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On a sunny if rather windswept August day in 2002, I was on my first ever visit to Tiree. It was only my second day on the island, and I had already begun to fall in love with the place. The people I met were friendly and down to earth. The landscapes (and seascapes) were stunning and wonderfully different from many I have seen elsewhere in Scotland.

I was staying in the Tiree Lodge hotel, on the shore of Gott bay. Close by one can see the ruins of some old church buildings with graveyards alongside, and I found myself drawn to see the old gravestones. While looking out over the sea I noticed a gravestone which stood askew and isolated next to the perimeter wall It was facing in the opposite direction from the other stones in the vicinity. As I got closer I could read the inscription, and eventually realised it was in Dutch.

Gevallen
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Van Zijn Vaderland
Purser Rijk Baron
SS Volendam
Geboren Te Harlingen
6 Januari 1889
Overleden Op Zee
30 Augustus 1940

This translates as follows.

Fallen
In the Service
Of His Fatherland
Purser Rijk Baron
SS Volendam
Born in Harlingen
6 January 1889
Died at Sea
30 August 1940

I was intrigued. How had Rijk Baron met his demise? How had his body come to rest here? What had become of the SS Volendam? I resolved there and then to find out more.

Initial research revealed some of the broad facts. The SS Volendam was a Dutch liner from the famous Holland America Line. The ship was built at Harland and Wolff Ltd in Glasgow (the engines were fitted in Belfast), and was completed in 1922.

The Netherlands was occupied in May 1940, but fortuitously the Volendam was one of a number of Dutch ships which did not fall into enemy hands. It was later one of a number of such ships chartered out to the British Ministry of War Transport. Under the terms of the charter the flag and the crew of the ships would remain Dutch.

The Volendam was put to service as an evacuation ship carrying children from Great Britain. Under the command of Captain W.P. Wepster it set sail from Merseyside on 29 August 1940 bound for Canada with approximately (1) 600 passengers. Of these, 320 were children being evacuated through the auspices of a body called the Children’s Overseas Reception Board. The crew numbered a further 273.

Once under way, drills were carried out to practice evacuating the ship in an emergency. The ship was part of convoy OB205. Unfortunately for the Volendam its convoy was being stalked by U-boats U59 and U60. Four ships in the convoy were torpedoed, but only one of them, the SS Har Zion, was sunk. The Volendam was attacked by U-boat U60 under the command of ‘Oberleutnant zur See’ Adalbert Schnee (1913-1987).

The Volendam, the lead ship in the middle column of the convoy, was torpedoed while it was several hundred miles off the coast of Malin Head, Northern Ireland. Two torpedoes stuck the ship on its starboard side in the area of Hold Number One. Only one of the torpedoes exploded. The attack had taken place in the early hours of 30 August 1940. Captain Wepster gave the order to abandon ship, and despite rough seas all 18 lifeboats got away safely, whereby all the passengers including children were saved. The wisdom of having safety drills clearly paid off. SOS messages were sent out and ships from the convoy helped to pick up the survivors.

Two British ships, the small tanker ‘Basset Hound’ and the ‘Valldemosa’, picked up some of the survivors. The Norwegian ship ‘Olaf Fostenes’ also assisted in the rescue, as did the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Sabre, which picked up 32 men. The stricken SS Volendam was saved. She had to be towed backwards, and was brought to safety in this manner by the tug boat Salvonia, initially to the Isle of Bute. She was later taken to dockyards elsewhere on the Clyde for repair, but was out of commission for almost a year.

The first torpedo had caused a rupture 15 to 20 metres wide. The second torpedo was discovered minus its warhead near the transverse bulkhead in Hold Number 2. Some have theorised that the force of the blast from the first torpedo somehow dislodged and disabled the warhead on the second before it struck. Most commentators agree that had the second torpedo exploded, the Volendam would have sunk.

Subsequently the unexploded electric torpedo was recovered from her, and taken away for examination. This was the first German torpedo recovered whole (only fragments had been recovered of the four torpedoes which sunk the HMS Royal Oak in September 1939), and must have given the wartime ‘boffins’ useful intelligence. The survivors had other reasons to be glad that it had not exploded.

It was apparent that Purser Rijk Baron fell into the water during the rescue operation and could not be saved. According to the entry in the register on the Island of Coll his body washed up on the island of Gunna (an islet lying between Tiree and Coll) on 21st September 1940. His death was registered on 11th September 1943 in Coll. The registrar, a Mr R Sturgeon, noted that the death was “registered on the information of R J Macdonald Procurator Fiscal”, that ‘Chief Purser’ Baron was married, and that he was 51 years of age. His father was given as Jan Baron, deceased, but his mothers first and maiden names were not shown. She was also recorded as deceased.

Another entry in the register starts with the letters ‘UR’, which I believe probably stands for ‘usual residence’, and gives the address, Buys Ballotsingal 37, Schiedam, Holland. His place and date of birth was not shown, although these details do appear on his gravestone. The cause of death was recorded as drowning. The Doctor certifying was shown as Dr D G Hunter, Baugh House, Tiree.

It seems rather strange to a modern observer, that such a long time had elapsed before the death was registered. Practices would undoubtedly have been different at the time, and any investigation would have been hampered by the constraints of war and the fact that the Netherlands was occupied at the material time. Unsuprisingly, given the passage of time, local recollections vary slightly (2), however it seems that at some point after the war, Rijk Baron's body was exhumed and taken home to his native land by his family.

