大象传媒

After training in the Conway and at the RN College, Greenwich,service in the Renown, including visit to Halifax
Transcribed from a video recording

My first ship was the battlecruiser 鈥淩enown鈥� and I was sent up by train, with others, to Rosyth in Scotland, and there in the dockyard was this huge, and you can imagine in the dockyard, massive vessel, the battle cruiser Renown, she was being fitted with all the latest 20 mm Oerlikon machine guns and pom-poms. Any crevice or part of the ship where they could fit one of these guns, they did. The ship was a mass of sparks, chaos, and of course for a young chap in a brand new uniform to see all this, anyway, taken aboard, and due course made ready for sea, we then proceeded to Scapa Flow, and we were there for nearly three months, again, refitted again, new crew. Everyone had to know what their job was, what their duties were, brand new, like anything else, called working up exercises, and there were a lot of things taking place, gun firing, simulated attacks from aircraft, that sort of thing.
This would be March, April, May of 43. Scapa Flow, by the way, anybody who wants to go there, there are no trees. The people who live there loce the place, but we hated it. It was the base for the Home Fleet. Then suddenly late one afternoon, on the Tannoy system, the Captain speaking, special sea duty men, which is the special call for everybody to go to their leaving harbour stations. We shall be proceeding in a westerly direction for Port X. Well everybody knew where we were going, and port X due West is Halifax, Nova Scotia. Everybody knew that. The thing about a ship like, a buzz gets around, and someone, somewhere鈥�.. Anyway, the beauty of that was that we proceeded slap into a force ten, which you鈥檒l see from the photographs, which was rather fun,all the decks were flooded below, all our sleeping quarters were flooded, and that was rather fun, looking back on it. Gordon wasn鈥檛 seasick, funnily enough, he was seasick later in another ship, but not in the Renown. We arrived in Halifax to a huge welcome, terrific welcome by the local people, people came down to the ship in their cars, took us to their houses, meals, it was really wonderful. Canoeing on the lake in the evening, marvellous, absolutely wonderful time. They were contributing to the war, but it had not affected them, they had everything you could think of, all the goodies, things that were rationed in England, we had a marvellous time. In Canada I went up in a Swordfish, that was a real鈥� there was an airfield at a place called Dartmouth, in Halifax and we were invited to visit this air base, and would we like a flight in a Swordfish? Cor, I mean, that was great. Open cockpit, string bags they called them, we had a flight right over the Renown, about half an hour, two of us you see, in the rear, pilot in front, that鈥檚 all, open cockpit, you see, what an experience!
Gordon Richmond

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