The Tattie Lads

by Ian Dear

  To which the Director of Naval Intelligence tartly replied:

  The remarks were bald statements of fact and were not intended to be construed as gibes or sneers, although it is agreed that the word ‘haughty’ was ill-chosen. It is regretted if the article has given offence, for it was intended to bring out the good seamanship, persistence and courage displayed by many of the participants in the operation.21

  Training

  Before induction courses were started at Campbeltown, training for ratings was on a ‘learn as you go’ basis. Captain FJ Thompson OBE RNR, who worked in the Admiralty’s Convoy Section before becoming the deputy CCRT in November 1942, gave details of the training in an article22 he wrote after the war:

  Training of the seamen took place at the rescue tug base, Campbeltown, Argyllshire, which was established in October 1940 with a commander, RNVR, as base commander. This able officer had been in the Rescue Tug Service in the First World War and was supported by a gunnery officer and gunner’s mates. At the end of 1942 a signal class was started under a yeoman of signals.

  All new recruits were given instruction in seamanship (which included ocean towage), wire splicing, gunnery, and signalling, the most suitable men being selected as gunners and signalmen. The Campbeltown base thus became self-contained. A second base was established at Harwich where a number of tugs of the smaller class were operated with East Coast convoys between Southend and the Tyne. In the early months of the war Royal Navy signalmen and gunners had been drafted to rescue tugs but this proved unsatisfactory as the difference in pay packets of the RN and T.124T ratings was considerable and caused ill feeling. This difference in pay was subsequently eliminated when RN rates were increased and other emoluments taken into account.

  The selected T.124T recruits were in the charge of ex-chief petty officers and petty officers, and after passing the two-month course were rated as ordinary seaman (OS) signalman or OS gunner, and were then drafted to a rescue tug.

  Equivalent ranks of RN and Merchant Navy ratings

  Merchant Navy

  Naval Rating

  Carpenter

  Chief Petty Officer

  Boatswain

  Chief Petty Officer

  Quartermaster

  Leading Seaman

  Able Seaman

  Able Seaman

  Ordinary Seaman

  Ordinary Seaman

  Engine Storekeeper

  Petty Officer

  Donkeyman

  Petty Officer

  Greaser

  Leading Stoker

  Fireman

  Stoker

  Steward

  Chief Petty Officer

  Assistant Steward

  Leading Steward

  Cook

  Petty Officer

  Assistant Cook

  Leading Cook

  All ratings engaged in Britain were ordered to Campbeltown to report to the C-in-C, Rescue Tug Base. On arrival, irrespective of any previous examination that they may have had, they were medically examined to make sure they were fit for sea service. If passed they went to the Mercantile Marine Office at Campbeltown where they signed the T.124T Agreement for HM rescue tug Minona, though Minona was in fact a handsome Edwardian steam yacht, permanently moored to the harbour quay as officers’ quarters.23 From August 1941, the ex-Scottish fisheries vessel Vigilant was also used as an accommodation ship. Renamed Ixiom in April 1943, she was then moved to Glasgow24, where Commander Parker ran administrative offices for the Rescue Tug Service on one of the floors of the commandeered St Enoch’s Hotel.25

  Until they were appointed or drafted elsewhere, both officers and ratings were borne on the books of HMS Nimrod. Like the ratings, at first there was no formal training for rescue tug officers, but as most of the commanding officers were ex-tug masters, the officers under them quickly learnt what was required of them. Later, Merchant Navy officers with foreign-going and Home Trade certificates, and those who had served in small ships, became the chief source of supply, but a number of uncertified junior officers were also recruited. Commanding officers were granted the temporary rank of lieutenant RNR or RNVR, while navigating and engineer officers were granted the temporary rank of lieutenant or sub-lieutenant RNR or RNVR.

