Railways 200: a maritime perspective, Part Two

October 3, 2025 ~ Serena ~ 1 Comment

Full Steam Ahead: Tourism and Freight

In the second part of our three-part Railways 200 special we go full steam ahead . . .

If the railways and the steamship were virtually born together, they also grew up together. The railways not only facilitated the development of new ports and new markets: together they enabled both domestic and international travel for work, study and leisure. They opened up tourist travel, which percolated down the social classes as workers’ holidays began to gain traction with employers and the law – especially to the seaside, to ‘London-on-Sea’ at Southend and Brighton, and to other resorts. Nowhere was it easier to access the sea by rail than at the Kent resort of Ramsgate, decanting passengers straight onto the beach.

Historic B&W aerial photograph of Ramsgate Harbour Station, showing people walking straight from the station onto the beach; a park and genteel terraces in the town are shown in the upper register of the image — Ramsgate Harbour Station, 1920. Ramsgate Harbour Station was operational between 1863 and 1926.
EPW000093 Source: Historic England Archive

Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Bristol

Elsewhere passengers started their overseas journeys by rail. Trains provided connections with steamship and ferry services. Bristol is a city which became a transport hub – Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s transatlantic steamer and early ocean liner, the SS Great Western, entered service in 1838, followed by the SS Great Britain in 1845. (A liner is a vessel that provides a regular ocean-going passenger and/or cargo service between two or more fixed points, in this case Bristol and New York.) From 1841 the Great Western Railway (GWR) terminus at Bristol, also designed by Brunel, provided a connection for passengers to and from the liner, with a hotel also built for the convenience of passengers.

Modern colour photograph, Brunel's old station now beside a busy road with plenty of car traffic. The front elevation is built of cream limestone but areas behind, such as the side returns and chimney stacks, are built of less prestigious and darker Pennant stone. — **Brunel’s Old Bristol Station, 2013 adjoining the present-day station. Its Tudor Revival style with its crenellations and oriel windows gives an impression of age and prestige**
**Peter Broster Wikimedia Commons CC-BY-2.0**

In this case the connection was not entirely seamless, as passengers still had to traverse the city, and potentially stay overnight in the hotel, but it is a travel cityscape which sprang from the brain of one man – and one which is still legible in the city today with the Grade I-listed old station next to the present-day Temple Meads (itself built in the 1870s), Grade II-listed hotel (known today as Brunel House) and SS Great Britain in preservation in the city.

Modern colour photograph seen looking down from a nearby window over the SS Great Britain displayed in dock and 'dressed overall' with flags flying between her six masts. and the city beyond. The river is seen to left and foreground. — SS Great Britain in Bristol, 2025
© Anthony O’Neil, geograph.co.uk CC BY-SA 2.0

How many visitors to Bristol today alight from Temple Meads, with Brunel’s original station on their right, to see the SS Great Britain and realise that they are following in the footsteps (or perhaps train wheels!) of passengers making the original transatlantic connection?

The Port of Liverpool and the Great Western Railway

Another ‘nearly seamless’ integration between the railways and port infrastructure can be seen in the Great Western Railway warehouse and office on the dockside at Liverpool, dating from the late 19th century. The GWR did not actually reach Liverpool itself, but goods could be moved by barge between the GWR’s Morpeth Dock at Birkenhead [1] and their warehouse at Liverpool alongside the Manchester Dock (filled in: now underlying the Museum of Liverpool) – a reminder that the railways also joined up with canal and river traffic in many different locations.

Modern colour photograph of Liverpool: edge of dock in foreground with propeller to left and steam crane to right, with the black & white hull of the ship just beyond in the middle ground. The deck lies under the lower roof of the warehouse saying RAILWAY, while the upper structure lies beneath the upper roof structure of the warehouse with the words GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY, creating a visual echo in the composition, also echoed by the building works beyond, and the varied heights and sizes of the Port of Liverpool and Royal Liver Building domes at the top of the image. — In this 2009 photograph the Great Western Railway warehouse is sandwiched between dockside infrastructure and the museum ship Edmund Gardner on the one side and on the other the dome of the Port of Liverpool building, with the Royal Liver Building beyond – two of the iconic ‘Three Graces’ of Liverpool fronting the River Mersey.
**DP073748 © Historic England Archive**

