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In Durban on 13th Jan. 1942, 159 RAF personnel and 28 members of No 4 Company RAOC, including my father Sergeant G H Jackson, known to everyone as Harry, walked off H M T City of Canterbury, in protest at the appalling conditions on board. This is the true story of what happened to those soldiers and airmen, including my father, and how ordinary working men, most of whom had volunteered to fight were asked to board a ship, to risk their lives for “King and Country” in a foreign land thousands of miles from home, and to travel there in the most appalling unhygienic and unsanitary conditions.

On 6th December 1941 Convoy WS14, one of the largest convoys ever assembled, sailed from the Clyde bound for the Middle East, carrying approximately 400 men of No 4 Company R.A.O.C. commanded by Major R Peatty, plus a large number of RAF servicemen. The importance of this convoy can be seen by the fact that as well as numerous escort vessels the Royal Navy had also assigned HMS Ramilles and HMS King George V, two of the Royal Navy’s largest battleships.

The troops on the convoy must have been concerned for the safety of their families, Sgt Jackson like a lot of other servicemen had developed a code so that he could tell his wife Marjorie back in the North East of England where he was. Before he left the UK they agreed on certain ways to evade censorship of his letters. For example Yorkshire was Africa and Sheffield meant Suez and Doncaster Durban. So in a letter home he would write, “Do you remember that trip we did to North Yorkshire and then visited our friends in Sheffield”? That meant they were going to North Africa and probably onto Suez.

While the troops didn’t receive any letters during their time on board, the ship had a daily newsletter which played down the amount of bombing the UK was receiving. Their letters home were of course censored, but using the code they did manage to give their families back home a rough idea of what was happening.

Harry wrote to his wife Marjorie, most days, typical letters concerned life on board, his pals, the war, hoping they were not getting any air raids. When Convoy WS14 reached Durban on the 8th of January 1942 the destination had been changed to Singapore, though at this stage the RAF and Army personnel still believed they were all going to fight in North Africa. At this point British High Command still believed in the myth of Fortress Singapore.

Sergeant Harry Jackson arrived in Durban on the 8th of January 1942 on the HMT “Highland Princess”. They had sailed from Avonmouth docks and joined the convoy in the Firth of Clyde. However after a month at sea Durban with its sunshine, lack of wartime rationing and its warm welcome from the locals, must have been a welcome sight to the men of No 4 Company. They did not however receive the normal reception from Perla Gibson the “Lady in White” who used to greet Commonwealth troops arriving in Durban with patriotic songs. For a few days they used the HMT “Andes” as a barracks until they were transferred to the “City of Canterbury”. HMT “Andes” had rejoined Convoy WS14, which had left the Clyde on the 5th of January, having been into Capetown to disembark the Vice-President of the South African Senate so conditions on board were for a WW2 troopship extremely pleasant.

This was the build up of Convoy BM12, which was going to take troops to Singapore via Bombay. The “City of Canterbury”, which had been built in 1923, had travelled out from the UK as part of Convoy WS5A arriving in Durban, South Africa on January 25th 1941. The rest of 1941 saw her operating primarily between Port Said and Alexandria. She was also involved in evacuating British troops from Crete in May 1941. For the rest of 1941 she carried POW’s from North Africa to Durban and South African troops to the Middle East. On December the 27th she left Aden bound for Durban, with a cargo of over 4,000 Italian POW’s, in a vessel designed to carry 800 men. The combination of overcrowding and many trips to and from North Africa carrying POW’s would appear to have left the vessel in an appalling condition, despite the Captain’s report to the contrary. One of the Warrant Officer’s on first boarding the City of Canterbury, on the 12th of January, commented, “my reaction was one of utter disgust, the decks of the ship were covered in two inches of coal dust, with excrement and vomit everywhere”. The men of No 4 Ordnance Company R.A.O.C. including Sgt Jackson found similar conditions on the vessel. They however were not to sleep in cabins, as the officers and warrant officers were, but in the ship’s cargo holds. This is where the bulk of the Italian POWs had been carried, and due to the overcrowding, they found similar conditions to on deck with bugs, lice, and excrement on the decks, and in the bedding. The lifejackets were filthy, and in an unserviceable condition as the strings had been cut and an issue of serviceable ones had been refused.