  In July 1941, six senior commanding officers were granted the temporary rank of lieutenant-commander. With the rapid expansion of the Service, their numbers were further increased in August 1943 when an additional six commanding officers, who held foreign-going masters’ certificates and had held a command for two years, were given the rank of temporary lieutenant-commander RNR. All personnel (ratings as well as officers) not embarked were retained as spare crews at Campbeltown, or at the Rescue Tug Service’s North Sea base at Harwich. Later, T.124T reserve pools were established at Gibraltar, St John’s in Newfoundland, Algiers, Malta and Colombo. From May 1943, T.124T officers were given a two-week officers’ divisional course at Portsmouth. This proved of great benefit for new entries from the Merchant Navy who had no previous knowledge of naval procedure and customs.

  Once the Campbeltown base began training courses, and as the section expanded, teenagers from the Sea Cadet Corps in different parts of the country were recruited as deck hands and galley hands, and ordinary seamen. The idea for recruiting them came from EG Martin, who wrote in March 1943 that he was ‘very much pleased today with the results of the examination of the first batch of sea cadets I took on, as an experiment, for special training – a shot in the dark which has hit the mark’.26

  Although young – sometimes very young – the Sea Cadets knew their knots and splices, and port from starboard, and some were already proficient in handling the smaller defensive armaments with which the rescue tugs were equipped. Jim Williams was in no doubt that it was his Sea Cadet experience that got him on to a gunnery course at Campbeltown. He passed out joint top and, when he was drafted to the Assurance class Eminent, he was given the job of manning the rescue tug’s starboard Oerlikon.

  When D-Day came and a German bomber attacked Eminent off Gold Beach, it was Jim’s crippling burst that sent it heading south with its starboard engine and wing on fire. Jim was rewarded with a carton of cigarettes and a tot of rum, though at sixteen he was too young to draw his own rum ration.27

  Jim was still aboard Eminent, and still the youngest member of the crew, when she was dispatched to the Far East. He wrote, recalling how he spent the first hours of 1946:

  In addition to the officers serving Christmas dinner to the crew, another naval tradition was that the youngest crew member took command of the ship at midnight on New Year’s Eve, for four hours. Our skipper, Lt-Commander Charlie Stanford, being the kind of gentleman he was, entered into the spirit of the occasion, sent for me at five minutes to midnight, presented me with his officer’s cap and two bottles of whisky to give the lower deck a dram. He wished me ‘all the best’ and discreetly disappeared until breakfast the next morning. Everything went well and the cap was returned to the skipper, minus the empty whisky bottles, little realising that the future would see me in command of my own ship. But that would be nearly 20 years later.28

  Recruiting from those with a knowledge of the sea would have been almost obligatory – there were exceptions – for a rescue tug was no place for landlubbers, as this extract from a book by two of the volunteers for the Service showed:

  On leaving port [to find a damaged ship] it was almost invariably a case of pushing on as fast as possible, irrespective of sea conditions, to the aid of a disabled vessel. A design feature of any tug is a large power to weight ratio and this is essential in a rescue tug – i.e. the engine power of such vessels is out of proportion to their size to give them the necessary towing power required. This, allied to the vessels’ shape, made them very uncomfortable in any sort of rough sea. Add to this the need to make all speed with an Atlantic gale blowing, and conditions on board [became] abysmal…

  Once the casualty had been located there then came the task of get
ting a tow rope on board in sea conditions which, in the 50-foot waves of an Atlantic gale, often meant the tug and the ship going up and down in opposite directions. Aside from those cases where the actual condition of the vessel made salvage impossible a further two important factors now came into play. These were whether or not enough crew remained on board to connect the tow: if not crew had to be put on board from the rescue vessel. Also, if the vessel still had sufficient power to operate her own winches; if not then the heavy towing hawsers had to be manhandled onto something strong enough to stand the strain of the tow – this with the two vessels heaving and pitching. Even the successful passing of the first towing rope was not necessarily the end of the operation since it was not unknown for the ropes to part two or three times during the tow. Then the whole procedure had to be undertaken again. This meant the passing of lines of increasingly greater size until the final tow rope was reattached and the tow could resume.