The rise of passenger travel

As the great age of the steam liner expanded, so also did the railways, and the two fed off one another, not only in Britain, but in parallel developments in other countries in Europe and elsewhere. This in turn enabled mass tourism (Cook’s Tours from 1855 to Europe, for example), emigration, and its darker side, colonialism. The liners, linking with railways on both sides of the Atlantic, made it possible for Charles Dickens to connect with his audiences in the United States and for Frances Hodgson Burnett of Little Lord Fauntleroy fame to regularly criss-cross the Atlantic.

Historic B&W photograph of men, women and children posing beside a railway carriage to the left, steam rising against the roof of the station — Passengers waiting on the platform at Waterloo for the Cunard Steamship Company boat train, probably for Southampton, 1913. The photograph was commissioned by Cunard from Bedford Lemere, who also specialised in photographing newly-built liners.
BL22173/001 Source: Historic England Archive

In the same way, liners grew not only to serve specific passenger routes such as Southampton or Liverpool to New York, or to serve European colonies abroad, but also to become cargo specialists. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw the rise of cargo liners and of refrigeration, benefiting not only the growth of fish and chips (see Part One) but also enabling meat to be shipped from South America and Australia under refrigerated conditions, for example by the Nelson Line, and despatched onwards by rail. Our records mark the loss of the Nelson Line’s Highland Fling on Enys Rocks, Cornwall in 1907, and Highland Brigade, torpedoed off St. Catherine’s Point, 1918. [2]

Like the coal magnates of the north-east before them (as covered in Part One), the railway companies saw the potential in an integrated market and a seamless experience. They would run passenger trains to the ports: thence it was but a short step towards commissioning the building of steamers, operating ferry services in their own right, and providing onward travel.

Trains and ships in the Lake District

Sometimes the ‘onward travel’ was a new development in its own right and an extension of the leisure experience within Britain. The steam yacht Gondola, the idea inspired by Venetian travels, as well as her name and hull form, was commissioned by Sir James Ramsden of the Furness Railway Company and entered service from 1859. The Gondola allowed passengers alighting from the Furness line at Coniston to enjoy pleasure cruises on Coniston Water in the Lake District, enhancing their holiday experience. [3]

The links between railways and ships were especially close in the Lake District, because trains could also transport small ships like these: the Gondola‘s hull was transported in four sections by rail and heavy horse to Coniston to be assembled locally, a methodology also adopted for the motor vessel Teal on nearby Windermere in 1938. [4] The railway line to Coniston was closed in 1962 so the link between Gondola and the railway that once brought passengers to her has been broken. [5]

Modern colour photo of the Gondola on the lake against a background of green tree and heather-covered mountains — **Steam yacht *Gondola* on a cruise on Coniston Water in 2011 © Ian Greig CC BY-SA 2.0**

The growth of the ferry

Where the railways could most easily dovetail with the steamers and provide the most seamless experience was on what we would today call ‘short-haul’ routes and ferries across to Ireland, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. They built on existing ports and routes with a history of passenger demand. The experience could be completely seamless and was a strong selling point. ‘The train comes to a standstill bang opposite the boat’ at Southampton, as described in promotional literature for the Southern Railway in 1931. [6]

The wreck record illuminates how old some of these ferry or ‘passage’ routes could sometimes be. The Duke of York ‘passage boat’ struck the Goodwin Sands in 1791 en route from Dunkirk to Dover – perhaps even with some refugees from Revolutionary France? (Turner was ‘nearly swampt’ on landing at Calais in 1802 as his painting Calais Pier demonstrates.) In 1669 one of the regular packets between Harwich and Hellevoetsluis (the precursor of the Harwich-Hook of Holland service which still continues today), was wrecked at Dunwich.

Some railway + ferry services were run by prestige named trains, such as the Golden Arrow train of the Southern Railway, which linked with the Southern’s first-class ferry Canterbury at Dover, which in turn connected with the reciprocal Flèche d’Or train which took passengers from Calais to Paris.

