by Ian Dear
I was informed by her Master that the engine room, stokehold, cross bunker and No. 3 hold were flooded from a hole in the port side caused by a near miss, but as there seemed no immediate danger of [her] sinking I informed him of my intention to attempt to tow her into Lisbon, a distance of 230 miles. He agreed and requested me to take twenty of his crew for safety. We received his permission to take provisions for these men and whilst they were being put on board we took about 3 tons of coal from his starboard side bunker to mix with our own which was of poor quality.12
The eight survivors from the sunken freighter were transferred to one of the convoy escorts, and Empire Brutus – which was without any power for her pumps or steering gear – was taken in tow. As the Empire Samson only had an ihp of 1100, and was just 114 ft overall, the tow to Lisbon was no easy task, particularly as the weather soon began to deteriorate. Accompanied by one of the corvettes, tug and tow headed for Lisbon in a moderate wind and a swell that made both roll heavily.
‘At approximately 0300 on 27 July,’ Pike wrote, ‘I received a signal from the Master of Empire Brutus informing me that he doubted her ability to make Lisbon as she was making water and listing to starboard.’12 The master requested this information be passed to the escort by R/T (radio telephone), but as Pike thought there might be U-boats in the area, which could home in on the transmission, he did not do so; and as he could not see any difference in the trim of the Empire Brutus, he continued to tow, although by the next day she was well down by the stern.
Early the next morning they were attacked by a Focke-Wulf Condor, but it was soon driven off. As the Empire Samson had had difficulty in maintaining steam during the night, Pike asked the nine Arab firemen he had taken aboard from Empire Brutus to assist his own firemen. When they refused:
I produced a revolver (unloaded) and promised to introduce them to their ancestors if they persisted in their refusal. Within two minutes they had organized Watches and were singing at their work in the stokehold. They worked cheerfully and well from then on and I think they deserve a good deal of credit for the success of the tow.12
In the afternoon, the master of Empire Brutus reported that the engine room bulkhead was buckling and was likely to give way, which would have quickly sent the ship to the bottom. The remainder of the ship’s crew were therefore transferred to the corvette escort. When the corvette’s commanding officer asked Pike what he intended to do, he replied that he was going to go on towing until the ship sank.
During the night, the weather deteriorated further and the tow became almost unmanageable – towing a ship that could not be steered was always problematical – and the next morning Pike informed the escort that he did not have enough coal to reach Lisbon. He asked, and was granted, permission to go alongside the damaged ship and take some coal from her bunkers, and by early afternoon the rescue tug was alongside, bumping badly in the ten foot swell.
A whip that could lift about half a hundredweight at a time was rigged and two gangs with buckets were formed. The escort transferred the master, chief officer and cook of the Empire Brutus, and everyone began shovelling, heaving and tipping coal from ’tween decks, which was six inches deep in water. By early evening, about eighteen tons had been taken aboard, enough for forty hours’ steaming. Good progress was made and at dawn the next morning, the escort put the rest of the crew aboard Empire Brutus, and left soon afterwards to avoid entering territorial waters. At 09.00 a local pilot came aboard and the Empire Brutus was handed over to local tugs.
When Lisbon was reached, Pike wrote that ‘we were greeted with enthusiasm by the Portuguese who made Pro-British demonstrations at the sight of the White Ensign, [and] I was conducted on a good-will tour of several Portuguese Government Offices by the British Naval Attaché’. It may, or may not have been a coincidence that when a British base opened on one of the Portuguese islands in the Azores later that year, Empire Samson was one of two British rescue tugs to be stationed there.
