by Ian Dear
16. George Corke memoir, courtesy of Mrs Joanna Barron. Before the war Corke had been a professional yacht skipper.
17. Engine room artificers were skilled in engineering repairs, making new parts if necessary.
18. Interview with Captain Smail in The Buteman and West Coast Chronicle, 29 March 1940.
19. Sea Hazard (1939–1945). London: Houlder; 1947. pp.12–14. There is a photograph of the tanker’s beached remains, and a Pathé News clip about her, on www.bute-at-war.org/vimage.shtml?/gallery/imperialtransportkb.jpg
20. Lloyd’s War Losses in World War II. Vol. II. London: Lloyd’s of London Press; 1989.
21. Booth T. Admiralty Salvage in Peace and War, 1906–2006. Barnsley: Pen & Sword Maritime; 2007. p.104.
22. ADM 199/1238.
23. ADM 1/10806.
24. ADM 199/1237.
25. Greenstreet’s wartime career partly comes from his diary in www.enduranceobituaries.co.uk/greenstreet.htm
26. Winn G. The Hour Before Dawn. London: Collins; 1942. p.61.
27. Dundee Courier, 9 August 1943.
28. Forczyk R. Fw 200 Condor vs. Atlantic Convoy, 1941–43. Oxford: Osprey Publishing; 2010. p.49.
29. Memorandum from CCRT dated 25/1/41 in ADM 199/1238.
30. Butler S. Not For Davy Jones. Bound manuscript, p.9. Courtesy of Peter Butler.
31. ADM 116/4546, 12 February 1940.
32. The British responded to the first unrestricted U-boat campaign in 1915 by instructing merchant ships to turn towards a surfaced U-boat if they were attacked by gunfire, forcing it to dive to escape being rammed. The Germans regarded this as a hostile act, which indeed it was, making the perpetrator a combatant, subject to the rules of war. In March 1915, Captain Fryatt, the master of the railway packet Brussels, almost rammed a U-boat with this manoeuvre, and the Admiralty duly awarded him a gold watch suitably inscribed to commemorate his bravery. Unfortunately for him, the Brussels was captured the following year by German destroyers and taken to Zeebrugge. Fryatt’s watch was found on him and he was put on trial as a franc-tireur (illegal combatant), found guilty, and executed by firing squad. The Admiralty was therefore understandably wary of decorating non-military personnel with military decorations.
33. T335/2, 14 April and 14 July 1941.
34. ADM 116/4546. The writer has only initialled the memo.
4
Reinforcements and the remarkable Salvonia
The TDC’s efforts to acquire tugs from Holland had proved fruitless, but when the Germans overran the Netherlands and France in May–June 1940, some suitable ones escaped to England, and were leased on a time-charter basis. The largest ones, all owned by the famous towage company L Smit and Co., were Roode Zee and Thames – built in 1938 – Lauwerszee (1930), Schelde (1926), Witte Zee (1926) and the very powerful, 4000 hp Zwarte Zee, built in 1933, which arrived towing an unfinished Dutch destroyer. They were all requisitioned by the Admiralty, but continued to fly the Dutch flag. They were managed by a civilian company, Messrs JD McLaren Ltd., of Dorking, on the Admiralty’s behalf, so the civilian crews – and this is an important point – were never subject to naval discipline.
Holland’s most modern tug, the Hudson, built in 1939, was not in Europe when the country was overrun. She worked briefly for the French authorities, and from June 1940 was based at Freetown before arriving in England in December 1942. The Admiralty did not list her as a rescue tug, although the work she did when at Freetown and later in the Mediterranean certainly merited this description, and she was often described as such. In October 1943, her managers wrote of her that since arriving in England she ‘has made two voyages to the Mediterranean, assisting fleets of landing craft outward bound, taking them in tow during repairs in mid-ocean, and casting them off again, which you will appreciate required a very high standard of seamanship’.1
Some French tugs had also escaped, and the largest were acquired for the Rescue Tug Service. They were: Mastodonte, Mammouth, Attentif, Champion and Abeille IV, and they were all requisitioned and given British crews. The Belgian tug Goliath also escaped. Initially this had a Belgian crew, but in December 1940 they were replaced by a Dutch one, and from then on she flew the Dutch flag until her master refused orders two days before the Normandy landings in June 1944.
