The Tattie Lads

by Ian Dear

  Jim Hardie, a signalman aboard Attentif, gave a vivid account of her passage to the Far Shore:

  During the Dog-Watch on the evening of June 5th, orders were received to proceed to Portland, arriving there around eight or nine o’clock we found the harbour almost literally full of LCI (Landing Craft, Infantry) and LST (Landing Ship, Tank), and heaven knows what else. Attentif, a requisitioned French tug, headed straight for the coaling quay to bunker ship, an all-hands job which found us still at it well into the wee small hours. After a brief period of rest we came on deck to find a vast empty expanse of water. Of the multitude of craft that had crowded the place only an hour or two before there was not a sign.

  Much later in the morning a large US Army truck drove up, carrying a small contingent of GIs under the command of an extremely tall middle-aged, middle-ranking officer. This group, part of the team responsible for the overall construction of the harbour, were to be delivered to their base off St Laurent (omaha). We then cast off, picked up our two bombardons and sailed for the rendezvous area, known as ‘Piccadilly’…

  Ships and landing craft from the first assault groups which had gone hours before were already filling the north-bound sea lane, passing to starboard of us as they headed back to the UK. I cannot remember precisely when we arrived off the beaches, only that it was some time around the middle of the next day. On reaching the end of our ‘corridor’ we made a sweep to starboard, which brought us round and sailing parallel to the Normandy coast. The battleships and cruisers stationed off shore, which we had passed earlier on, were still maintaining their deafening barrage, salvo after salvo, augmented by several large, rocket-firing landing craft closer to shore. Destroyers were constantly on the move, patrolling at speed all along the coastline, and all around us the sea was full of small craft and troopships. A truly incredible and memorable sight.

  On our arrival at our delivery point off St Laurent, and with our American passengers safely transferred to their new berth, we handed over our tow and headed back to Portland at full speed. There we collected another pair of bombardons and, with hardly a pause, were under way again late that same evening. This was the beginning of a non-stop shuttle service which continued relentlessly until our final units were delivered on 16 June.16

  Problems with Goliath

  Nothing went as smoothly for the Dutch-manned Goliath when she was ordered to recoal at Portland after she arrived there on 30 May. Curiously, she was flying a Red Ensign, though there was no explanation of this in the SNO bombardon’s report on the incident that soon unfolded.

  The SNO briefed Goliath’s master that an officer would board the rescue tug to help him practise handling the bombardons, but the master then reported his dynamo had broken down, so the exercise was cancelled and the dynamo sent for repair. The master also particularly requested, and strongly stressed, the urgency for removing a small water tank from inside his coal bunker, but it was not possible to complete this because other work had higher priority, so on 3 June SNO bombardon cancelled the work and told Goliath to recoal regardless. The SNO later reported:

  The Goliath took no notice of this signal at all. At 1945 the vessel had not moved in compliance with my order. I sent another hand message which read: ‘You are to move immediately to the inner end of outer coaling pier and do what you are told or you will be relieved of your Command in the morning.’ This message was acknowledged and signed by the Master, but the ship did not move. During this time I was continually getting messages from SNO Naval Store Department, Portland, about Goliath not being ready for coaling and SNO said that unless she did come she would miss her turn, and would throw the coaling programme of the port out of gear.14

  At 22.30, as Goliath had still not moved, Champion, the bombardon duty tug, was ordered to move Goliath to her coaling berth, and she was then recoaled:

  The next day I reported the matter to the FOIC Portland personally, stating the trouble I had had with this tug, the action I had taken, and proposed to him that the Master and the whole of the Dutch crew should be relieved forthwith. With this the FOIC concurred. The Master reported to my office the next morning and I then told him that in view of his direct disobedience of orders and general slackness of his ship, he would be relieved from Command, and asked him if his Mate was a suitable person to take Command. His reply was, ‘If I leave, My Mate and crew leave.’ I therefore ordered the Master and crew to pack up and be ready to proceed to Lee-on-Solent pm that day.14

