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MALTA CONVOY CHAPTER ONE

I served as an Ordinary Seaman on HMS Manchester, a medium cruiser, from April to August 1942. My action station was on the centre gun of A turret, and my cruising station on one of the port side 4-inch guns. The account below tells the story of the convoy known as Pedestal, as I recalled it ten or so years ago, when I wrote this account of the action in which the cruiser was finally struck by a torpedo, and had to be scuttled.

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SOUTHWARD BOUND

Not many days after our return from the Arctic we read the tell-tale signs again: no more shore leave. Provisioning ship and taking on water soon followed; ammunitioning wasn't needed, for we hadn't fired a shot while up north. So one summer evening we found ourselves steaming once more past the boom defence vessel in the southern entrance to the Flow. On the messdeck the rumours had already started. It was Iceland again, to stop the German raider from breaking through. But we noticed that the ship's head was pointing resolutely west; the green headlands of the north of Scotland moved serenely by. So we were going to meet an important convoy from half way across the Atlantic (where the Canadians and now the Americans too handed over to the British) and escort it up through the Denmark straits and on to Murmansk; it was carrying aid to the Russians direct from America. But this theory weakened as the bows turned to the southward, and somewhere off Ireland we rendezvoused with an aircraft carrier, escorted by two destroyers — also headed south. Old hands identified her as HMS Furious: what could this signify?

The four ships ploughed the long blue Atlantic swell in a southerly direction so steadily that new rumours were bound to spring up. We were going to accompany this carrier round the Cape, to join up with Navy units operating out of Bombay, so as to harass Japanese shipping in the Indian Ocean. That meant we would be putting in at Simonstown to refuel, the old lags winked, and so we would enjoy South African hospitality and the bright lights and the girls of Cape Town. Or the carrier might carry on, and leave us there to carry out anti-raider patrolling in the South Atlantic, just as cruisers had done earlier in the war, and seen the Graf Spee to the bottom.

The proliferation of rumours, with scarcely a shred of evidence in their support, at length irritated me so much that I decided to launch one of my own. A lone Free French sailor had joined us shortly before leaving Scapa; I had talked with him from time to time - a tiny man, with a powerful Bordeaux accent. His nationality gave me the idea of our having a French-speaking destination - so I determined it should be Madagascar. One afternoon I was standing at the guardrail beside another sailor from another messdeck, a member of another four-inch gun crew. Looking out to sea, I quietly told him that a steward in the Navigating Officer's cabin had seen a chart of the island of Madagascar open. I gave it as my view that the pilot wouldn't be studying the seas around Madagascar without some good reason, so presumably that was where we were bound. He listened intently without comment; I shifted away to rejoin my gun.

Ten minutes later I was sitting at my post at P2 when I noticed groups of sailors forming and splitting up and reforming, evidently passing information and discussing it. One of my gun crew came up to me and stood close.
'Heard the latest buzz then?' he said quietly, leaning over.
'The Indian Ocean, you mean?'
'No - well, I don't know. But it's Madagascar.'
'How d'you know?'
'It's from the pilot, they say.'
'Well, he should know ...'
'Where's Madagascar, then, Lofty?'
'It's the other side of the Cape ... in the Indian Ocean.'
'Why would we want to go there?’
'Stop the Japs, perhaps ...'
'Yeah ... maybe. If they took it, they could cut off our route to India - '
‘And to the Eighth Army too.'
'Right, so they could ... Suppose it makes sense then ...'

At that moment the TS claimed my attention on the headphones, for a routine report that we were all present and correct. This enabled me to hide my jubilation at the success of my little scheme. By the end of the watch the word Madagascar was on everyone's lips. I felt that my contempt of messdeck rumours was completely justified. But there were doubters, and attempts were being made to trace the information back to source. And when no officer's steward could be found to substantiate the story of the Madagascar chart, suspicion focussed heavily on me. Accosted by my messmates I had to admit the fraud. Reactions were mixed, from resentment and shoulder-punching to amusement and even admiration at my having taken in a considerable part of the ship’s company.

Any lingering beliefs that we were bound for southerly latitudes were dispelled when, quite suddenly, we turned east and increased speed. Most of the older hands now declared that we were headed for Gib - no sailor would risk losing respect by saying the name of Gibraltar in its full form. And Gib might just mean that we were going to enter the Mediterranean. The earlier light-hearted mood, envisaging entertainment in southern cities unaffected by the black-out or wartime shortages - such as Cape Town or Buenos Aires or Rio de Janeiro - was swiftly replaced by one of earnestness, streaked with anxiety. For the Axis powers had established naval ascendancy throughout much of the Mediterranean, and controlled the sealanes from Italy to Libya so strongly that the island of Malta was severely threatened, suffering daily attacks from the air and running dangerously short of supplies and ammunition.