  With the tow successfully attached the long journey back to port could begin, usually without any sort of escort since such vessels were in short enough supply even for a large convoy. There would be little or no respite for the crew of the tug during this period. Not only did the tow require constant attention – in spite of being wrapped around with cowhides and coated with grease where it passed over the towing horses at the stern of the tug – but the constant vigilance of lookouts and the gunners was needed in case of enemy attack. These were in addition to the watch-keeping duties required to navigate the ships to safety and keep the tug’s machinery fully operational.29

  Naval discipline

  Perhaps one of the hardest lessons that had to be learnt was the naval discipline all T.124T recruits signed up for. Having to wear uniform – at least ashore, informal crew photographs show this was far from the case at sea – was bad enough, but having to learn who to salute and when, and how those in authority were to be addressed, must also have been difficult for some T.124T personnel to swallow, particularly those who had already served in the Merchant Navy and were used to a less formal way of life. Nor would the Royal Navy’s quaint and rigid class-driven regulations have always been received with equanimity. But at Campbeltown naval discipline was strictly maintained, with any serious offender being dealt with by the RN captain commanding HMS Nimrod.

  The recruits at Campbeltown were housed in an old Army drill hall, Victoria Barracks, which had been vacated by the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, though their large wooden crest still decorated the building. Recruit Ed Gardner remembered it like this:

  The main hall was filled with rows of bunks, two and three high, with metal lockers around the outer walls. We all were allotted one of each and that became our home for our stay. The petty officers’ quarters were at the far end and upstairs. They looked over the balcony and kept an eye on the shenanigans that went on in our section…

  [There was] ‘a lot of activity in the town and the harbour. Ships were continually entering and leaving as the North Atlantic was right on our doorstep, handy for joining or leaving convoys. Often we would be ashore and hear ships sounding their recall signals, and see sailors running through the streets to board the boats taking them out to their ships at anchor. Each crew knew their own signal, so many blasts, long and short, on the ships’ sirens. Everything stopped in the town bars, cafes, restaurants, etc. while everyone listened to identify whose signal it was, and then either relax or start running like hell for the harbour. No excuse was accepted, if you didn’t make it in time you were AWOL (absent without leave), a very serious offence in wartime, and shore patrols (naval police) would round you up and throw you in the clink until your case came up or your ship returned.

  Once we had been issued our uniform and kit we had more medicals, got our shots, and were detailed off into Messes and groups: seamen, stokers, gunners, etc. and settled into our training routine. A petty officer or chief petty officer was allotted to each group and he became our instructor and basically controlled our lives until we left to join our ships.

  The daily routine was being rudely awakened by a recorded bugle call over the Tannoy system at 0600 hours, and our days were taken up with work parties, drills, route marches, parades, boat pulling, sculling, rope work, seamanship, rifle drill and unarmed combat against the physical training instructors. They were all Bruce Lee wannabes and manhandled us unmercifully. Often we were hauled out of our beds at four in the morning to catch the lines and tie up the submarines that were based at Campbeltown and coming in from Atlantic patrols. They appeared out of the mist like ghosts and the only welcome they got was from us guys who caught their heaving lines. Brave men.30

  Jack Close, a T.124T W/T officer who joined in 1943, remembered his first sight of Campbeltown after a tedious trip from Glasgow:

  A neat little harbour in the shape of a square; a few fishing boats nestled up to the quay and a steam yacht with graceful lines was moored at the farthest arm of the harbour. The bay stretched out towards Davaar Island, nestled under the shadow of Beinn Ghuilean, rising steep and austere to the south. From the harbour a pleasant promenade stretched away into the curving distance and was lost in the evening mist. The main street climbed gently towards a couple of hotels and a scattering of shops. It all seemed pleasant, picturesque and agreeable enough to two weary travellers.31

  The officer in charge of training at the base was Lt RD Robinson RNVR. He had begun his own sea career aged twelve, attending the Naval Training College at Hull before becoming a cadet in the Humber Pilot Service two years later. ‘Part of the induction training,’ he later told a journalist, ‘was to keep the cabins and saloons clean and to assist in the preparation of meals around the clock, for thirty pilots. The life was hard, discipline was strict and often involved physical punishment.’32