On 5 September 1943, the C-in-C Mediterranean, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Andrew Cunningham, issued an Order of the Day, No. 1. This began: ‘I wish to record my appreciation of the devotion to duty and resourcefulness of Lieutenant Alfred Sidney Pike RNR and the officers and crew of HM Rescue Tug Empire Samson’ and ended: ‘The perseverance and good seamanship of Lieutenant Pike and his crew in difficult and trying circumstances are worthy of commendation.’ As the rescue tug’s second mate, Sub-Lt TW Thornley RNVR, later commented: ‘We were, I think, justifiably proud that a White Ensign tug, crewed by 19 ex-MN T.124T officers and ratings should be chosen for Order of the Day No.1.’13
Another of the smaller Empire tugs that distinguished herself in the Mediterranean was the Empire Ann, and her story was written up in Lloyd’s List and Shipping Gazette.14 In her first six months in the Mediterranean, under the command of Lt CH Burgess RNR, she handled 1.5 million tons of shipping before being given a ‘roving commission’ during the invasion of Sicily and one night, when operating from Syracuse, she was sent to the rescue of a stranded 8000-ton merchant ship.
‘It was in very dirty weather,’ explained her first lieutenant, Sub-Lieutenant I Sturrock RNVR of Hull. ‘We had everything that night – lightning, thunder, squalls, hail, high wind, heavy seas and little visibility. We spent 16 hours getting the grounded ship afloat. Luckily, she was then able to proceed under her own steam, and we took nine hours getting into Syracuse, about ten miles away.’ When they eventually arrived, they found the storm had caused chaos among the ships in the harbour; and although they had just spent thirty-eight hours at sea, Empire Ann’s crew turned out and struggled for another four hours with other tugs to sort out the mess. The Lloyd’s List article ended:
There are about a dozen ‘Empire’ tugs on duty in the Mediterranean, each of them having gone out from England under her own steam. The story of the Empire Ann is typical of them all. They have all tackled jobs they were never built to handle, and have done invaluable work in the invasion harbours in North Africa, Sicily and Italy.14
Gibraltar patrols and the Azores
Permission to base a rescue tug at the Azores had first been sought from the Portuguese in 1941, and the Salvonia had been chosen. However, Portugal – Britain’s oldest ally, sealed by a treaty ratified in the fourteenth century – prevaricated as she was understandably fearful of how the Germans would react. Instead, the Salvonia had been based at Campbeltown and Iceland before being sent to Gibraltar from where, as we’ve seen, she took part in the pedestal convoy to Malta. She was at Mers-el-Kébir for part of December 1942,15 before returning to Gibraltar, and it was from there she was called to assist the 7100-ton British freighter Empire Mordred, whose engine had broken down about forty miles east of Gibraltar’s Europa Point.
It was a routine task for the rescue tug, but one that brought unexpected complications when Mordred’s master declined to take the tow, saying that he expected to have made the necessary repairs by early the next morning. The freighter’s escort was informed, and the master was advised to take the tow as he was an easy target for U-boats, which were probably in the vicinity. Perhaps reluctantly, the master agreed and the next morning the Salvonia brought the freighter into Gibraltar’s commercial anchorage.
Salvonia’s commanding officer duly submitted a claim for salvage, but the freighter’s owners must have queried the claim, for the Treasury Solicitor became involved. Such an incident had never happened before and memoranda flew to and fro within the Admiralty. The Director of the Trade Division remarked it was deplorable that the freighter’s master allowed the fear of salvage expenses to endanger his ship, and two questions arose from his refusal: Could an escort order a merchant ship to accept a tow, if in the opinion of the commanding officer, the operational situation demanded it? And if such an order was given to a merchant ship, was the merchant ship liable for salvage charges? The short answer – though it seemed to take an inordinate amount of time to come to it – was yes and yes, and in due course an Admiralty Merchant Shippin
g Instruction (AMSI) was issued, which explained what had happened, and gave the Admiralty’s verdict on it:
It should be clearly understood that the risk of a valuable ship being lost through remaining stopped in dangerous waters cannot be accepted for considerations of this nature, and there must therefore be no hesitation on the part of a Master in accepting towage from tug or other vessel which has been sent to his assistance.16