  The upshot of all this was the entire crew was sent by road under armed guard. As D-Day was so close, they would have had restrictions placed on their movements, but on 29 June a signal was sent authorising Goliath’s crew to be released for further employment in tugs. The SNO concluded his report:

  I regret that this drastic action was necessary, as in my opinion the Master is a good seaman and the Dutch members of his crew appear to know their work and to have a good spirit. I explained to the Mate and the rest of the crew that the action I had taken was no reflection whatsoever on them and that the reason why they were leaving their ship was that the Master had told me that if he left, they all left.14

  Goliath’s log recorded a different version:

  Water tank ordered to be removed from engine room in order to increase bunker capacity. Work left unfinished by shipyard workers. Captain refused to sail as ship was not in a seaworthy condition. Navy commander, Portland, ordered to imprison crew of Goliath. Later Captain and crew rehabilitated.15

  Stormy weather

  A contemporary report on cotug’s operations records that the tugs came from a variety of sources and each had to be treated differently.16 Generally speakings, it remarked, there was very little trouble, but the Red Ensign and Dutch tugs were, especially later in the operation, often held up for lack of key members of the crew. This would have been avoided if an adequate pool had been kept in being. It would have been better if tug personnel in Operation overlord had all come under the Naval Discipline Act for the whole period of the operation.

  The report also pointed out that tug crews were exempt from the Merchant Navy pool, so there was no official source from which tug hands could be obtained, although the Ministry of War Transport had established a small pool on Aorangi:

  This was inadequate and did not last long, and after a few weeks it was left to the various tug managers or their agents to fill the gaps. As a consequence working days were lost. This shortage did not apply to White Ensign tugs.16

  Another contemporary report by Sir Walter Monckton describes the difficulties encountered by the weather:

  From D-Day onwards [the weather] was almost continuously worse than that to be expected for the time of year. It not only determined what could be dispatched each day – some tows, particularly the floating roadway [whales] were very susceptible to weather – but it also affected the progress of erection and thus varied the daily requirements. These day-to-day variations complicated the economical allocation of the different types of tugs. In preparing the towing programme certain assumptions had to be made. The average speed of towing was estimated at 3 knots; in practice, however, 4½ knots was achieved with the result that the allowance of 72 hours for the round-trip time of the tugs was reduced. On the other hand, it had been assumed that the weather would only prevent towing on one day in four and this guess proved optimistic. Losses to tugs were estimated at 10 per cent but actually only 2 were lost; one US [Partridge] and one British [Sesame].17

  He then added that only two phoenixes were lost, one by mining and one by torpedo, and that they both sank in thirty seconds, ‘which was far quicker than the designers had ever dreamed’, but he did not include the one lost through stress of weather in the Bristol Channel in October, which, thankfully, took a lot longer (see below):

  But losses to the other equipment were heavier and nearly 40 per cent of the roadway spans (whales) failed to survive the crossing. Up to D10 [ten days after D-Day] the progress of erection had been satisfactory with the exception of the
piers and roadway, the dispatch of which had been held up by the weather; the arrival of this equipment now became urgent as it was most desirable to commence the discharge of vehicles from LST in each harbour. Consequently the officer responsible for dispatch from the UK was a continual customer of the weather prophets to ascertain when he could safely send over the equipment and he was delighted to be told on the morning of D12 (Sunday 18 June) that there was an almost perfect weather forecast. The crystal-gazers were enthusiastic; everything pointed to a 48-hour spell of fine weather; on their charts there were no ominous areas of low pressure, the pressure wedges were all as they should be and even the signs of the Zodiac seemed propitious.

