by Ian Dear
After watching the President as he sat chatting on the fantail with the various members of his party, one of the British seamen described the President’s free and easy manner of making himself at home everywhere, with the remark to Chief Ship’s Clerk Terry that, ‘The President certainly sits “proper natural” back there, doesn’t he?’
After proceeding upriver for an hour, course was reversed at 6:00 P.M. for it was desired to return to the anchorage before dark. On the run back Mr Hopkins and Admiral McIntire trolled a couple of lines with feather lures, but had no luck. Anchor was dropped at 6:45 P.M. and upon thanking Commander Lawder and Lt Commander Vaughan for a pleasant trip, and after saying goodbye to Lord Swinton, the President left the Aimwell for the Memphis, going aboard at 7:00 P.M.16
President Roosevelt gave the Aimwell a photograph of himself inscribed ‘to the officers and crew of HM rescue tug Aimwell from their friend F.D. Roosevelt’, which was hung in the wardroom and copies of it distributed among the crew. He also talked to one of the rescue tug’s officers, Lt A Craig, who told him about the rather unusual circumstances of his marriage, a conversation which was later recorded in a British newspaper:17
‘While in the United States commissioning the Aimwell I met by pure chance a girl I had known when we were both children,’ said Lt Craig. ‘Within 24 hours we were married. The President asked if he could take a letter to her, which he did. He was also interested in the rum ration and asked for a sip. It made him cough and he was surprised at its strength.’
The President followed Lt Craig’s letter with one of his own, congratulating Lt Craig’s wife on the birth of her son.17
Notes
1. The Allies sank more than 800,000 tons of Axis shipping in the Mediterranean, yet 2.8 million tons of supplies (84.6 per cent of the total), and just over 206,000 men (91.7 per cent of the total) reached their destination, remarkable statistics. See Ceva L. ‘Italy: Navy’ in Dear I, editor. Oxford Companion to World War II. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2005. p.469.
2. Grove E, editor. The Defeat of the Enemy Attack on Shipping, 1939–45. London: Navy Records Society; 1997. pp.132,143.
3. From MOI leaflet ‘The Spirit of the Ark’ in ADM 1/12121.
4. Towrope, 2001; 3(7):11.
5. From: Winser J. de S British Invasion Fleets: the Mediterranean and Beyond, 1942–45. Gravesend: World Ship Society; 2002.
6. RNVR notes in Yachting Monthly (April 1945): 362–63.
7. Tomblin BB. With Utmost Spirit: Allied Naval Operations in the Mediterranean, 1942–45. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky; 2004. p.410.
8. ADM 199/1274.
9. Jackson C. Forgotten Tragedy: The Sinking of HMT Rohna. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press; 1997. pp.116–18. This is one of the few books that makes any mention of a rescue tug, so the author can be forgiven for remarking that Mindful ‘frequently had been used as a tugboat’! See www.rohnasurvivors.org/bibliography for other books about the sinking.
10. In DSRTA archives. Courtesy of Len Reed. Admiral John Cunningham should not be confused with Admiral Andrew Cunningham whom John Cunningham succeeded as C-in-C Mediterranean in 1943 and as First Sea Lord in 1946.
11. Odhams, 1958.
12. Obituary, Scotsman, 22 July 2011.
13. ADM 199/534.
14. Copy of letter of commendation in Towrope, 2009 (Spring): 12 and Towrope, 2009 (Summer): 8.
15. Anon. Towrope 2000 (Spring): 20.
16. Extract from log of the trip of the President to the Casablanca Conference, 9–31 January 1943. It is part of the Grace Tully Archive in the Franklin D Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, and is online at www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/resources
17. Western Morning News, 7 February 1944.
8
Jaunty, the cripples, and the feisty Empire Class
The Assurance class Jaunty was another rescue tug that had a busy war, mostly in the Mediterranean.1 But after her launch in June 1941, she started her operational life by taking part that December in a raid on the Lofoten Islands (Operation anklet), which lie off the Norwegian coast about a hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle. Led by the cruiser HMS Arethusa, a force of British commandos and Norwegian troops were landed on the islands on 26 December as a diversion from the much larger Vaagso raid three hundred miles to the south. Sub-Lt (E) TL Mosley RNVR, who was aboard Jaunty for the raid, later explained:
Our job was to take the force into the narrow approach to the islands. While towing a supply ship in the fjord we were attacked by aircraft. But, though we towed in the Arethusa and other ships through repeated air attacks, we brought them all out again when the raid was completed.2
On her return Jaunty was stationed at Stornoway from where, in January 1942, she went to the assistance of the 1088-ton steamship Thyra II, which had been bombed off Barra Head, the southernmost part of the Outer Hebrides, and she later towed two other damaged ships to Reykjavik.
