Corvette K264 was chasing round at the head of the convoy dropping depth charges which brought a submarine to the surface. The corvette did a "U" turn and rammed the sub. at the same time spattering it with a trace of bullets. It then lowered a boat to pick up survivors.

14th January 1943 - We had an aircraft warning at 4.a.m.. Everybody turned out with life jackets and identity cards !
The aircraft flew twice over the convoy and was fired on by escorts and merchant ships. At 4.40a.m. the all clear was sounded and no bombs were dropped.

15th January 1943 - Arrived Phillipeville, Algeria at noon and started to discharge cargo.

19th January 1943 - Left Phillipeville and joined a convoy from Bone, Algeria. As we were joining the convoy we had an air attack which sank the SS FORT BATTLE RIVER , killing 13 crew members.

23rd January 1943 - Action stations sounded at 6.30p.m. and we watched a German bomber fly over the convoy having a battle with a night fighter.About a mile away the bomber burst into flames and crashed into the sea causing a terrific explosion as its bombs went off. Twenty minutes later several planes attacked the town. All the ships opened fire , including us, which lasted for about 15 minutes. There was a lull for a few minutes before they swooped again. It was like hell let loose. The following morning we were visited by a lone bomber which dived and dropped its bomb a quarter of a mile away.

27th January 1943 -Alarm sounded at 2.45a.m. More ships from Algiers were due to join the convoy at 4.30.a.m. It was a brilliant moonlit night and every ship in the convoy could be seen as we approached Algiers which we could see in the distance was getting a battering as were the ships leaving port to join us. Enemy aircraft were constantly passing backwards and forwards over us but did not seem to want to bother with us. At 3.15 a.m. we got the submarine warning so the convoy started to zig zag and the escorts began to drop their depth charges. Then suddenly one of the passing aircraft decided to have a crack at us. we were 1st ship , 2nd column which they all seemed to make for. We heard the plane go into its dive but could not see it. All guns pointed in its direction, the escort opened fire which was a signal for the rest - so we let him have it!. A bomb whistled down and exploded in front of us. Suddenly we all spotted the plane flying past at about 40 feet above the water. Someone shouted "We've got him !". He gradually disappeared out of sight as we heard 2 more bombs explode in the water well astern of us. Then we heard the powerful throb of his engines as he began to climb again - the next thing we saw was what looked like a flare in the sky which graduaaly burst into flames , began to lose height and we saw him crash into the sea , blazing furiously. "Thats another one" !! We seem to have done quite well this trip - 2 subs and 3 planes - quite a change!
5.00.a.m. - more depth charges and still zig zagging. Fierce barrage still over Algiers.
As we had discharged our cargo we were sailing empty apart from about 18 inches of petrol rolling about in NO.1 hold. At this stage of the war jerry cans had not yet made an appearance so the aviation spirit cargo was carried in 4 gallon petrol cans - 2 to a cardboard box. We had been carrying about 2000 tons in our NO 1 hold and either by bad loading or sheer weight some of the cans had been squashed so we were left with this residue rolling about in the hold.

29th January 1943 - The Commodore put up the signal to increase speed to 10 knots. However the SS RECORDER signalled that his maximum speed was 7 knots because the ship had lost part of its stern in the Algiers bomb attacks so 7 knots it had to be as the speed of a convoy is always the speed of its slowest ship. There were lots of submarines in the area with depth charges being continually dropped but no ships were lost. We arrived in Gibraltar at 10p.m.

1st February 1943 - Went out into the Mediterranean behind Gibraltar to pump out the aviation spirit from Hold NO 1. It was actually only about 6 inches deep and was a common problem in Merchant ships.

3rd february 1943 - When we had arrived in Gibraltar from England the convoy had split into 2 with the first half leaving for Algeria before us. We were lucky as we did not lose any ships but the first half of the convoy was continually attacked resulting in 8 ships being sunk and 2 badly damaged. One of the ships sunk was the PACIFIC EXPLORER which was carrying the same cargo as us with the aviation spirit in NO.1 hold. It got a direct hit and blew up and sank within 2 minutes with not a single survivor.

There was also an American ship carrying 800 troops of which 400 were lost. THe SS FORT BATTLE RIVER was sunk as she was leaving Phillipeville so that was 9 ships sunk out of our convoy.

Whilst waiting to form convoy in the bay of Gibraltar we were awakened several times by explosions caused by Navy ships dropping depth charges to prevent swimmers from the Spanish coast attaching limpet mines to our ships.

7th February 1943 -Our convoy left Gibraltar at 4p.m. There wer 31 ships and we later joined another convoy from Algiers. At 10.45.p.m. we were awakened by an explosion caused by a ship in the next column being torpedoed. It was the MARIE CELESTE which was the Commodore ship. As we sailed past we heard lots of shouts from men in the water then the ship in front of us in our column- the EMPIRE MODERID - got torpedoed, although it did not sink.

Footnote:
28th February our skipper , Captain Jackson, went to Buckingham Palace to be decorated. Our convoy was credited with sinking 3 submarines and bringing down 7 enemy aircraft.

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