While the Salvonia was based at Gibraltar, Jack Close joined her as second wireless operator, and he later described her main task there:
The Salvonia left harbour at dusk, patrolling in Gibraltar Bay all night and returning alongside at early light, her job being to counter the piloted torpedoes and the swimmers with limpet mines who came out under cover of darkness from Algeciras on the Spanish side of the bay. Spain, although ostensibly neutral, was Axis-friendly and turned a blind eye to activities along her coastline opposite Gibraltar. There was known to be an Italian tanker alongside Algeciras harbour, the Olterra, which had been adapted for the use and concealment of underwater craft and swimmers, from which attacks were carried out against Allied shipping…
We left harbour at dusk, patrolling between the anchored merchant ships, trying to spot anything suspicious in the water, dropping anti-personnel charges or light depth charges overboard if suspicions were aroused. The area covered during these patrols was often considerable, particularly when a convoy had just arrived in the Bay, or one was assembling before sailing. At such times the ships at anchor could cover an area up to three miles long and a mile across.17
Sometimes the Salvonia was called out to ships in trouble in the Atlantic or in the Mediterranean. In March 1943, when a U-boat attacked convoy MKS-10 west of Gibraltar, she and another rescue tug were sent to assist two torpedoed freighters, Fort Battle River and Fort Paskoyac. The former sank, but the Salvonia towed the 7134-ton Fort Paskoyac back to Gibraltar where the freighter was made watertight, before being towed to Britain by the Empire Harry and Empire Larch in convoy XK-6. The convoy also included the two Dutch rescue tugs Hudson and Schelde, towing the British tanker Seminole mentioned earlier.
By November 1943, the Salvonia was back in Britain, undergoing an extensive refit at Liverpool, prior to being sent – at long last – to the Azores after successful negotiations for British and Americans’ air and naval bases had been concluded. The first British base was opened at Horta in October 1943, and both the Salvonia and Empire Samson were stationed there. They remained at Horta for the rest of the war, and helped a number of ships, including the British cruiser, HMS Glasgow, which ran aground while leaving the harbour.
On 19 September 1944, the Salvonia brought in the disabled US Liberty ship Edward P Alexander; and on 21 December she was dispatched to assist the Buckley class destroyer USS Fogg, which had been torpedoed by a U-boat north-east of the Azores. The Salvonia reached her the next afternoon, but that evening the destroyer’s stern section, about a third the length of the ship, sheered off. Nevertheless, the Salvonia managed to bring what remained of her into Terceira safely, where she was temporarily repaired. She was then towed back to the United States, given a new stern section and returned to service.18
Return of damaged ships
Returning badly damaged vessels to Britain for repair was one of the tasks rescue tugs performed regularly. Vulgarly known as ‘cripples’, most were part of XK convoys from Gibraltar. To go to this length shows how valuable each vessel, both merchantman and warship, was to the war effort, and rescue tugs were the only vessels capable of performing this task.
One of the warships returned to Britain was the ‘I’ class destroyer HMS Ithuriel, which was badly damaged by two near misses in Bône harbour in November 1942. She was beached and temporary repairs were carried out, and in February 1943 Jaunty towed her to Gibraltar in convoy ET-12. She remained there as an accommodation and training ship until August 1944, when the Prosperous towed her to Plymouth. She was judged to be beyond economic repair, but scrap metal was a valuable commodity in wartime so it was not entirely a wasted effort.
Sometimes, a cripple had to be towed back in two halves if a torpedo had broken it in two, though the ‘P’ class destroyer HMS Porcupine was deliberately cut in half at an Oran shipyard after being torpedoed off the port on 8 December 1942. The torpedo had caused such extensive damage amidships that the destroyer was declared a total loss, but it was then decided to strip her of all her armaments, and to send the two halves back to Britain. Perhaps some far-sighted naval bureaucrat had already earmarked them for future use, as after the two sections had been towed to Portsmouth – the forward half by the Assurance class Charon, the after half by the Aimwell – they were turned into accommodation hulks at Stokes Bay for landing craft crews. The front half was commissioned as HMS Pork and the rear half as HMS Pine.19 Waste not, want not.
