大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by a volunteer from csvberkshire on behalf of Alec Kay and has been added to the site with his permission. Alec Kay fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

Incident at Trincomalee

In May 1943 Alec joined HMS Ganges, the shore-based training ship, as a boy cadet. He was seventeen years old. One day the Chief Mate told Alec and his friend that they were to go on a mission and would be back in about three months, but in fact it would be two and a half years before they returned to the UK. First of all they were sent to the Mediterranean where they remained from Sept 43 until April 44, after which they went to the Far East. He dictated to me the following incident which occurred off Trincomalee in Ceylon:

When I was transferred from the Mediterranean fleet to the Dutch East Indies fleet, I came on board HMS Wayland which was the Fleet Repair ship. My job was Bowman on the 45ft Cutter. There was also a Stern Bowman, Stoker and the leading hand who was the Coxswain. One night at about 2 a.m. we got a call on the tannoy: it was for boat crew at the gangway on the double. I then went onto the Cutter and we cast off.
It was a very dark night, there were no lights and the leading hand said there had been a major incident. When we got close to a floating dock I could see that it was at an angle of about 40 degrees. Inside the floating dock was a battleship. Later I learned that it was HMS Valiant, a 35 thousand ton battleship. As we got to the dock we could see there were a lot of Singhalese workmen and they were in a panic. We came alongside and picked them up. It was very dangerous as the whole dock and the ship could have turned over. We laid off to see what was going to happen. After about two hours the dock engineers started to stabilise the dock. We were told to take our Singhalese to the jetty. We then went back to the floating dock, picked up any more workmen and at about 6 a.m. we were told there was no more danger, and we went back to HMS Wayland. The Commander-in-Chief of the Dutch East Indies fleet sent a signal to our captain, Lord Carson, expressing his deep gratitude. We then found out that the Valiant had to be taken away to Colombo, and were later told that she had broken her back. This incident had to be kept very quiet as both the floating dock and HMS Valiant had been badly damaged, and in fact she never saw any further operational action. I don鈥檛 know the reason for the dock tilting but I think it was something to do with the instruments. As a result of this incident, I was allowed to go on transfer to HMS Cumberland, where I went on a big bombardment exercise against Sabang, an island in the Straits of Malacca, this being one of the biggest operations in the Dutch East Indies fleet. I remained in the Far East from 1944 until 1946 when I was demobbed.

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