  So arrangements were put actively in hand; all possible tugs were mobilized and set out with a record number of units, including 22 tows of roadway each 480 feet long making a total of nearly 2 miles. But not one yard of roadway reached the far shore, because at 0300 hours on the Monday morning (D13) it commenced to blow. It blew a full gale for three days, such as had not been known in the Channel in summer for 80 years. It has been described as second only in portent to the gale which scattered the Spanish Armada in 1588; and it would have scattered and smashed the Allied Armada of small craft, with disastrous results to the forces already ashore in Normandy, had it not been for the gooseberries provided by the 60 blockships. They had already rendered yeoman service during the rough weather in the days immediately following D-Day but during the storm they, as the Eastern Naval Task Force Commander signalled, literally saved the day.17

  Up to the start of the great storm it could be said that everything was proceeding more or less to plan, except that the original completion date for the two harbours was never going to be met. mulberry a was closer to completion than its English counterpart and questions began to be asked as to why this was so. In an effort to make up time an extra phoenix was towed over to mulberry b in failing light and a falling tide, and was poorly planted near its main entrance, a case, Monckton suggested, of more haste made less speed. But he added that the care with which the units of the British mulberry were usually planted might well have been a contributory factor in it surviving the great storm, which its American counterpart did not.18

  The problems the rescue tugs encountered because of the weather were endless. Before the storm had even reached its height, Superman reported that a rating on the unit she was towing had died of seasickness, and what Saucy’s commanding officer, Lt JW Evenden, and his crew had to deal with shows just how bad the weather was. She was towing roadways (whales) with a number of other tugs when the great storm hit her in the early hours of 19 June, after she had left the Solent the night before in a light north-easterly breeze and a slight sea. The wind began to increase just before dawn, and by 09.30 the sea was becoming rough. The wind had veered and was coming from Saucy’s port quarter. She was being steered thirty degrees to port of her correct course to allow for the ebb tide. The tow then started to make a corkscrew motion. Evenden reduced speed to prevent this, and altered course to put the wind and sea dead aft. ‘I intended to carry on like this,’ he wrote in his report, ‘and make Route No. 12 [one of the dedicated channels from ‘Piccadilly’] as long as the tow behaved.’19

  The trouble was that it didn’t and in the rising wind and sea each of the six sections began yawing wildly from side to side, as well as pitching. Speed was reduced still further, but this did not improve matters. By now all the other tugs had left Saucy behind. A steel cylindrical tank at each end of the whale seemed to be affecting how it followed (towed), and during the morning the tank of its first section came adrift and floated away. The section then sank, buckling the decking of the second section, which prevented Saucy from stemming the ebb tide. The unit’s crew of soldiers aboard Saucy tried to save the other five sections, but one by one each section sank. The towing hawser could not be saved either, and had to be cut adrift, and all the towing gear was lost.

  ‘I have towed many craft, and of varied types,’ Evenden wrote, ‘and this is my first loss, and I feel it very much.’ He concluded: ‘I would add that the weather was too bad to be happy about the job. I did what I could for the best, in the circumstances.’19

  As we know, Evenden – who had been awarded the MBE in 1942 and was mentioned in despatches for his work during the Normandy landings – was not the only one to lose his tow in the storm, but unfortunately he lost another on 27 June, and in October he was caught in a gale near Lundy island while towing a phoenix from Milford Haven with Hesperia. A second phoenix was also being towed, and the Canadian Flower-class corvette HMCS Trentonian was escorting this small convoy.20

  Evenden had already received a letter of commendation for towing AFD 17 from Iceland to Gibraltar, but it must have been a first for a commanding officer to receive one following an unsuccessful tow. But Evenden did, and after reading the report of Trentonian’s commanding officer, there is no doubt that it was no more than he and his crew deserved:

  15 October, 1730: Trentonian sailed from Milford with the two Rescue Tugs towing phoenix 194.

  16 October, 1030: wind southerly, force 5–6, sea and swell rapidly increasing. Both phoenixes taken into Barnstaple Bay for shelter.

  1705: Wind veering to west-north-west and increasing. Heavy swell entering Barnstaple Bay. Saucy [with tow and Hesperia] turned and headed for Lundy Island. Trentonian followed. phoenix 195 remained in the Bay as one of the tugs towing it reported her steering gear defective, but would sail for Lundy as soon as repaired.