  After six years he studied for his second officer’s certificate, and at the outbreak of war was serving as first officer on a small tanker. Soon afterwards he joined the Rescue Tug Service as a Sub-Lt RNVR aboard the Saint class St Cyrus, which was sunk by a mine off the Humber in January 1941. He was one of only three survivors, and was in the water two and a half hours before being rescued. He spent three months in hospital recovering from his injuries, but these made him unfit for sea service. Instead, he was promoted to lieutenant and put in charge of rescue tug training.

  During his time at Campbeltown, Robinson was awarded the Royal Humane Society Medal for rescuing two men from drowning who, on a dark and stormy night, had fallen into the water from the quay. He jumped in after them and kept them afloat until help arrived. The police constable who made notes of the incident wrote that ‘while in conversation with Lieutenant Robinson he seemed to treat the whole affair as a matter of course, making very light of his brave action.’33

  He also received no less than four Admiralty commendations for his wartime work, one of them for his courage and skill in helping to refloat HMS Nyasaland which had been stranded during a severe gale on a lee shore in Campbeltown harbour. In May 1945, he moved with the Rescue Tug Service to Harwich (HMS Badger) when the Campbeltown base was closed, and later transferred to the Royal Navy. By the time he retired in 1954, he had attained the rank of commander.

  Robinson is an example of how tough tug men were in those days. They had to be able to manhandle eighteen-inch manila tow ropes in extreme weather. But sometimes they were more than that. In the first few months of the war, the crew of one rescue tug, Marauder, were so unruly that their commanding officer had to alert any UK port she was about to enter, and in early 1940 the entire crew was dismissed and replaced. Ed Gardner tells the story of a crewman refused entry to the Campbeltown cinema because he was too drunk. He returned to his ship, loaded the bow gun and fired at the cinema. But he wasn’t a gunner and hadn’t laid it properly, and the shell passed over the cinema and landed in the parade ground of HMS Nimrod. The man was caught, court-martialled and sent to prison.

  This story sounds unlikely, but it does reflect the general attitude of the Rescue Tug Service, which Ja
ck Close summed up well:

  A dislike of authority and a grudging adherence to law and order characterised the service, the officers being no exception. We conformed when necessary in order to placate the Admiralty, otherwise we went our own way, quietly proud of the job we did, which, by its very nature, was often carried out in the worst of conditions and in the knowledge that we were frequently somebody’s last hope. This approach to life I absorbed gradually, though it had been evident early on that HM Rescue Tugs was far from being a quiescent branch of [the] Admiralty. There was usually an air of truculence bubbling away below the surface, even among ourselves sometimes, as witness the ditty directed at some luckless tyro issuing orders from the bow, which begins:

  They stand on the fo’c’sle and shout,

  They shout about things they know nothing about…

  (substitute own words)34

  Though it is doubtful if anyone took a pot-shot at the Campbeltown cinema, on one occasion another T.124T rating did produce a loaded pistol in a pub when he was refused a drink – the most frequent offence among T.124T personnel was drunkenness. This applied to officers as well as ratings as the following memorandum from the deputy CCRT made clear. Dated 18 January 1943, it was addressed to all rescue tug commanding officers:

  A number of reports of disciplinary courts and court-martials held on officers in the Rescue Tug Service have recently been received at the Admiralty. CCRT is much concerned regarding these reports which not only reflect on the discipline and self esteem of the officers, but such reports tend to give a bad name to the Rescue Tug Service, which is certainly not desired and would be deplored by all concerned.

  It is not desired to interfere with the amenities and general comfort of the officers in the Rescue Tug Service as a result of these few cases of drunkenness and misbehaviour by the issue of drastic regulations and it would be preferred that Commanding Officers exert their authority and use every endeavour to check insobriety and its attendant results.35