In August 1942, she and the Salvonia sailed with Operation pedestal, the famous convoy mounted to relieve the besieged island of Malta. They were attached to Force R, the refuelling tankers and their escorts, which sailed from Gibraltar on 9 August at the rear of the convoy. At 0855 on 11 August, Jaunty and the two cruisers, Sirius and Phoebe, joined Force F, the convoy’s escort force, but at 13.00 those aboard the rescue tug witnessed the sinking of the British aircraft carrier HMS Eagle. She was torpedoed some seventy nautical miles south of Cape Salinas, the southernmost point of Mallorca, and Jaunty immediately went to the carrier’s assistance.
‘On approaching the position she was observed to be listing heavily,’ Jaunty’s commanding officer, Lt-Commander Harold Osburn OBE RNR, later reported, ‘eventually sinking in about fifteen minutes from the time of the explosion.’3 By then his crew had prepared every possible means for rescuing the survivors. One boat was lowered and floating nets and lines were hung overboard. ‘I could see many men in the water and we started to pick them up as quickly as possible, there being at the time a heavy covering of fuel oil on the water.’
Jaunty’s first officer took command of the lowered lifeboat, and had soon picked up several exhausted survivors, while Osburn manoeuvred Jaunty to pick up those struggling in the water further away. Two members of his crew in particular distinguished themselves during the rescue operation by repeatedly diving overboard with lines they then attached to survivors so that they could be hauled aboard. Osburn estimated that Jaunty rescued about two hundred and fifty men. The injured were transferred to one destroyer and the rest to another, with one dead man being left for Jaunty to bury at sea.
At dusk, the main convoy was attacked by Ju 88 dive bombers and Force R to the southward also came ‘in for attention’, the official despatch recorded:
[O]ne Ju 88 dropping two bombs, one of which fell between the oilers and the escort, another diving on Jaunty which was about seven miles to the westward and endeavouring to join Force F [after picking up Eagle survivors]. She claims to have damaged it with Oerlikon fire. No damage was done to any ship in these attacks.4
Osburn was more detailed about this encounter, writing in his report:
The hostile aircraft flew in to attack us from the port side, but no bombs were dropped by it as we immediately opened fire with our two Oerlikon guns, and observed two direct hits on the body of the aircraft just behind the wings on its starboard side. Being now rather dark we could not see its definite end, but was sure of it being damaged.3
Jaunty was then ordered to return to Force R, as she was too far behind Force F to catch up. Once she had rejoined, she screened the oiler Brown Ranger, eventually arriving back in Gibraltar on 16 August, ‘but all on board,’ Osburn concluded his report, ‘were disappointed in not having been able to continue the operations to Malta’. Meanwhile, the Salvonia stood by as a rescue ship for Operation baritone, which involved flying off thirty-two Malta-bound Spitfires from HMS Furious before she, too, returned to Gibraltar on 18 August.
Following the North African land
ings in November 1942, Jaunty assisted the 6736-ton US Army attack cargo ship USS Almaack. Having delivered her cargo to the beaches, Almaack was returning to Britain in convoy MKF-1Y when she was torpedoed one hundred and twenty miles north-west of Gibraltar, and Jaunty reached her the next day and towed her back to Gibraltar.5
Another important tow for Jaunty came in March 1943, when she and the Restive brought in the Seminole, a 10,389-ton British tanker. She was in convoy TE-16 some twenty miles west of Oran when a U-boat hit her with two torpedoes, which, luckily, did not ignite her load of high-octane fuel. Her crew abandoned her, but she remained afloat, and Jaunty and Restive towed her to Oran, where the fuel was transferred to another ship. The following month she was taken to Gibraltar and was later returned to Britain to be repaired, one of a series of cripples, as they were called, to make the twelve-hundred-mile passage under tow.