I then had an amazing stroke of luck, in obtaining a first hand account from a Volendam survivor. I received a reply from an enquiry I had made, from a Mr Joe Cosgrove, now living in Australia, who had been on the SS Volendam as a child evacuee when it was torpedoed. Joe recounts his experiences;

"It is now sixty two years since the event but I will tell you all I can remember, bearing mind that I was only seven years old at the time. It all began when my mothers cousin in Canada, invited my parents to send my sister and I to her in Canada for the duration of the war, with the intention of our parents then joining us in Canada after the war was over, this must have been early 1940.

After the applications for us to be evacuated etc. had been approved, my sister and I joined up with a group of other children from Bury, Lancashire.(by the way that is where we came from) and went by train to Liverpool. I think this must have been about the 23rd or 24th of August 1940. We were placed in a transit place, an empty school I think it was along with a large group of other kids from all over England. There we were all subject to further medical checks. My sister was found to have a cold or chest infection or some such thing and was barred from proceeding any further, and was duly returned home to our parents.

The rest of us spent the next few days in transit. I remember that every night we had to go into the air raid shelters as Liverpool was being blitzed heavily at that time. We boarded the Volendam on the Tuesday, We went to bed that night still tied up to the wharf but when we woke up in the morning we were at sea. I can remember doing lifeboat drill at various times, looking out from the ship and seeing nothing else but other ships which made up the convoy we were in.

It was the Friday night when the torpedo hit but I don’t know at what time, I remember the cabin steward, whose name was Paul, collecting me in my pyjamas putting my overcoat on me and wrapping a blanket round me and carrying me up to our lifeboat station. I don’t know how long we were in the boat but I do remember I was saying my prayers most of the time. We were eventually picked up by one of the escort vessels. I don’t remember anything much about what happened after that until we arrived back in Scotland a couple of days later.

There we were all taken to another transit school were we were all kitted out with clothing and footwear. After a few more days we were on a train bound for Manchester and then on another to Bury and then totally unannounced I walked into my parents house. Although they had been informed that I had survived they had know idea where I was or when I would be home. I did have a few souvenirs. My lifebelt, my ID tag and a copy of The Daily Dispatch ( no longer in existence) which had front page pictures of Volendam survivors landing in Scotland (Gourock) I think. But they have all got lost over the years.
The Dutch naval officers grave you came across, was the only death amongst the crew or passengers I believe and he lost his life during the lowering of the lifeboats. The ship did not sink. She developed a heavy list and was eventually towed back to Scotland, repaired and returned to active service in WW2. Whilst being repaired a second unexploded torpedo was found in one of the other holds(lucky for us)."(3)

The Gourock Times of 6 September 1940 ran a story about the Volendam under the headline 'British Evacuee Ship Torpedoed', albeit in a rather veiled form, no doubt due to the constraints of wartime censorship. I have reproduced this article in full seperately. The piece made reference to the loss of the Purser, but in very little detail. In another stroke of luck however, I stumbled onto something quite different, the account of an eye witness. Sheila Mackay was a thirteen year old child when she and her sister Jessie became ‘Seavacs’ on the Volendam. Her personal story is recounted by Brown(2000, P155-157). The following passage stands out as evidence of how Rijk Baron met his fate.

"It was about half past ten that same night that I woke to find someone shaking me violently. When I sat up Jessie and the two Robertsons were up and fully dressed. Then I heard the alarm ringing. I got up and before I was half dressed Jessie and the Robertsons were away. I wasn’t properly awake either. I just drifted along the crowded passage the way the rest were going. Then a big black sailor came up to me and asked me my boat station. I told him and I can remember he just hoisted me over his shoulders and took me safely to the boat station. By this time I was wide awake. I thanked the sailor and then got hold of Jessie. I bet you I gave her a right good row for leaving me.

I thought it was another practice alarm at first. Then when we had to climb into the lifeboats I realized with a shiver it was no practice. I’ve never seen the sea as rough in my life as it was that night. It was also pitch black. We got into the lifeboats. Then a man at each end began lowering it …… at last we reached the water. The man cut one end of the rope and the one end of the boat fell with a splash into the water leaving the other end in mid-air. But the man at the other end cut the other rope and then we were rocking up and down in the very stormy seas.

Then I discerned a man coming down the rope ladder into our boat. The iron thing that had held the rope was swinging about, it went towards the man and crashed against his head. He was knocked unconscious and fell into the water and got drowned. I didn’t realize how horrible it was at the time. I was just wondering if I would go the same way as him! Wondering if I would ever see dry land again. Wondering if I would ever come out alive."

Young Sheila Mackay was to be one of the children subsequently landed safely in Scotland. Her account tied in with Joe Cosgrove’s recollection that the death had occurred during the lowering of the lifeboats. Her vivid description left little doubt as to what had happened. Rijk Baron had met his demise, when he received a blow to the head from a swinging pulley, which caused him to fall into the water and drown. A terrible accident in the midst of a dramatic rescue. The crew of the Volendam had acquitted themselves well, and in doing so the Purser had paid the ultimate price.

Footnotes

(1) The number of passengers on board varies in many of the written accounts.
(2)Tiree has a wonderful local archive, 'An Iodhlann', where I was made most welcome. Alasdair Sinclair in particular was most helpful during my subsequent research.
(3)On 19 September 1940 another evacuation ship the 'City of Benares', was torpedoed, this time with considerable loss of life. A total of 258 out of 408 passengers and crew were lost, including 77 out of 90 children. In an almost unbelievable twist of fate, two of the children saved from the Volendam, lost their lives on the City of Benares.

References

Brown,M. (2000) Spitfire Summer - When Britain Stood Alone, Carlton Books London.

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