The South African civilian dockers had walked off the ship and refused to work her. Some of the dockers stripped to the nude on the quayside, as they had become covered in fleas and various other bugs, and they took turns to hose each other down. Some of the dockers piled their clothes on the dock and set fire to them. The whole vessel was in a shocking condition. The men of No 4 Company were all granted shore leave, and Harry went ashore with two of his fellow sergeants.

When the three sergeants returned at around midnight they found a large body on servicemen, mostly RAF from 453 Squadron also from the “City of Canterbury”, milling around the dock gate shouting that they were not going back on board because the ship was “lousy”. Harry Jackson with his two pals forced their way through the crowd to go back on board. Some RAF Sergeants approached them and asked them not to go on board, and to support them in their protest. However the three men made they way back onto the ship.

Back on board it was a scene of confusion. On deck men were throwing blankets hammocks and bedding over the side because they were swarming with lice. Everywhere men were complaining at the state of the ship. In the darkness the lice bedbugs and cockroaches had become more active, and as they shone their flashlights the various insects scuttled back into the dark. The ship was alive! They went down into the holds and found them to be the same. At this point Sgt Jackson approached the Officer Commanding No 4 Company R.A.O.C., Major Robert Peatty, and complained about the condition of the accommodation. Sgt Jackson accompanied Major Peatty and other officers in an inspection, and all agreed that the holds of the ship were in a dreadful state, also there was not enough room to sling hammocks, and the troops would have to sleep on the steel decks in the cargo holds.

One of the “mutineers” described the City of Canterbury as a “hellship” he also recalled a Wing Commander drawing a loaded pistol and firing it into air, and ordering one of the sentries on the gangplank to use his bayonet on some of the men leaving the ship. The Airmen and Soldiers who had walked off the ship were then forced back on board by armed troops being called out and used against them, and the authorities mounted a guard on the docks with South African troops manning Lewis guns on the dock walls.

Next morning Harry Jackson saw men with arms legs and chests badly bitten by bugs. In the morning around ten-o-clock men again walked off the ship, and assembled on the quayside. An hour later he went to Major Peatty and told him he was going to leave the ship. This was because he agreed with the men in their protest, but also to help keep order. The officer agreed it would be a good idea if order were kept, as by this time there were hundreds of troops milling about on the quayside. After a discussion with the RAF Sergeant of the Guard, Harry left the ship by the rear gangway, as the Sergeant of the Guard felt “it would be embarrassing to him” if he left the ship on the main gangway.

Down on the quayside there were a number of No 4 Company’s Sergeants already there, and Sgt Jackson with other NCOs kept the men in order. Airmen and soldiers could be heard shouting “I’m not going back on that filthy ship”, “They can shoot me first”, “What do they think we are — prisoners of war?” This was a volatile situation, and the RAF and Army personnel divided into their respective units, and officers came along and tried to persuade the troops to re-embark, without at any time giving the men a direct order to board the ship. At around 11.00 A.M. Air Commodore Frew, DSO, MC, AFC (later Air Vice-Marshal Sir Matthew Frew), came to the quayside and asked for a deputation, six from the RAF and six from the Army. Air Commodore Frew was in South Africa as head of the British Air Ministry Mission in Pretoria.

Sgt Jackson was in one of the deputations made up of Army personnel. The Air Commodore listened to the complaints from the two deputations, and them asked them to find out the feeling of the hundreds of troops on the quayside. After talking to the men the deputations reported back to the Air Commodore that the feeling was that they would not go back on board whist the ship was in the filthy condition that it was. Sgt Jackson and the Air Commodore, inspected the living quarters accompanied by other officers. He was shown lice, bugs, and the unserviceable life jackets that were crawling with vermin.

continued in Part 2

Howard Jackson
Woodstock Oxford.
June 2005.

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