A mission to the United States in 1940 was only able to purchase two suitable tugs: Sabine and Sea Giant. Both were given British T.124T crews and flew the White Ensign. A third, Bascobel, was transferred in 1941 to the Ministry of War Transport under the Lend-Lease Act and was renamed Empire Bascobel. Sabine, incidentally, was the tug aboard which the movie star Marie Dressler made her film Tugboat Annie in 1933. Sabine was elderly (1917), but had a modern towing winch and a speed of thirteen knots. She did much useful work, bringing disabled vessels back to the Humber where she was stationed. Sea Giant, the former USS Contocook, was based at North Shields. She was on permanent one-hour notice, as there was a lot of enemy activity – particularly coastal bombing and minelaying – and most of the casualties brought in were coastal ships. Her second mate, Bill Stewart, later described her as being only suitable for coastal towage, though she had first-class accommodation.2
These reinforcements should have eased the shortage until some of the new Assurance class were commissioned. If it did, it did not last long, for when, in March 1941, the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, suggested, in a distinctive green handwritten note, that Nore Command needed more rescue tugs, his request had to be turned down. As a memorandum from the CCRT to the Director of the Trade Division pointed out: ‘Requests for further Rescue Tugs are being continually received from all the Commanders-in-Chiefs [except Portsmouth] … these requests cannot at present be met.’3
The distribution of rescue tugs at that time shows only Western Approaches Command had adequately powered T.124T-manned rescue tugs suitable for work in the North Atlantic, and by February 1941 thirteen commissioned, Red Ensign and Dutch rescue tugs were based at Campbeltown for work in the North-West Approaches.4 A high percentage stationed elsewhere were still civilian-manned and too underpowered to operate in anything but sheltered waters. Naturally, the distribution list continually changed, and on 4 April 1941, the CCRT made alterations because of attacks on shipping in St George’s Channel, and because he intended to make more use of Iceland as a rescue tug base. This meant towing more salvaged ships to the UK for repair, which could only be done by rescue tugs.
Superman’s century
Two of the most experienced rescue tugs attached to Western Approaches were Seaman and Superman, and they often operated together out of Campbeltown. In June 1941, they tackled a particularly awkward tow, and one that did not end as happily as had the resurrection of Imperial Transport. While anchored in Lough Foyle, Northern Ireland – a convenient jumping off place for the Atlantic convoy routes – Superman received a signal from FOIC Greenock to proceed with Seaman to the assistance of the 2491-ton British merchantman Gravelines. A straggler from convoy HX-127, she had been torpedoed off the northern Irish coast north-west of Bloody Foreland. They arrived at the ship’s estimated position at midnight, but the search was delayed until dawn as the visibility was poor.
Gravelines was eventually sighted at 07.30, with the ASW trawler HMS St Kenan standing by her. She had been struck amidships and the whole of her midship section was awash. All the surviving twenty-five crew members [the master and ten of the crew had been killed] had already been transferred to one of the convoy’s escorts, so the trawler put some of her own crew on board to make fast the rescue tugs’ tow ropes. The hook-up was completed at 09.50, but by evening the stern half of the ship was starting to list to port and the fore part to starboard. Later the stern half broke away, but remained afloat with about thirty feet of it sticking out of the water. ‘After this,’ the skipper of Superman, Lt H Tarbottan RNR, drily commented in his report, ‘the fore half towed moderately well.’5
The following morning, when abreast the Mull of Kintyre in a freshening east-north-east wind and a
choppy sea, the tow took a heavy list to starboard and lost much of its deck cargo of timber. Half an hour later, it laid over on its side with the masthead in the water, preventing any further headway. After some hours using various tactics to try to bring it upright, the hulk righted itself but retained a twenty-five-degree list to starboard, and both rescue tugs recommenced towing. It was heavy-going and Kames Bay was not reached until 23.00, where the hulk was moored to a buoy. However, unlike Imperial Transport, nothing could be done with the remains of Gravelines – the stern was never recovered – and the following year the hulk was broken up for scrap.
Just retrieving part of Gravelines would presumably not have counted as one of the hundred successes with which Lloyd’s Shipping Gazette credited Superman while commanded by Tarbottan, Lt Ernest Jones RNR, a Bristol Channel skipper in peacetime, or one of the Rescue Tug Service’s most successful commanding officers, Lt JEL Brice RNR. Under the headline ‘Superman gets a century’, the article eulogised Superman’s record of escorting one hundred convoys without losing a single ship she had been sent to save:
The fact that the Superman operated in that stretch of the North Sea known as ‘E-boat Alley’ during the peak of enemy activity is a measure of her performance. Her contribution to the total of salved shipping is very large. She has enabled millions of pounds’ worth of vital cargoes to reach these shores when they would otherwise have gone to the bottom of the Atlantic or the North Sea…
As a fighting ship also, Superman has something to be proud of. She claims one enemy aircraft destroyed and one probable. Her guns have joined in beating off air and E-boat attacks, and three of her crew have been wounded in combat by attacking aircraft…6
Superman also played a valiant part in the Battle of the Atlantic, achieving something of a record by bringing four stricken ships to safety in five days. The closest of many close shaves she experienced occurred when she went to the rescue of a rammed ASW trawler. The incident was described by Sub-Lt Brian Murphy RNVR, who joined the Superman as a stoker eight years earlier and was now her second engineer:
We had made fast the tow rope and were just getting under way when the trawler’s full load of depth charges came adrift and went over the side. I still don’t know exactly what happened after that except that there was the biggest all-time record in explosions, and I found myself extricating myself from the galley stove. Another ship, which had a grandstand view, told us afterwards that they didn’t know whether the Superman was coming down keel or funnel first! All that happened to her was a twenty-eight-degree list caused by the shifting of the coal in the bunkers.6
The ‘probable’ to which the article was referring was almost certainly the attack on Superman by a Heinkel bomber on 4 March 1942, when the rescue tug was commanded by Brice, and was helping to shepherd a convoy along ‘E-boat Alley’. As Brice later wrote in his report:
The first attack was made from the port quarter along the fore and aft line of the ship. Sub-Lt Mackay RNVR, who was on the bridge at the time put the helm hard to port, as three bombs left the plane. This avoiding action saved the ship as the bombs only missed by about twenty feet on the starboard bow. This ship answers her helm very quickly. The Oerlikon gun opened fire and got in several hits on the plane. The rear gunner of the plane opened fire. Several shells from the Oerlikon hit and the rear gunner did not open fire again during the course of the action.
The plane appeared to lose height for a moment and then banked to renew the attack from ahead. The .5 gunners were then able to bring their gun to bear. There was quite a period of manoeuvring for position; Superman was trying to bring both .5 [machine guns] forward and Oerlikon aft to bear and make him attack down wind to increase his leeway. He then attacked from ahead at about 1000 feet. The .5 gun hit him with a good burst, [as] he swept over our mastheads, [but] the .5 gun was hit and jammed, and both gunner and loader were wounded. The men remained at their posts and attempted to clear the gun even though wounded.7
The plane flew off and, keeping at a good distance, began circling around, sometimes out of sight:
He then attacked from the port quarter with canon gun and machine guns. The Oerlikon got in a good burst right into the plane and he swerved away. He lost height but was climbing again before he disappeared in the mist. Very shortly afterwards the sound of a plane diving steeply was heard, then a thud; no more was seen of the plane.7
For helping to achieve Superman’s century record, and ‘for good services in action against enemy aircraft’, Brice and Mackay and three ratings, Deckhand Edwin Lamswood, Able Seaman George Tilney and Fireman William Johnson, were all mentioned in despatches.8
One of the most exciting incidents in her career [Lloyds Shipping Gazette concluded] was when the convoy of which she was part escort was attacked by 18 E-boats. Two torpedoes fired at the tug missed their target. Her guns helped to smash up the attack and she picked up 37 survivors from a ship, which had been sunk. In fact, the saving of life is as much her charge as the saving of ships. Her biggest life-saving feat was to take off 58 survivors from a whale factory ship. On another occasion she saved the crew of an Iceland trawler which a Dornier attacked after making an unsuccessful attempt against the Superman.6
Salvonia’s war
Of the commercial ocean tugs with which the Rescue Tug Service began the war, only the 150 ft, 571-ton Salvonia was classified by 1944 as being capable of operating in any weather (see Appendix). By then she was stationed on neutral territory, the Azores, and so was civilian-manned and managed, but at the start of the war she had been requisitioned by the Admiralty, and armed with a twelve-pounder gun, two Oerlikons and two Lewis guns. With 1350 ihp, she had a speed of ten to twelve knots and an endurance of at least fourteen days.