Another cripple that had a successful outcome was the ‘W’ class destroyer HMS Wivern. In February 1943, she went to the aid of the Canadian corvette HMCS Weyburn, badly damaged after hitting a mine off Cape Spartel, on the Moroccan coast. The Wivern took off the survivors, but was herself then severely damaged when two of Weyburn’s depth charges – whose primers could not be removed because of wreckage – exploded as the Weyburn sank.20
The next month, the Wivern was towed to Britain by the Lend-Lease rescue tug Destiny, whose commanding officer, Lt RE Sanders RNR, was to be awarded the MBE the following year.21 He was one of the Rescue Tug Service’s most experienced officers, and in his book The Practice of Ocean Rescue (see note 1 in Chapter 5) he describes how, while towing the Wivern back to Britain in convoy XK-3, he rigged a large lug sail in her bows to prevent her yawing, that alarming tendency common in all towed vessels, especially in bad weather. The Wivern was under repair for over a year. During this time she had a twin six-pounder army gun installed for use against E-boats, and did useful work with the Harwich Escort Force for the rest of the war.
Not so fruitful were the efforts to return the Hunt class destroyer HMS Derwent to service after she was badly damaged in Tripoli harbour. In January 1943, British and Commonwealth troops captured Tripoli while chasing Rommel into Tunisia, and its harbour became an important supply base for them. It also became a prime target for German bombers and on one occasion a medium-calibre bomb narrowly missed the rescue tug Brigand, which was anchored there. It exploded fifteen feet from the port side just forward of the engine room. Blast and shrapnel caused considerable damage to the superstructure and peppered the hull plating with small holes, but on 17 March the NOIC Tripoli was able to report to the Rear Admiral, Alexandria that the Brigand was again seaworthy.22
This was just as well, because two days later a dozen Ju 88 bombers again attacked shipping in the harbour. Surprise was total as the telephones in the area were not working, and no warning could be given. Bombs hit two of the merchant ships, Ocean Voyager and Varvara, and the Derwent was hit by a circling torpedo.23 Both the Derwent’s boiler rooms and the engine room were flooded, leaving her in a sinking condition and an obvious candidate, if she survived, to become a cripple.
The Brigand was quickly on the scene and her commanding officer, Lt David Gall RNR, was later mentioned in despatches for the promptness with which the rescue tug responded to this crisis. He later reported:
Engines were brought to immediate notice and when shrapnel ceased to fall crew were set to rig extra fire hoses in case we could help some of the ships. A motor boat with KHM [King’s Harbour Master] on board closed and we were ordered to the assistance of destroyer Derwent. We slipped buoy and proceeded. The vessel was hit amidships on the port side and as she was reported to be very unstable it was decided to lash up to her and proceed into shallow water [at the southern end of the harbour]. This was done and she was made fast to a buoy close inshore. Salvage hoses were rigged and assistance offered but this was declined as the ship seemed about to sink. We cast off while she slipped from the buoy and stood by while she drove on shore.24
However, the Der
went’s troubles were far from over. Just after midnight, the first of the two damaged merchantmen, Ocean Voyager, blew up with a tremendous explosion. The resultant waves shook the beached destroyer so severely that her stern was lifted bodily inshore about thirty feet; and the bows were swung back into the harbour, and refloated. Some three hours later, the Greek cargo ship Varvara also exploded in ‘a terrific spurt of flame’. Her entire cargo of petrol caught fire, sending a blazing mass of debris towards the beached destroyer. The destroyer’s action damage report recorded:
All hands were called, and preparations were made to abandon ship, in case this mass of burning petrol floated down on Derwent, as it showed every sign of doing. Quarter of an hour later, when the inferno had got dangerously close, all hands, with the exception of sixteen, were landed at a small jetty abreast the ship by motor boat, whaler and skiff. Magazines were flooded, and all remaining ready-use ammunition was jettisoned, with the exception of a small amount for the pom-pom and Oerlikons in case of a further attack.
When the fire was about a hundred yards from the ship all the remaining hands were ordered into the boats. A similar order was given to the officers. By this time, however, the fire had lost some of its intensity, and an unspoken decision was reached to hold off the burning cases and attempt to save the ship from catching fire. Invaluable work was performed by the very shattered remains of the whaler, which was lowered, and formed a physical obstruction to the burning petrol at the most dangerous area where the ship was holed.25