One evening as dusk fell we caught sight of some yellowish hills to the south-east: my first sight of Africa. It was past midnight when we nosed into Gib harbour, which was seething with activity, though under diminished blue lighting. In the humid warmth of an August night, cruisers and destroyers were taking on fuel and water, as were a number of merchant ships. From the dockside, blue faces were turned up to study us, with the detached fascination accorded to those going out to face death. Those looks told us for sure that we were bound for the Med, in spite of much of it having been virtually closed to British surface vessels over the past year, though our submarines, based on Malta, had sent a significant tonnage of Axis shipping to the bottom.

Taking on fresh water and fuel took much longer than normal; the confusion inside Gib harbour was heightened by the shortage of space and the number of fleet units to be serviced. Dawn had already broken when we assembled, again very slowly, a few miles from the harbour entrance, to the east of the Rock. It stood out greyish-white in the bright morning light; its crest cut the blue sky with an aggressive clarity quite new to me. I felt the open exposure of all the ships, manoeuvering to get into position, as ominous. Everything could be seen from the Spanish shore, and reported to the enemy. No-one was in any doubt as to which side the Spanish fascists favoured.

Mediterranean convoy: Days One and Two

Eventually, after much raising and lowering of flags, and vigorous semaphore signalling, the convoy of 14 merchant ships, with an escort of five cruisers and a large number of destroyers, got under way. If there remained any lingering uncertainty about whither we were bound, that was dispelled soon after by an announcement from the Captain on the ship's tannoy: we were going to relieve Malta, the proud little island that had stood athwart the German route to North Africa and refused to yield to enemy assaults. Earlier efforts, in February and June, had been slighter in scale, and made the mistake of using a slow convoy speed; little had got through. The merchant ships with us now were larger and faster, each capable of as much as 14 knots. That brought Malta within five days' sailing time. Moreover, for part of the trip we would be accompanied by heavier units of the fleet, including aircraft carriers to give us air cover. The convoy itself would steam in four lines, each line headed by a cruiser leading three or four merchantmen. There would be two rings of destroyers, an inner and an outer. Given vigilance, there was every chance of our getting through with little loss. We could expect to have to fight off attack from the air, the surface and from submarines; but the combined firepower we could muster was fearsome. There was no doubt but that we would give a good account of ourselves. The success of the enterprise, and Malta's survival, depended on the watchfulness and fighting spirit of every man on board each of the many ships in the convoy. This time we were out to teach the Axis a lesson they wouldn't forget.

Morale rose at once — and spirits even more when the massive grey bulk of battleships and aircraft carriers grew on the horizon and took up position a few miles astern. Fledgeling sailors listened attentively as old hands agreed among themselves that this was the strongest convoy escort they had ever seen gathered in the Med, and that these merchantmen could outsail by four or five knots the few ships that had made up the February or June convoys, neither of which had managed to bring significant aid to the island. Such was the confidence engendered that we actually wished for a squadron of enemy planes to appear in the sky so as to let us give them a pasting, or for an Italian fleet to blur the horizon with trails of smoke so that we could give chase, engage them in battle and send them to the bottom, letting the convoy steam on unscathed for Malta.

Our belligerence was however soon to turn into impotent fury. Alerted no doubt by an agent of the Germans in Algeciras, a Spanish drifter had set sail from Malaga or thereabouts, and shaped her course to intersect with the convoy. She was first noticed as a smudge of smoke on the port bow. Our initial hope was that this was an Italian cruiser about to fall into our trap. But as the stubby superstructure and short hull rose above the horizon, we knew she could be no warship.

Excitement dropped, but we kept her in view. We watched with disbelief as she sailed inside the outer destroyer screen and then with dismay when, penetrating the inner screen too, she impudently hove to just ahead of the two cruisers leading the middle lanes of the convoy. A large Spanish flag fluttered prudently at her stern. As we swept past her, we could see that crew-members were stationed on either side of her wheelhouse, openly taking note of all that the convoy and its escort consisted of. At this effrontery we exploded in anger, asking each other indignantly why we didn't blow her out of the water at once: she was clearly a spy ship in the service of the enemy. For all we knew, the crew might be German, masquerading as Spanish seamen. But the bridge made no move. The little vessel rode the successive wakes of the cruisers and the merchantmen, lingered to record also the heavy units astern, and then made all haste for the North African shore, presumably to land in one of the Spanish enclaves on the coast, and from there transmit the vital information about our convoy's composition and escort strength to the Axis powers.