The post-war Golden Arrow seen at the Railways 200 Greatest Gathering in Derby, August 2025, one of the Merchant Navy class, commemorating the Clan Line. © Andrew Wyngard

In general, the railway steamers had a fairly good safety record, but collisions in fog could and did happen, most notably with the Normandy paddle steamer, belonging to the London & South-Western Railway Company, which was involved in a collision off the Needles in 1870 with considerable loss of life while en route to the Channel Islands. [7]

Another collision in fog which ended more happily was that in the Channel between the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway steamer Seaford, having left Dieppe with passengers for Newhaven, and ‘le cargo-boat’ steamer Lyon, belonging to the French railway firm Compagnie des chemins de fer de l’Ouest, voyaging in the opposite direction under a reciprocal service arrangement. All on board the sinking Seaford were saved by the French ship, which returned to Newhaven, and ‘special trains’ were run for the passengers to get them home, although a few people were sent to hospital with broken legs and ankles. [8]

Vintage Southern Railway booklet cover featuring a map and promotional text for weekend and holiday travel to the continent, dated May 1st, 1939. — 1939 Southern Railway brochure with map of connections, the last hurrah of passenger services before World War II. The Art Deco cover design blends stylised ships (white and pink) with steam trains (green) (Author’s own collection)

In 1918 the London & South-Western Railway ferry South Western was attacked by U-boat while on a cargo run from Southampton to St. Malo. More commonly, however, the railway ferries were lost outside both their normal roles and usual routes during both World Wars. They found themselves requisitioned for war service and were sometimes sunk on that service, such as the Southern Railway’s Tonbridge, which pivoted from her cross-Channel service to become a net layer (setting anti-submarine nets), and was sunk by a bomber off Sheringham in 1941.

Railway ferries also played their part both at Dunkirk in 1940 and during D-Day on 1944, including one very special class of ferry which we will take a look at next week in the conclusion to this blog series.

An artistic depiction of the steamship SS Canterbury with the Red Ensign flying astern, steam billowing from her funnels, and heading towards the White Cliffs of Dover — Southern Railway steamer SS *Canterbury* (of the *Golden Arrow* service described above) approaching Dover. Walter Thomas, c.1936 Science Museum Group Collection © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum

A vintage black and white photograph of the ship in wartime livery, with an aeroplane flying overhead. — **HMS *Canterbury* (FL 7489) Underway, at sea. As HMS *Canterbury*, the railway company ferry would participate in Dunkirk and D-Day**
**Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205124826**

All aboard for Part 3 next week . . .

With many thanks to Andrew Wyngard, railway consultant for this blog.

Footnotes

[1] The Great Western Railway Warehouse and Office, Coastal and Intertidal Zone Archaeological Network (CITiZAN), online; photograph of the warehouse and office, CITiZAN, online

[2] Historic England NMHR records

[3] History of Steam Yacht Gondola, National Trust, online

[4] Gondola, National Historic Ships, online; Teal, National Historic Ships, online; MV Teal, Windermere Lake Cruises, online; ‘Lake Flotilla’, Liverpool Echo, No.17,595, 6 June 1936, p4

[5] Andrews, M and Holme, G, 2005 The Coniston Railway (Pinner: Cumbrian Railways Association)

[6] Leigh-Bennett, E P and Fougasse 1931 Southern Ways & Means (Plaistow: Southern Railway)

[7] Historic England NMHR records. It should be noted that the comment on the safety record pertains principally to records of losses within English waters, which are relatively few by comparison with the regularity of the service and the number of journeys undertaken; however, other wrecks did occur outside English waters, around the other home nations, the Channel Islands, and the coast of France.

[8] Historic England NMHR records; ‘A Channel Steamer Sunk: Loss of the Seaford‘, Morning Advertiser, 21 August 1895, No.32,535, p5; ‘Le Naufrage du Seaford’, La Marseillaise, p3 (in French)

[z] Railways 200 Fridays – PS Waverley, National Historic Ships, online

Diary of the Second World War – August 1945

August 15, 2025August 19, 2025 ~ Serena ~ Leave a comment

Graphic commemorating the 80th anniversary of VJ Day, featuring a bold 'V' with '80' above and 'VJ DAY' below.

