大象传媒

AA TEENAGER鈥橲 WAR AT SEA

First Voyage

The war broke out when, as a sixteen-year-old Merchant Navy midshipman, I was homeward bound towards the end on my first trip, a six months voyage to the Far East as far as Japan. My ship a 9000 ton general cargo steamship. The first thing we really took in about the situation was at the end of August when the Captain informed the crew that war was imminent. We were at that time in the Mediterranean and there was anxiety that if war broke out, Italy would join in on the side of Germany. We were just south of Italy. An immediate job for us boys was to paint all the exposed brasswork on the ship black. As polishing brass was one of the more unattractive routine tasks this was a pleasure.

We arrived at our homeport, Liverpool, to find Britain at war. Poland had fallen and what became known as the phoney war set in. (Not so phoney at sea as the first ships were sunk within hours of war breaking out.) During my three weeks leave I, with the rest of the population, got an identity card, a ration card and gas mask and learned to deal with the blackout. My mother had made blackout curtains for the house and we had to think ahead to fit them before going out to the Cinema to avoid having to put them up in the dark when we came home. The blackout had its hazards out of doors. One night down town I bumped into someone in the dark outside a fish and chip shop. A girl鈥檚 voice came out of the night, 鈥淭his blackout鈥檚 a bugger, have a chip鈥�. My 11-year-old sister鈥檚 school had been evacuated to North Wales and during my leave she came home. She brought with her a couple of pounds of fresh River Dee salmon! It turned out that she had been billeted on the family of the local poacher! The attitude in the country was oddly happy. After the threat of war since the Munich crisis the previous year, there was relief that the uncertainty was removed. My generation had grown up in the shadow of the 1914-18 war which dominated the boys books of the time and the conversation of our fathers with their contemporaries. For them, for the rest of their lives, the 鈥淲ar鈥� would mean the earlier conflict. We youngsters felt rather pleased that now we were going to have a war of our own.

First Wartime Voyage

I rejoined my ship early in October to find her tranmogrified. Painted completely in wartime grey with a necklace of degaussing cables round the hull, the Boffins very quick response to magnetic mines. Also she had been armed!
A 4鈥� BL naval gun and a 12 pounder anti-aircraft gun had been fitted on the poop. On the bridge were two 1917 Lewis machine guns and on the foredeck, a weird contraption called a Holman Projector. This was designed to throw old-fashioned Mills bombs at attacking aircraft. I was a short tube attached to the ship鈥檚 steam line. With the bombs we had empty cocoa tins. The drill was to remove the pin from a bomb, carefully place it in a cocoa tin, drop it down the tube and open the steam cock. The idea was that this would shoot it up in the air, air pressure would remove the tin, the lever would fly open, explode the bomb and frighten the Luftwaffe. The only time we used it, the bomb came out of the tube with a spout of rusty water and fell on deck. A quick-thinking seaman threw it over the side before it went off. We all had an intensive course in the drill for these weapons at the local RNVR depot and when we sailed, included in the crew was a party of Naval ratings who formed the nucleus of the gun crews. Even though we were not a severe threat to the enemy, just having the whole crew going to action stations with heaps to do and being able to make a satisfactory noise had a good effect on the morale of the Merchant Navy crews of the time. Much better than just waiting to be shot at.

We set off on another voyage out to the Far East. From being the junior the previous voyage, I was now second senior and had two first trippers to benefit from my deep experience. Another innovation was to learn the routine of sailing in convoy. Our first taste of action was an attack by a Focke Wolf condor aircraft. The 2nd Officer banged the firing pad of the 12 pounder as it flew overhead. The shell went through the fuselage but was fused to explode at 500 feet, well above the aircraft which was at masthead height. We later heard that it did indeed come down in Ireland. The bomb just missed us and exploded just off the bow of the ship. The U-boats struck about three days later and within an hour three ships had been torpedoed. Later that night the weather deteriorated and by dawn was blowing a full gale. Uncomfortable for us but more so for the U-Boats. From then on, the usual hazard to seamen of gales and fog were our friends.