  17 October, 0015: Arrived Lundy Roads, wind west-north-west, force 6. Hesperia anchored with tow and Saucy cast off as she had no means of shortening towline. Wind variable during night, conditions improving.

  0925: Tugs towing phoenix 195 left Barnstaple Bay but turned back on account of wind backing to south-south-west and increasing.

  1500: phoenix 195 and tugs anchored off Clovelly [on western end of Barnstaple Bay]. Wind south-west, force 6. Very little shelter off Lundy Island for phoenix 194 and the two rescue tugs as they had to remain clear of anchored shipping. Tides very strong, and tow swung right around Hesperia on turn of tide. Saucy connected up to phoenix and cleared Hesperia, but carried away all her small towing gear in doing so.

  PM: Wind south-west to west-south-west, very gusty, force 6–7. During the night weather deteriorated rapidly, wind south-west to west-south-west, shifting and gusty, force 7–8. Tide turned after midnight. Hesperia and tow again fouled. Saucy could not assist owing to lack of gear. Hesperia weighed anchor to clear tow and in doing so was blown clear of lee of island. During the middle watch she held tow against wind, about two and a half miles east of island, but as the flood tide gained in strength and wind increased, she was forced eastwards. Saucy could not connect owing to seas breaking over phoenix platforms. Hesperia was unable to make headway but it was expected she would be able to return to lee of land on ebb tide.

  18 October, 0800: Tide turned. Wind increased force 9–10. Hesperia hove to 12 miles east of Lundy. Saucy standing by unable to connect as seas washing half way up the fore side of phoenix. This was the position until Hesperia’s towline parted.

  1207: Hesperia’s towline parted close to her, leaving about 200 fathoms attached to phoenix. Saucy closed and crew of phoenix instructed to stand by to attempt to get second towline connected. Unit now beam on to wind and sea. Just possible for the men to keep footing on lee platform.

  1305: Saucy successful in passing a line to the crew of the unit and the five men on the platform commenced what appeared to be an extremely difficult and dangerous operation, the hauling on board and connecting up of Saucy’s heavy towline. Fleeting it in with a tackle, they got it on board foot by foot.

  1420: messenger parted and end of towline was lost. Saucy stood clear of phoenix, hauled in her line, and waited to enable the crew of the unit to rest.

  1700: Saucy again closed phoenix and got heaving line on board. This time the operation was successful.

  1827: Saucy connected to
one corner of the unit. Reported she would endeavour to hold it up to the gale, but had not sufficient power to tow it under prevailing conditions. Wind west-south-west, force 8–9, very rough sea.

  1929: Saucy’s towline parted…

  2113: Crew taken off phoenix by Appledore lifeboat. Trentonian and tugs standing by phoenix to warn shipping as unit unlighted and visibility bad. Wind during the night westerly, force 9–10, with intermittent rain squalls.

  19 October, 0800: wind moderating. Unit 000 degrees, Hurtstone Point 3 miles. During the morning Hesperia grappled for the 200 fathoms of line trailing from phoenix but could not lift it with gear available, grapnels not strong enough.

  0952: wind force 6–7. Sea and swell subsiding but still not suitable for boarding unit. Trentonian steamed west to search for Rescue Tug Hudson reported to be joining with spare towlines and party of ten naval ratings to man phoenix.

  1100: Hudson sighted and directed to phoenix.

  1225: Hudson arrived and lay off phoenix. Instructed to put ten ratings aboard as soon as practicable.

  1250: Hesperia closed unit and succeeded in putting one officer aboard. Hudson then closed and put three of her crew on board, but none of the special boarding party. Hudson then got a small line on board and appeared to be commencing to tow. This simply had the effect of hampering the two more powerful tugs in their efforts to connect, so Hudson was ordered to cast off and to put the ten naval ratings on board. The object was to connect up the largest Rescue Tug Hesperia first, and the men were needed to get her heavy line on board. Hudson finally put these ratings on board and Saucy and Hesperia were both connected.