The night passed quietly. The summer temperatures of air and water in the Med gradually heated the cold metal of the ship, and we dispensed with all clothing other than a singlet and underpants, plus our working overalls, normally turned down to the waist and tied there by knotting the sleeves. We wore plimsolls without socks, and of course had our anti-flash gear handy for gun drills or action when it came; most of us left our caps in our messdeck lockers. The warm sun, its heat mitigated by the breeze out at sea, kept us out on deck a lot of the time, even when we were not on watch at the four-inch guns.

It was on the second day, I believe, that action began. The first enemy presence appeared very high in the sky: an Italian reconnaissance plane, checking up on the convoy's position and current composition. The aircraft was above us before we noticed it - to the chagrin of look-outs on watch - and was greeted with a vituperative barrage of anti-aircraft fire from the cruisers, that must have been almost useless given the plane’s altitude. So we had failed in our first engagement.

The second was much more unexpected. Some sailors were standing at the port side of the Manchester, by the guardrail, looking out across the intervening half-mile of water between us and the cruiser HMS Nigeria, when one of them saw a shape appear in the water not two hundred yards away. It became a periscope standard, then a whole submarine. At once the sailors raised their voices, yelling up at the bridge. Suddenly the submarine realised its error and began submerging, blowing all its tanks. The command 'Independent fire' was given, but the submarine was so close that few guns could depress far enough to get the sub in their sights. Only the Oerlikons, meant for anti-aircraft combat and firing light shells shaped like big bullets, succeeded in peppering the water round the sub's conning tower with a few rounds before she sank out of sight. By now two destroyers from the inner screen were racing up, but in the confused underwater noise created by so many propellers on all sides, they must have found it hard to locate the sub. I doubt whether any claim of a sinking was made, even though we heard the dull boom of depth charges exploding astern for some time.

We relieved our embarrassment at having failed to react quickly enough to the submarine by laughing about the enemy skipper's shock on realising he had surfaced right in the middle of an enemy convoy. But later that afternoon there was no laughter on our faces when, after another submarine alert, we looked astern to see one of the aircraft carriers, HMS Eagle, listing heavily to one side. Planes were sliding off her flight deck into the water. As she disappeared into the haze with increasing distance, she was evidently sinking. Destroyers had rushed to her aid and were depth charging at a distance. They dared not do so too close to the stricken carrier, for men were already swimming in the water nearby, and the explosion of a depth charge even several hundred yards away is felt in a swimmer's stomach like a kick from a horse, and can stun you with pain - or at lesser distances kill.

The holiday cruise atmosphere, always tenuous, vanished totally. We were witnessing an act of war; undoubtedly some men had died, and many were swimming for their lives.
'Poor bastards!' Coates said quietly at my side, over and over again.
I thought of the sailors still clinging to the carrier. Now she might be heeling over so far that they could only drop off the flight deck many feet into the water below. At any moment she might turn turtle, her massive weight smashing into the swimmers, and burying the carley floats that had not been able to paddle clear. It was the turmoil and confusion that assailed me: the sudden transformation of an intricately organised fighting machine into a chaotic liability, death and dying within her and all around - a disaster area.

The loss of the carrier sharpened our vigilance remarkably. We were glad when night fell and enveloped us; there was no moon. The following morning when we looked astern, the sea was empty: the battleships and the remaining carrier had left us. We felt betrayed. Now we had to carry the whole load: the four cruisers leading the merchantmen; the anti-aircraft cruiser bringing up astern, weaving across the tail of the convoy; and the escorting destroyers, still prowling, lean and hungry and ominous. It must have been that day that we suffered our first air attack. It took us to action stations, even though it was a high-level affair. The bridge wanted the action crews of all anti-aircraft armament closed up, even the six-inch guns, available only for low-level attack. I recall we were stood down from time to time, but ordered to remain close by for rapid response. There were several alerts, and from inside the turret we could hear the sharp explosions of the four inch guns amidships, as well as the coughing recoil of the Bofors on B turret.

When each action was over, we would spill out to see what the results had been. If any enemy aircraft had been shot down, we were too late to see the evidence. But we looked long at the two or three merchantmen that dropped astern that afternoon; at least one of them had thick black smoke rising from amidships. Eleven left … eleven ships to relieve Malta with!

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