Jaunty had a remarkable record in the Mediterranean. On her return home, a local newspaper interviewed her commanding officer, who claimed, with understandable exaggeration, that it was Jaunty and Restive that had really taken the surrender of the Italian fleet at Malta on 10 September 1943, as it had been their responsibility to transfer armed guards from British warships onto the Italian ones.6 Both rescue tugs also played their part in helping to tow HMS Warspite, a First World War battleship of 33,410 tons displacement, from Malta to Gibraltar, after she had been badly damaged during the Salerno landings.
Empire class
By 1943, Empire tugs of different sizes were stationed in the Mediterranean, but the Empire Wold, just 114 ft overall, was sent to work in the atrocious weather around Iceland where in January 1944 she distinguished herself by going to the aid of a trawler that had run aground. The weather was just about as bad as it could be, with an eighty-mile-an-hour gale and blinding snowstorms, and several times the Empire Wold was forced to abandon her search and return to harbour, her crew exhausted. Eventually, the weather moderated, the Empire Wold located the trawler’s crew, and they were eventually all rescued. For displaying ‘courage and leadership of a high order, and also great skill and determination’, her master, Captain William Russell, was awarded the MBE,7 but sadly the weather eventually got the better of her and in November 1944 she disappeared without trace while searching for an abandoned tanker.
The majority of Empire tugs in the Mediterranean assisted in ports handling the huge amount of shipping created by the fighting in North Africa, but some – and not necessarily the largest – acted as rescue tugs, accompanying the numerous convoys destined for different parts of the Mediterranean. For instance, in November 1943 the Empire Larch – now armed with a three-inch gun and two machine guns, far in excess of the armaments the class had been originally allotted – helped escort convoy KMS-31 from Liverpool to Gibraltar.
As an article in Lloyd’s List and Shipping Gazette pointed out, the smaller Empire class tugs, like those already mentioned, showed they were capable of performing tasks for which they had not been designed:
The ‘Coastwise’ tugs were originally coal burners, but a certain number were fitted to burn oil fuel and excepting a few of the earlier vessels, they also had fire and salvage pumps fitted. Some of these were also used for rescue work. Of this class the following extract from the Master’s letter of one on passage gives some indication of their adaptability:
Leaving Milford Haven we towed two Free French submarine chasers on separate lines; we towed them to Gibraltar at a speed of 6.7 knots, and consideration must be given to the fact that bad weather was experienced in the last 36 hours. The chasers then escorted us to Gibraltar. Leaving this port, we again took them in tow and towed them to Bathurst in the Gambia, maintaining a speed of seven knots. We remained in Bathurst three weeks doing all sorts of jobs, and on arrival at Freetown we were kept back, with another tug, to tow a crane barge, taking her to Takoradi at an average speed of 5.7 knots.
After calling at Pointe Noire [Congo Republic] and Walvis Bay [Namibia] we went into Luderitz Bay [Namibia], picked up a barge, and towed it to Saldanha Bay [near Cape Town] at 6.5 knots. It was on this passage that we met the Cape rollers, but the little ship rode them like a duck. From Cape Town onwards we did no more towing, but called in at Durban, Laurenço Marques [Maputo], Beira, Mombasa, and Aden just in case we were required, the final distance being 13,525 miles, steaming time 74.4 days, average speed 7.6 knots. She behaved splendidly throughout: she was a sturdy little tug, and made the 13,525 miles by which she was routed without one stop for engine trouble.8
The crew of one of these smaller type of Empire tugs, Empire Fred, behaved with exceptional courage when, on 16 July 1943, fire broke out aboard a Liberty ship, SS Fort Confidence, while she was unloading ammunition on to the Norwegian freighter Bjørkhaug in the port of Algiers. The resulting explosion blew the stern of Bjørkhaug on to the quay and set the area alight. Fort Confidence also had several thousands of tons of petrol on board, which if it had exploded could have flattened large parts of the port. The firefighting services eventually brought the blaze under control on most of the quay, and in the forward part of the ship, but it could not be contained elsewhere and ammunition continued to explode.
