大象传媒

Shield Rochester 鈥� Merchant Navy and Royal Navy

At the outbreak of war I was in Rio de Janeiro serving as first officer on the cargo vessel La Estancia. The announcement came at 10.30 in the morning, local time whereupon we were immediately sent by the Consul to St. Lucia, from there we continued our trade as a cargo vessel to Baltimore and Halifax finally to join a convoy home to Hull.

Our next trip was a long one from Hull south to the Cape Verde Islands and then crossing the Atlantic through the Panama Canal to Australia calling at Fiji and then to Bowen amongst other Australian ports. We finally had to pick up a full cargo of special timber from Vancouver, Canada to manufacture aircraft frames. After visiting several US and Canadian ports we met up with a convoy off Halifax. Traveling at only six knots we felt very exposed. We had several warnings of U boat sightings, which put us on edge. One Saturday night off Iceland, submarines attacked. After the first explosions I lined up all hands on the boat deck in anticipation of trouble. We were the sixth ship hit just before midnight, a torpedo on the port quarter. The captain gave the order to abandon ship as we felt the ship begin to go down by the stern. The crew and three passengers clambered into the lifeboats, which had been swung out in readiness on the portside deck. At the same time a tanker was hit some five miles away. It exploded with a whoosh not a bang, lighting up the clouds with a bright red column of flame. I gave a final check of the engine room; one engine was still working in the green glow of the emergency lights, the water almost submerging it. I felt the ship lift going down stern first and slid down a lifeline into the water. The ship rushed past as it slipped down almost vertically upright. Amid the debris I finally found the lifeboat and was pulled aboard.

A ship flashed a signal and stopped. I think it was the 鈥淔iscus鈥� but it was almost immediately torpedoed and quickly sank by the stern. After a while the corvette 鈥淐oreopsis鈥� came up alongside. We clambered aboard the low afterdeck. For the next week or so, in cramped conditions, I shared an officer鈥檚 cabin and learned to play new card games. I left the ship seven days later in port at Gourock on the Clyde with the clothes I stood up in and with 30 shillings, won in cards.

After a few months in various cargo vessels I was offered fourth officer in the cable ship HMS 鈥淢onarch鈥�. The pay as a Royal Navy Officer was higher than as first officer on a cargo ship! Over the next two years we worked around Scapa Flow, the North Sea and the Channel with one trip around to the Barents Sea

A short while before the invasion we were sent around to the South East coast. In preparation for the landing a cable had been laid from Swanage to within a mile of the Normandy coast. A day or two after the landing we were sent to pick up the cable and complete the connection to the shore. In the pitch black after nightfall we were looking for our signals from the Normandy coast. We were hit by shells, which we thought were from the shore, although we realised later were from an American ship. I was on the bridge, which collapsed, another salvo knocked me into the water. I scrambled onto a raft joined by the Chief Petty Officer. The Canadian frigate 鈥淭rentonian鈥� soon picked us up. I couldn鈥檛 walk having a number of shrapnel wounds and I was dragged into the captain鈥檚 cabin alongside my own captain. The last time I had seen him he was standing beside me on the bridge. He was in a very bad way with an open head wound; the surgeon shook his head in resignation.

The Monarch had sunk so close to the shore it could be refloated. After a couple of months, once we were both repaired, I rejoined her and we worked up the coast rejoining cables cut in the early days of the war. In April 1945 we were anchored off Orford Ness and just sitting down for dinner when there was a bang astern. She went down quickly, stern first. I didn鈥檛 even have time to rescue the box of Mars bars in my cabin that I had been carefully saving from my weekly ration. We thought she had hit a mine but later discovered that it was a torpedo from a mini submarine.

With only a couple of months of the war in Europe remaining I had only time to be sunk one more, and that as a passenger hitching a ride in a trawler south from Scapa Flow. We were picked up by a rescue launch and taken back to Harwich. The doctor who examined us was very concerned about my profuse bleeding from a head wound, but it was not so bad, it was the juice from the blackberries we had been eating for dinner.

Unlucky to be hit so often but lucky to survive each time, I loved my work. I continued to work on cable ships for several years as First Officer and Captain, mostly in South America for a US company. I returned to England in 1950 to take a post of Marine Superintendent with Stephenson Clarke a company based in the North East. I finally, reluctantly retired 28 years later in 1978.

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