The Terukuni Maru

In our final Diary of the Second World War, 80 years after VJ Day on 15 August 1945, we take a brief look at what it took in terms of shipping losses to enemy causes in the immediate post-war world before we circle back to the early months of the war and a rare loss of a Japanese vessel in English waters, and an even rarer one under the circumstances of war.

Sweeping the Peace

The immediate post-war world was dedicated to achieving the peace and in this the world’s navies and merchant fleets played as large a part as they had done during the days of war – but in shipping lanes that were considerably safer than they had been for the past six years: no approaching aircraft with a payload of bombs, no warships on the prowl on the surface of the sea, no submarines waiting to loose a torpedo and hole a vessel below the waterline.

Even as the new world order started to take shape and ships brought home troops, POWs and refugees, home, carried occupation forces, and took dispossessed persons and GI brides to new lives on other continents, there remained one more issue that was harder to deal with than simply ceasing fire.

After both World Wars there were occasional losses to stray mines following the cessation of hostilities (see our post on losses after the First World War, which were recorded right up to 1925). Between VE Day on 8 May 1945 to VJ Day 15 August 1945, there was only one war-related loss in English waters: HMS Kurd, mined off the Lizard with the loss of 16 crew while on those self-same necessary clearance activities in July 1945.

As late as 1950 the Ramsgate trawler Volante exploded after striking a mine in the Thames Estuary, although fortunately, in that case, all hands escaped.

These were the very last direct maritime victims of the Second World War within English territorial waters. Mines continued to wash up on beaches on a regular basis until the 1950s and 1960s and less frequently since then, although they still occur and require dealing with.

A Japanese liner in 1939

From the immediate post-war period, we now circle back to think about VJ Day and events earlier in the Second World War. Of course, the events in question – the atomic bombs unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the surrender of Japan – took place on the other side of the world and so we cannot commemorate the end of the war directly with events in our waters in the year of 1945.

The war, however, came to Japan’s door in the waters of the Thames Estuary in November 1939 with the loss of the Terukuni Maru – described in the contemporary press as a ‘crack liner’ – i.e. a first-class liner (a slightly old-fashioned usage now, but which survives in expressions such as ‘crack shot’). Her prestige was demonstrated in several ways, such as the fact that she was a motor-driven vessel, rather than a steamer.

Terukuni Maru and Nagasaki

The Terukuni Maru was completed in 1930 for the Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) Line as a link between Japan and Europe. She was built by Mitsubishi at Nagasaki, reflecting the increasing pre-war Japanese industrial confidence which saw ships built domestically, rather than via orders placed with foreign shipyards. [1] This shipyard would be devastated by the atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. An annotated aerial view of Nagasaki in the US National Archives from 1945 identifies the shipyard (marked 2 on plan), while the shipyard is seen devastated in this aerial view of 1946 with sunken shipping also visible.

The final voyage of Terukuni Maru

The Terukuni Maru left Yokohama for London on 24 September 1939 – but not without war risk insurance: it was a journey that may have seemed safe in the Far East but would become increasingly risky as it neared a Europe in conflict.

As they neared the English coast in November 1939, that journey would become riskier still. There had been plentiful recent minelaying all along the east coast of England: by U-boats on the Suffolk coast and off the mouths of the Thames and Humber by destroyer groups, each claiming several ships. US naval intelligence warned that ‘thirty-nine mines had been sighted adrift off the English coast’. [2] British intelligence suggested that on the nights of 20 and 21 November German mine-laying aircraft had been active. [3] Among the ships attributed to the Thames destroyer group’s activities was the Dutch liner Simon Bolivar, bound from Amsterdam to South America, on 18 November.

There were already swept War Channels off the coast of the UK for Allied shipping and neutrals alike – mines being no respecter of neutrality – for at the outset of war Japan was neutral. Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 was yet to come.

Both the British naval authorities and the captain of the Terukuni Maru were well aware of the dangers ahead.

