大象传媒

I emigrated to Australia from England in early 1939 when I was 17. After war broke out, I felt I was not making my contribution, so I left Australia to try to get back to the UK in 1940, and finally arrived back in January 1944.

After being sunk by a Japanese cruiser in the Bay of Bengal in 1942, I arrived back in Sydney, transported as a DBS, a Distressed British Seaman.

I reported to the Norwegian Consulate in Sydney, because it was the best way to get in touch with the Norwegian shipping line that had employed me, and told them everything that had happened to the Elsa. I said I wanted another job, and they posted me to the Troja in Melbourne. The ship was Norwegian, owned by Wilh. Wilhelmsen Lines, a very large shipping company which had 73 ships at the outbreak of war.

Norway was occupied by the Germans, but the Norwegian merchant fleet, anything that had got away from Germany, was all over the world working for the Allies. The Troja had been doing regular runs to Australia and was on charter to the Australian government. It was a ship of the line, not a tramp, you see. Tramps went all over the place, but ships of the line had a regular run, for instance between Europe and the Antipodes.

I joined the Troja during her fitting out as a DEMS, a Defensively Equipped Merchant Ship - 4.7 inch guns on the poop, Holman projectors, Bofors on the wings of the bridge. The Holman projectors fired grenades using compressed air.

On the subsequent voyage to the Middle East carrying military equipment for the Australian forces we used to have gun practice. I remember the Holman projector wasn't aimed very well and the grenade dropped down onto the deck. Everybody scattered like mad. Nobody got hurt - they were very lucky. It went off as it hit the deck.

We discharged at Lake Timsah on the Suez Canal and Port Said, and made a return voyage with phosphate and copper; phosphate from Port Safaga on the Red Sea and copper ingots from Beira in Portuguese East Africa, as it was then. We returned to discharge in Hobart, Tasmania.

On the next voyage to the Middle East our main cargo seemed to be beer for the Australian Army. After landing 500 tons of Richmond Bitter at Lake Timsah, handled by the army, the Australian diggers, we were the most popular ship in the Middle East. For the Australians, anyway!

After discharge we proceeded to Port Said waiting for orders, and than had orders to proceed to Haifa with all speed. That was an overnight run from Port Said to Haifa. There were explosions during the night where somebody was being attacked by either the Eyeties or the Jerries, we don't know which, but we were not allowed to stop to find out.

We were told at Haifa that they were trying to make up a convoy to go to the relief of Malta. We were in Haifa for the weekend, and I went to visit Jerusalem via Tel Aviv. The road to Tel Aviv followed the beach line, and all of a sudden there was huge excitement among the passengers as a group of aircraft came in low across the water - they thought we were going to be machine-gunned. It turned out they were British aircraft, but it was hair-raising as there were four or five aircraft coming in low and you can imagine how exposed you felt on the beach road.

I had hired a car that took six passengers from Haifa, quite cheap, about seven pounds or something, and spent a day looking at all the holy sites in Jerusalem, including the Wailing Wall - I put my hands on it. We stayed one night then returned to Haifa for the Monday morning. I can't say I was really enlightened by the experience, having read all about it all before, but something does stand out, the place has a certain mystique about it.

Anyway, back in Haifa, the requirement was for ships that could sail at 15 knots or more, and as we could only manage 13 knots we were not included in the convoy. All the Norwegians were quite disappointed, as they wanted to be in the action.

So we had a couple of holds converted into troop quarters, and we took about 300 Australian soldiers on leave back to Australia.

After three or four voyages to and from the Middle East, I asked the shipping company if I could get a ship going back to the UK. They agreed to do this, with the Chief Engineer's backing. They were very good to me. And I joined the Tiradentes in Sydney, which was due to return to Liverpool via the Middle East. She was undergoing repairs, and loading with military supplies urgently awaited in the Middle East. We eventually got out of Sydney but broke down in the process. Everything went wrong with the Tiradentes. If it was possible to break down, it did. It was one of the very early motor vessels. I know I was on my feet from leaving Sydney to arriving in Melbourne, which took three days instead of the normal one or two as the generators kept failing. I only left the engine room to eat. But we got there, and carried out more repairs in Melbourne, then more repairs in Fremantle, and set off from Fremantle for Durban, and broke down practically every day. It was a hair-raising voyage and we eventually arrived with one engine completely shattered.

On one of these breakdowns we changed the exhaust valves on the starboard engine because the other ones had burned out, and the Second Engineer went to start the engine, which you did by turning a wheel attached to the starting manifold - six on air, three on air and three on fuel, and six on fuel - and there was an explosion, and the starting manifold disappeared into bits and the Second Engineer was left standing there with the wheel in his hand. I was at the top of the engine room looking down and I saw him standing there with this wheel in his hand. It was an absolute miracle, with this big heavy casting exploding to either side of him, that nobody was hurt.

The explosion started the engine, but there was nothing else that could be done because there was no means of starting once you had stopped - you just had to run it on and on getting gradually slower and slower until eventually it packed up altogether.

It took us 55 days to get from Fremantle to Durban. The port engine had to be stopped for repairs to the valve gear several times, but fortunately with no more explosions, and we eventually made it. The ship had been written off as lost. We said we weren't lost, just delayed!

They were very pleased to see us in Durban, but we were a bit late getting these military supplies to the Middle East - we thought at the time that the bloody war would be over before we got there!

The amazing thing about getting the repairs done in Durban was that they had all the drawings and the pattern blocks for the starting manifold. When the Norwegians left Norway when the Germans invaded, they had the good sense to get all the patterns and drawings from the shipyard and take them with them, so we were able to manufacture them in Durban. It must have been three weeks - you can't do it overnight, it was a very complicated manifold.

But we got it done and set sail for the Gulf of Aden - but we broke down before we even got to Beira. No generator power, and the generators were old, ancient. It was blast injection, the fuel was injected with high pressure compressed air rather than by a pump. That was on very early diesels, and they gave a lot of trouble. There was constant bearing failure on the generator engines. We eventually got repaired again in Beira, and went out and joined a convoy, then lost it because we broke down again and kept breaking down. We were left very much on our own.

We eventually discharged these military supplies at either Port Said or Lake Timsah, I can't remember which, and set off westbound in the Mediterranean, with a barrage balloon attached. You would see strange blobs appearing over the horizon, and wonder what it was, then suddenly realise it was barrage balloons over another convoy coming the other way.

We joined a 100-ship convoy off the Straits of Gibraltar, shepherded by HMS Ramillies, the battleship, and escort destroyers racing around like hens with their chicks. Fantastic. We thought we were getting near to the end of the voyage, but disaster struck again - we had a switchboard fire which blinded the electrician. We had to call for the hospital ship which was attached to large convoys, and we dropped astern of the convoy and stopped to transfer the electrician to the hospital ship; by the time we had finished the convoy was out of sight. We never did catch it, and made our way on our own.

We limped along once more and eventually got into the Western Approaches. We had to wait outside Liverpool for a day in rough weather, and eventually got in. We discharged the remains of the cargo at Liverpool Docks and went across to Cammell Lairds at Birkenhead for repairs. It had taken us seven months to travel from Sydney to Liverpool, longer than in the days of sail.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.