The fall of France

Spring of 1940 found me on my next ship with what was regarded as a cushy job. Ferrying troops and equipment over to France. We would spend a few days at anchor off Cowes, then go into Southampton to load. A night trip to Le Havre, a day or two discharging then back to anchor off Cowes. It was then that I enjoyed my first taste of command; in charge of the ship鈥檚 motor lifeboat, which was used for communication with the shore. The first indication that things were not as they should be in France was in May when, as we approached Le Havre, we were diverted to Brest. A launch came out from the shore with an official who was closeted with the Captain. We then turned round and sailed back to the UK, much to the annoyance of the Canadian troops on board who, after months of training in Canada were all ready to join the war in France. As it turned out they were probably lucky.

Arrest in Casablanca 鈥� Evacuation of Gibraltar

In June we had peculiar task. We were sent to Falmouth to embark 1000 French troops who had come over with the BEF from Dunkirk but who had had enough of the war and wanted to go home. A port in occupied France was of course out of the questing so sailed for Casablanca. As our ship鈥檚 company consisted of 19 English officers and engineers and 27 Chinese seamen, we had to take considerable extra stores. We were quite impressed that these included 7 enormous casks of wine for the Poilu鈥檚 litre per day and a smaller cask of something no doubt a better vintage for the 30 odd French Officers. Being just a year out of school and having passed School Certificate with credits in modern French and Spanish my schoolboy French improved enormously during the three weeks of the voyage. The troops were an interesting crowd, half Chasseur Alpins, one of their elite regiments and the rest Foreign Legion. It was during this voyage that the Royal Navy attacked and sank the French warships in Oran when they refused to join with the Allies. When we arrived in Casablanca a few days later we were anything but the flavour of the month with the French Authorities. In fact we were met by a destroyer who fired a shot across our bows and escorted us into port where we were arrested. The arrest lasted just a week. When the war broke out, the civilian population of Gibraltar had been evacuated to Casablance because of the expected Italian air raids. They now had King George鈥檚 subjects eating their heads off so we were released to take them away. We youngsters were more than pleased to have a big proportion of pretty girls as passengers. Here again my choice of European languages at school paid dividends and my Spanish improved as much as my French had. We put them all ashore in Gibraltar and after three weeks joined a convoy of a dozen ships taking the civilians back to the UK. Here again they were nearly all women, children and girls. To keep themselves occupied during the voyage they did all our washing and ironing for us. I can remember the astonishment of my mother when I came home on leave with a trunk full of clean, beautifully ironed clothes. The voyage home took three weeks and we were lucky not to be attacked, as our only escort was an armed tug.

Japan joins the War4

My last voyage as a midshipman saw lucky escapes, due to Engine Trouble. My ship was one of the early motor vessels, 1925 vintage. We set off for Hong Kong via the Panama canal but either one of other of the engines gave trouble most of the time. Once through the canal we sailed independently but after the first week both engines failed. It was obvious that Shore expertise would be needed and the choice was to return to a Californian port or carry on the way we were going to Pearl Harbour. The Captain decided on the first alternative and four days after starting to limp eastward Japan attacked Pearl Harbour. After a wonderful few weeks being entertained by the people of San Diego we set off again but before we got to Hong Kong, it fell to the Japanese. We turned left for Singapore; again the Japs got there first. A brief call into Java, then finally to Sydney Australia. Nine weeks there, this time being entertained by cousins of my father then the voyage home. This time there were no alarms or excursions though we learned later that we had sailed through the battle of the Coral Sea without seeing a ship or an aircraft. This luck saw us home unmolested and my time as the lowest form of animal life in the Merchant Service came to an end with my teenage years as I went on leave to sit for my 2nd Mates Certificate.

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