As will be seen, she had a remarkable career and was the model for the Assurance class, the Rescue Tug Service’s backbone during the Second World War. From the start she had a busy time of it. Notices of the distribution of naval salvage money in The London Gazette records that between the outbreak of war and the end of 1939, members of her crew received salvage money for SS Tongariro and SS Stratford, and in the first half of 1940 for SS City of Roubaix, SS Ville de Bruges and SS Agia Varvara. Some of these were standard peacetime tows, but valuable ships were saved that might otherwise have been wrecked or picked off by a passing U-boat. Perhaps because of this exceptional record, her commanding officer, Lt Reginald Chudleigh RNR, was gazetted for the OBE in July 1940.9
Then in August 1940, while stationed on the Clyde, Salvonia was dispatched to help the 15,434-ton Dutch liner, SS Volendam, of the Holland America Line. This ship had been crippled by a freak torpedo attack near midnight on 29 August, some two hundred miles north of Northern Ireland while part of an outward-bound convoy, OB-205. ‘There was a terrific explosion,’ the liner’s master later wrote, ‘a column of water was thrown up which splashed over the fore part of the ship and the bridge, flames were seen on port and starboard sides near No. 1 hatch, and later fragments of a torpedo were found on the fore deck and bridge.’10
The ship had been struck on the starboard side, sixty feet from the bow, the torpedo making a hole in the ship’s side big enough to drive a double-decker bus through, and several smaller ones as well. The ship immediately took on a list to port, and it was found that No. 1 and No. 2 holds were filling rapidly. With the danger of the ship turning turtle and sinking, and with the weather worsening by the minute, the master decided to transfer his six hundred and six passengers, including three hundred and twenty children who were being taken to the safety of North America, to other ships in the convoy. Despite the deteriorating weather, all the passengers managed to get away in the lifeboats, and were picked up by nearby ships, though not without difficulty. Some of the children had to be hoisted on board one ship in a banana basket.
By 14.00 the next day, the wind had freshened to force 7 or 8, and the master of Volendam now requested assistance. At dawn on 31 August, the Salvonia was seen approaching. She made three failed
attempts to shoot a line across, before the fourth was successful. The bows of the liner were too badly damaged, so the hawser was secured aft on her starboard side, and she was then towed stern first towards the Clyde.
The situation remained critical, but by late afternoon the wind and sea had decreased, and just after midnight on 2 September the Salvonia and her tow reached the Firth of Clyde. There they were met by harbour tugs, which helped beach the liner in Kames Bay, and the following morning a diver recovered an intact torpedo, without its warhead, lying on the starboard side in No. 1 hold. It was presumed at the time that two torpedoes had been fired in quick succession, and that the explosion of the first destroyed the warhead of the second.
But the torpedo could have been a dud, as U-boats were plagued by faulty torpedoes during the early part of the war. Admiral Karl Dönitz, the U-boat C-in-C, commented in his diary that at least thirty per cent were duds. The Norwegian campaign in April–May 1940 brought matters to a head, and the problems were eventually solved. Despite this, by the end of May 1940, early on in their ‘Happy Hour’, U-boats had sunk two hundred and forty-one ships amounting to 853,000 tons.11 One wonders what the total would have been if their torpedoes had been more reliable.
Problems with their torpedoes did not prevent U-boats from causing havoc among convoy SC-7, which left Sydney on Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Island on 4 October 1940. SC was the designation for a ‘slow’ convoy, moving at six to seven knots, while the faster HX convoys, which left from Halifax, Nova Scotia, were expected to maintain eight to nine knots. SC-7 comprised an odd assortment of thirty-five old merchant ships of various nationalities that could never have kept up in an HX convoy, but they carried essential cargoes for the British war effort such as scrap iron, timber, pulpwood and steel.
Once clear of Canadian waters, the convoy only had a single escort, the sloop HMS Scarborough, until it was handed over to escort ships from the Western Approaches, which would shepherd them into Liverpool. By the time they reached Rockall Bank, the convoy had lost four ships to U-boats, three of them stragglers. But the convoy’s luck did not really run out until the night of 18/19 October when, in an early, if rudimentary, use of the ‘wolf-pack’ tactics that caused such havoc during the Battle of the Atlantic, the convoy was attacked by five U-boats, which sank sixteen ships, making twenty in all, the highest loss a convoy suffered during the entire war. The ‘wolf-pack’ then went on to ambush an HX convoy coming up behind SC-7, and sank twelve more.