Holland’s most modern tug, the Hudson, commanded by Captain Benjamin Weltevreden,9 now proved her worth in this dangerous situation. She had already towed a troopship and a hospital ship clear of the disaster, and the Dutchman now backed his ship’s stern to the bows of the burning vessel, intending to tow her clear. A line was passed through the eyes of the bow moorings to pull them free, but they were too taut and could not be moved. Securing a tow rope to the bows of the burning ship, the Dutchman pulled her forwards just enough to allow the slackened mooring ropes to be cast off.
Rear Admiral JAV Morse RN, the senior naval officer at Algiers, had witnessed the explosion from his office window. He hurried to the scene and went aboard the Hudson to witness the unfolding drama, and he later wrote in his report:
HM Rescue Tug Hudson commenced towing at once and was able to get Fort Confidence clear of the jetty. By this time all shipping in the vicinity of Quai Lorient had been shifted and there was a clear run towards the South Entrance. The wind at North East was slightly on the port bow, but to tow the ship through the entrance a turn of nearly 90 degrees was necessary and the Boom Defence extended half way from the northern Breakwater...
HM Rescue Tug Hudson is an ocean-going tug driven by diesel engines and has not the manoeuvrability of a harbour tug. Although the Master handled her with great skill it was necessary to bring the tow across the stem [of the ship] to turn the ship into the entrance, but the hemp mooring ropes, which had taken the straight pull, parted before the Fort Confidence could be brought round, and the ship, carrying a fair amount of way, ran into the northern half of the net defence. She was nearly head to wind and the flames from her after hold started to envelop the after platform with its ready-use ammunition lockers and shell stowage.10
The situation was now critical, and may well have ended in complete disaster if the Hudson had not received the assistance of the Empire Fred and the French harbour tug Furet II. Empire Fred, commanded by Lt A Craig, whom we last met aboard the Aimwell with President Roosevelt, was one of the smaller type of Empire tug, but this had not deterred the Admiralty from commissioning her in January 1943 as a rescue tug. After two crewmen from the Hudson had boarded the burning ship to secure the tugs’ tow lines – ‘a very gallant action’, wrote Admiral Morse, ‘as ammunition was continuing to explode’ – each of the tugs in turn tried to take the burning ship in tow, but each time the tow parted. However, through their efforts, or maybe because of the wind, Fort Confidence eventually floated free of the Boom Defence nets.
A destroyer waiting just outside the harbour now tried her luck at taking the burning ship in tow. She managed to secure a wire hawser to Fort Confidence’s anchor, and began pulling her out of the harbour by going astern. But the wind and swell foiled her, and in a further attempt the Empire Fred came so close to Fort
Confidence that she nearly caught fire. The Hudson did manage to get another rope aboard her, but by then Fort Confidence, still ablaze, had run aground, and there was nothing the Hudson could do to shift her. The plan to tow her right away from the port had to be abandoned, although other reports say she was eventually taken out of the harbour and beached. Admiral Morse concluded his report:
I cannot speak too highly of the behaviour of the Masters, Officers and Crews of the tugs. Ammunition was going off continuously and the sides of the ship were red hot, yet all went about their work with the phlegm for which these fine Dutch seamen are famous.10
The Honours and Awards Committee noted that the Empire Fred and the Hudson towed SS Fort Confidence ‘from a position at Algiers where she was a menace to the security of the whole port. They were handled with great courage and skill’. In due course, Lt Craig was awarded the OBE and one of his crew, Able Seaman Harry Haxell, was mentioned in despatches for his ‘courage and skill’.11 An honorary MBE was awarded to Captain Weltevreden, and honorary BEMs to two of his crew, RH Hansen and L Fillekes.
Later the same month, the Empire Samson, another of the smaller type of Empire class which had been commissioned as a rescue tug, was part of the escort for convoy OS-52/KMS-21 heading for Gibraltar when, on the afternoon of 26 July 1943, it was attacked by high-flying bombers. One of the freighters in the convoy was hit, and sank so quickly that the Empire Samson was able to pick up only eight survivors. The rescue tug’s commanding officer, Lt AS Pike RNR, then noticed that another ship in the convoy, Empire Brutus, had stopped and went to investigate. As he approached, he saw two of the convoy’s escorts returning the crew to her, as they had apparently abandoned ship when the bombing started. Pike wrote in his report: