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John James Kelsey known as Jackie, was a steward in the Merchant Navy.
He was a crewmember on the 5047-ton London registered ship SS Oakcrest owned by the Crest Shipping Line.
SS Oakcrest was little more than a coaster built in 1929 by R. Duncan Ltd of Port Glasgow as S S Korana for Premorska Plovdivdba DD (Overseas Navigation Co. Ltd) of Gunduliceva Ulica 3, Zagreb, Yugoslavia.
S S Oakcrest was 403ft long overall, 52鈥�5鈥� beam, 24鈥�6鈥� draught, driven by a single-screw triple-expansion engine with a maximum speed of 10kts.
Records indicate that S S Oakcrest had never been sold or transferred in her life, remaining a Premorska Plovdivdba DD ship.
In the company鈥檚 black hull livery with black funnel, blue six-point star on a red band, engaged in Mediterranean, UK and River Plate trades.
Her maximum speed was probably a good deal less by the middle of 1940, when she was hired by the British Ministry of War Transport and administered for them by Crest Shipping Co of Stone House, Bishopsgate, London.
S S Oakcrest in British service would not have worn her peacetime livery and would probably have been painted a non-standard overall grey.
She was pressed into long trans ocean service only by the generous government insurance cover and the fact that Britain was losing to enemy action over a quarter of a million tons of shipping a month.
In peacetime SS Oakcrest would probably have been quietly rusting away in some backwater, too small and old to be venturing profitably anywhere.
Instead, with a single, probably pre-Great War gun or her stern to ward off surfaced German U-boats, a civilian crew and a single RN DEMS (Defensively Equipped Merchant Ship) Gunner, she plied her way across the Atlantic.
Through the U-boat infested Western Approaches to the British Isles and the dreaded "Black Gap" with no Royal Navy escorts or long distance aircraft to cover to Halifax, Nova Scotia and onto New York.
On her final journey SS Oakcrest was torpedoed a few hundred miles off the coast of Scotland at position 53潞 north 17潞 west on 22nd or 23rd November 1940.
SS Oakcrest was part of the convoy OB-244 with a total of 7 ships on route from Liverpool to New York when she and the other ships came under attack from the German submarines U-123 and U-103.
This was in an intense period for the Atlantic campaign: a month after the slaughter of convoys HX-79 and SC-7, when German tactics had romped ahead of British technology and numbers, attacking on the surface at night.
U-123 was among the U-boats which attacked SC-7, sinking Boekelo (2,118 tons, Netherlands), Clintonia (3,106 tons, British), Shekatika
(5,458 tons, British) and Sedgepool (5,556 tons, British), all on Saturday 19 October 1940.
The other ships in the convey OB-244 that were lost along with SS Oakcrest were Cree, King Idwal and Tymeric all sunk by U-123 captained
by Karl-Heinz Moehle, while U-103 captained by Viktor Sch眉tze claimed Daydawn and Victoria.
The ships sunk by U-123 totaled 23084 tons and two others sunk by U-103 were 10873 tons.
The fatal blow to SS Oakcrest came from U-123.
It is said that SS Oakcrest sank in seven minutes. Two of her crew got into a lifeboat, which was lowered and fell astern; these crewmembers were never seen again. Those still alive got into a second lifeboat.
In the North Atlantic winter, continually taking water over her sides, the lifeboat drifted Northeast for between eight and eleven days. A number of men died of exposure and injuries in that time and all were consigned to the deep. Some were in clothing needed by the living.
It was during a storm, with a foot of near freezing seawater washing around in the lifeboat, that the survivors sighted land.
The lifeboat reached the shore on the dark and stormy night of 1 or 2 December 1940. They had landed on the Isle of Barra in the Scottish Outer Hebrides, but not before two more men who within the sight of land let slip their hold on hope and died.
The lifeboat did not beach safely in the narrow rocky gully, on a storm-racked Barra coast surrounded by cliffs. At the last moment it broached, side-on to the sea, capsizing, hurling the exhausted survivors into the water, and crushing two. The men, all frost bitten, collapsed onto the tiny shingle beach of Bagh Heige.
After eighteen hours, from dark until mid-morning, two of the survivors who could still muster the energy staggered inland for help.
They were only a couple of miles from the main settlement, Castlebay. A body of water stopped them, and one practically drank himself to death, having gone without water for over a week. The other reached a farmhouse at Tangasdale, west of the beach and north of the loch. By a last, vicious, twist of fate those who came back with the survivor realized they knew one of the men who had already died of exposure from being in the water after the torpedo hit, 22 year old John MacKinnon. Had he survived that night he could have been by the fire in his own home on Barra.
From the relative of SS Oakcrest survivor, John Adams, I now have an evocative description of the landing of the survivors early in December. Adams鈥� niece Cherry Campbell and her family visited Barra in 1998 and spoke to islanders who recalled the events.
Murdoch MacNeil (84 years old in 1998) remembered that the first house to take the survivors was Roderick Neil MacNeil and his wife, at Tangasdale, a little inland from the beach on the western side of the island. Their daughter, Morag MacNeil, a retired teacher, still lived there in 1998. She was a youngster at school at the time of the landing her
mother was milking the cow when she was first aware of men coming from the shore around the hill.
Cherry was able to talk to Miss Morag MacNeil, and Mrs. Peggy MacNiel (in her 80s) who lived across the road.
They kept repeating 鈥淚t was an awful day.鈥�
Morag said it was early morning, her mother was milking the cow in the field (It would get light in December at that latitude about 8.30-9.00am). Morag was leaving for school - perhaps around 8.30, so it must have been at least Monday, 2 Dec 1940. They saw the yellow oilskins on the hill, climbing. Because of Loch na Dorlinn and Loch St Clair, the Loch of the Black Cascade, which lay beside the beach in front of the settlement of Tangasdale, the men went round the back of the loch, circled round, and appeared over the hill from inland. Another SS Oakcrest survivor James Campbell also vaguely remembered this long after.
Morag's mother gave the survivors whisky - the attending Doctor was cross. Alcohol to the hypothermic and shocked can induce blood away from the vital organs, causing coma and death.
Morag said she was shocked - she didn鈥檛 think her mother had any whisky.
Due to the terrible condition of the survivors, local men from the village of Tangasdale used wheelbarrows to get the men back to the houses.
Their legs and feet were so swollen; their sea boots had to be cut off. They had been adrift, Mrs. Peggy McNeil said, for 9-10 days. They were desperate for fresh water, and drank too much, too fast. One died from drinking too much from a stream, after drinking nothing for a week.
The crofters were told not to over feed the survivors. Morag can remember one survivor saying, 鈥渋s that all we get?鈥�
Lorries took the survivors away. Some of the men were initially cared for in the houses at Tangasdale, then taken into other houses in Castlebay.
Eight of the nine survivors who died on Barra, were buried on the island, one was buried on the mainland at his family鈥檚 request.
It is estimated that out of the original crew of 44, possibly 24 initially boarded the lifeboat.
Casualties of the attack on the SS Oakcrest where 35 from a crew of 44 lost.
U-123 sustained damage during the attack in a submerged collision with a sunken ship and was forced to return to base for repairs.
No details exist of the exact circumstances of the death of John James Kelsey; he died on either the 1st or 2nd December 1940. He is buried in the Church of Scotland Graveyard at Cuier; Isle of Barra, under a government supplied slim granite headstone engraved with the Merchant Navy (MN) crest.
Beside John James are 3 other crew members of SS Oakcrest, Frank James Delaney, Sailor, aged 19 from Liverpool, Charles Thomas Hobbs, Cook, aged 29 from Kirkdale, Liverpool, and Richard Storey, Fireman and Trimmer, aged 18 from Newport, Monmouthshire.
The other four casualties from SS Oakcrest are buried at the Catholic Cemetery in the village of Borve 2 miles south of Cuier.
They are Walter Whitty, Boatswain, aged 39 from Cheekpoint, County Waterford, Ireland, William Daley, Able Seaman, aged 40 from Passage East, County Waterford, Ireland, William Carr, Fireman and Trimmer, aged 25 and Michael Fenton, First Radio Officer, aged 43.
An interesting but unfortunate detail is that Walter Whitty and William Daley were related through marriage, they were married to sisters who became widows on the same day.
Other crewmembers of the SS Oakcrest who were buried at sea are commentated at the Tower Hill Memorial in London dedicated to the Merchant Navy losses of the two World Wars.
The message on John James Kelsey's grave is ~
WE THINK OF HIM OFTEN SPEAK HIS NAME ALL WE HAVE ARE MEMORIES AND A PHOTO IN A FRAME.
The Captain of U-123, which fired the fatal torpedo at the SS Oakcrest, Karl-Heinz Moehle, was born 31 July 1910 in Norden, Ostfriesland. He joined the pre-Nazi German Navy, the Reichmarine in 1930 and served in surface vessels before shifting to the Nazi-era Kreigsmarines illegally developing U-boat arm in 1936.
He had commissioned a new small coastal Type 11B in 1937, after serving as a Warrant Officer in two smaller training boats.
He had a good war by late 1940, sinking 8 ships in 6 wartime patrols, mostly in the North Sea, before the prestigious commission on U-123.
U-123 was to be his last front line command, and with her he sank the remainder of his 22 ships totaling 95416 tons.
In June 1941 he was posted to command the 5th U-boat flotilla at Kiel and then the whole U-boat base. He was promoted Korvettenkapitan in March 1943.
Arrested in June 1945 and tried at Nuremburg for passing on to his subordinates the infamous "Laconia Order", he served five years being released in November 1949.
Karl-Heinz Moehle died Sunday 17 November 1996; he lived a full life.
As for U-123, she was one of the most famous U-boats in the war.
A Type IXB she was laid down on 15 April 1939 at AG Weser, Bremen and commissioned 30 May 1940. She took part in 12 patrols that included two very successful patrols on the US East Coast.
U-123 sank 46 ships for a total of 229393 tons and sustained damage to another 6 ships at 53568 tons.
Taken out of service at Lorient, France on 17 June 1944, scuttled there on 19 August 1944. Finally surrendered to France in 1945 and became the French submarine Blaison until 18 August 1959.

Acknowledgments and Sources of Information

Robert Kelsey of Ayr, Scotland. Robert is the brother of John James Kelsey.

Niall MacPherson of Isle of Barra, Outer Hebrides, Scotland. Niall provided photographs of the eight survivors who died and are buried in Barra. He also provided information from eyewitnesses of the events of 1 and 2 December 1940.

Cherry Campbell of Edinburgh, Scotland (Originally from Wales). Cherry is the niece of survivor John Stephan Adams.
She made a visit to Barra in 1998 and was able to interview some of the residents who helped the sailors of SS Oakcrest.
John Adams did not survive the war, he joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve shortly after the tragic SS Oakcrest event.
He was aboard H. M. Trawler Stella Capella on 19 march 1942 when she was sunk by U-701 just of Iceland; there were no survivors.

Ian Campbell (No relation to Cherry Campbell) of Tasmania. Ian is the grandson of survivor James Campbell. James originally from Partick in Glasgow died in 1977. James lost both legs to frostbite as a result of his SS Oakcrest experience.

Commonwealth War Graves Commission, through their web site I could research details about the SS Oakcrest crewmembers buried in Barra.

Gudmundur Helgason of Iceland. Gudmundur runs the web site U-Boat.net. This site provided me with the many details about the U-boats involved in the attack on Convoy OB-244 and their captains.

Morag MacNeil resident of Isle of Barra. Morag attending school at the time of the landing gave Cherry Campbell a detailed eyewitness report of the events of Monday 2 December 1940.

Mrs. Peggy MacNeil resident of Isle of Barra. Peggy MacNeil also gave Cherry Campbell a full detailed account of the events. Peggy and husband Donald helped in the recovery of the survivors from the landing beach.
By a strange coincidence unknown to me until this script was researched and written that I discovered I actually met and knew Peggy and Donald MacNeil.
During the 1970鈥檚 my next door neighbour in East Kilbride, Mary Rodgers (nee MacNeil) originally from the Isle of Barra had many visits from her family which included her parents Peggy and Donald MacNeil.

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