大象传媒

The short life of H.M.S.Ekins(as I remember) copyright to H.J.Scott-Douglas

.My draft was to the U.S.A. on the Queen Elizabeth 1, we only took five days unescorted, the trip was uneventful, we steamed into New York Harbour passed the Statue of Liberty to pier 92 (I believe) from there we went by train to Ashbury Park, New Jersey which was H.M.S.Saker, we stayed there until 26th. November 1943 when I was drafted to H.M.S.Ekins (captain class turbo-electric frigate 1300 tons 3-3" guns, 26 knots). I was to pick her up at Bethlehem Steel Shipyard at Hingham near Boston .We took the train to New York (Grand Central) then on to Boston where we were bussed to Hingham where on 29th. November 1943 we accepted and commissioned H.M.S.Ekins, as we had a few days to store and ammunition ship also find our way around the ship, we were allowed night leave so my mate and I went into the nearest town which was Quincy, there was a large department store called Sheridans where we went to buy nylon stocking and underclothes etc. which were unobtainable in the U.K., we were lucky enough to meet a Scottish lady serving there who sorted us out, I bought Margaret nylons, underclothes and a lovely dressing gown . We moved from Hingham to Boston while we worked up and learnt more about handling the ship. My advancement to Petty Officer had come through, I was 20 1/2 years old, this made me the senior torpedo rating aboard in charge of the torpedo party, all the ships electric's and depth charges, answering to the Gunner who was trained in guns but not torpedoes and associated equipment, the biggest problem was we had all been trained in D.C. (direct current), these ships were A.C. (alternating current), but we managed and mastered the lot. I made out my lists for damage control, depth charges stations, action and cruising stations and special sea dutymen for entering and leaving harbour, and spent a lot of the time exercising the crews, much to the amusement of the dockyard workmen on the quayside, the war was a long way away from them.
We left Boston January 1944 and via. Nova Scotia picked a convoy for U.K., after an uneventful trip we arrived in Belfast where we were to be based for a short while. We joined a hunter killer group which roamed the Atlantic keeping the U Boats on the move, we would rendezvous with convoys and refuel from the tankers, all tankers at this time carried fuelling gear, this enabled the groups to stay at sea for many weeks. Our job was to keep the U-Boats under water so they could not catch up with the convoys. U Boats were now fitted with Snorkel, which enabled them to charge their batteries while submerged, coastal command now had long-range aircraft, which also kept the U Boats under. We attacked many contacts but because there were no positive sightings we never claimed any hits, when you hit a U Boat at about 200ft down it takes a long time for the wreckage to arrive on the surface so you could make a positive claim. About April 1944 we were transferred to the East coast to Immingham on the Humber from where we did nightly patrols to thwart the E Boats which were active, these were German Scknellbootes, 42 knots, 4-21"torpedo, 6-30m.m. A.A. guns, they were too fast for us to catch so we kept them on the move. In May we shifted to Sheerness and did a few channel convoys, these were not very pleasant because of the air raids and the large guns at Calais kept trying to hit us, they were not very successful but it was not pleasant having these large shells dropping around you. It was on one of these convoys that we were in collision with H.M.Tug.Buccaneer it's bow crashed into the starboard side of our forecastle above the water line, this caused us to return to Chatham dockyard for repairs and enabled me to spend a few precious hours with Margaret, so every cloud has a silver lining.
Back in service at the end of May we lay off Southend until the night of 5th. June 1944 when we set sail escorting about 30 Landing Craft type vessels full of petrol through the channel, our quietest trip yet, we were on our way to Arromanches in Normandy France, to Sword, Juno and Gold beaches the invasion of Europe was on. We arrived at about 0800 6th June 1944 we could hear the guns firing but our lads were away from the beach and were awaiting the arrival of our convoy to replenish their trucks and tanks etc., our landing craft ran up the beach and starting unloading. Our escorting job was done; we now patrolled to seawards of the beachhead to keep U-Boats and E Boats away. On our patrols we sunk a midget submarine and a two man motor boat whose crew we captured, their idea was to creep into an anchorage, point the boat at a target and eject out the back of the boat, the bows of the boat were packed with explosive. There were a few air raids because we had air superiority over the beach head, there was an armoured train (German) which use to wait in a tunnel near Caen, it had a bad habit of coming out of the tunnel firing it's gun and nipping back into the tunnel, the R.A.F. took care of it by bombing each end of the tunnel and burying the train. By now the Mulberry Harbour had been constructed and had survived a gale, so we were surplus to requirements and were sent to Harwich. At Harwich we were used for Dutch Coast Patrol as an M.T.B control ship, keeping the swept channels clear of E Boats who had a bad habit of laying mines especially pressure mines because of the shallow water. By this time our troops were advancing and we wanted to open up the schelde leading to Antwerp to supply them. We would leave Harwich early afternoon with four M.T.B's (Motor Torpedo Boats), two of these we would station at each end of our patrol area, when the E Boats approached our patrol we would direct our M.T.B's to intercept and we would illuminate the target with star shell or snowflakes, as the E Boats turned away they would run into the M.T.B's who hopefully would slow them down and we could finish them off. On one trip we spotted a small sailing boat, on board were two German soldiers escaping from Dunkirk which was surrounded, they were pleased to be out of it, on the same trip we picked up a survivor from a German bomber which had been shot down by a Mosquito night fighter, the bomber had been carrying a V1 (doodle-bug), they had started using planes after we had overrun the launching sites. During April 1945 we were patrolling again when E Boats penetrated our patrol, minesweepers swept the area for three days and found nothing. The next evening 16th. April 1945 we were doing our usual patrol when a mine blew up under us amidships, partly flooding our boiler and engine rooms, we stopped and drifted, shortly another mine blew up under our forecastle flooding several compartments and injuring several people with shock and concussion injuries. I was in charge of damage control and we quickly ran emergency power to power electric pumps and lighting and managed to keep the second boiler room so the stokers could raise steam and get the steam pumps going, we also had to replace a lot of lamps because so many had been smashed. Luckily the ship stayed on an even keel and we were able to keep the water in check but unable to lower the level. Now we had steam again we slowly got under way, it was dangerous to hang around in that neck of the woods, and the next morning a salvage tug met us and lashed itself alongside and took us to Chatham, pumping out all the time but it was still unable to lower the level of water inside the ship. At Chatham we were put into dry dock straight away, when the dock was pumped out we saw the reason why they could not lower the level of water; the holes were too large. Ekins was declared a total constructive loss and was scrapped. This was my last ship during wartime.

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