Captain B Matsukura gave an interview to The Times. in which he said that, having arrived in the Channel on the morning of 19 November, his vessel was boarded by naval officers for clearance and guidance towards the swept War Channels. [4] They finally weighed anchor for London with their 28 remaining passengers on the morning of 21 November with the assistance of a British pilot, while five crew were posted to scan for mines. However, as lunch was being served, ‘there was a terrific explosion . . . the ship shot up, several plates were broken, and three of the passengers were injured.’ [5] To Reuters he said that ‘When we struck the mine the ship shivered and jumped into the air.’ [6] The master gave his opinion that: ‘I would say it was a deep mine. If it had been an ordinary floating mine at least one of my look-outs would have seen it. My own belief is that it was a magnetic mine.’ [7]

All on board saved – including an unusual passenger

The ship’s engines were disabled and the pilot suggested beaching the ship, but it proved impossible to do so, and she began to list. However, the time it took for her to finally sink, 40 minutes later, and the relatively few passengers (most having disembarked earlier in the voyage) meant that it was possible to save all on board in eight lifeboats: 28 passengers, a passenger’s dog, 177 crew, and the pilot. The ship then finally heeled over to starboard and sank. [8]

There was another passenger – a stowaway of sorts. A falcon had flown on board, exhausted and hungry in the eastern Mediterranean, and was ‘taken care of by the bath-steward, but otherwise regarded as a bird of ill-omen.’ It was placed on board the Beaverford, one of the ships which had come to the rescue, and taken to London Zoo. The Beaverford was in Convoy HXF (Halifax-UK Fast), having made the journey ‘northabout’ via Scotland and bound for Dover, which suggests the convoy was on scene and others may well have been able to assist, including their escorts HMS Acasta and HMS Ardent. [9] The falcon’s survival made a good story and a feelgood picture for the press, even if its feathers had been somewhat ruffled by its extraordinary journey.

Images flashed around the world

But someone else also took good pictures of the wreck as it was taking place – the ship’s photographer, K Asami. The Daily Mirror told its readers: ‘You owe the amazing pictures in today’s Daily Mirror to a boy of eighteen . . . His photographs will be well paid for. It won’t be only camera work that will have earned him the money, but initiative and enterprise.’ [10]

That picture of the wreck itself is now in the Mirrorpix archives – search on Terukuni Maru – and and tells the full story at a glance – the ship heeling over to starboard, her bows already below water, the passengers escaping, and the swarms of other vessels giving assistance at the scene. The viewpoint is high, and taken from some distance, so he was able to take his photograph safe on board another vessel, giving him a stable platform to create a coherent image that told a powerful story.

Clearly he was able to take his most precious – and portable – possession with him, and became an accidental war journalist. Photography – and the democratisation of photography – made it possible to record shipwrecks as they actually happened, a trend which started to significantly come into its own during the First World War, can be said to have come of age during the Second World War, and is a precursor to today’s crowdsourced mobile phone footage that contributes so much to modern television news bulletins.

Orderly evacuations such as those on board the Terukuni Maru, or aboard the WWI loss Ballarat (subject of an earlier post) made it easier to do so, or those on board rescuing vessels could also take pictures (covered in our post on HMHS Anglia, also WWI). The teenage Asami’s astonishing photograph was syndicated around the world by radiophoto – a means of remote transmission of photography which emerged in the 1920s and 30s (also called Wirephoto by the Associated Press). For example, it was reproduced in the New York Times, where it was described as ‘passed by British censor’. [11]

Those who were there could thus bring a perspective that professional journalists just could not cover, but the conventional press could, of course, avidly film and interview survivors: check out this Gaumont newsreel of 23 November 1939.

Censorship and the War Channels

The reason Asami’s picture passed by the censor was that there was no identifiable detail as to the vessel’s location and no press report gave details other than ‘North Sea’ or ‘England’s east coast’, in conformity with British wartime censorship, even internationally. For example, in the Daily Mirror, we are told: ‘Crowds saw the crack Japanese liner Terukuni Maru sink off the East Coast yesterday after striking a Nazi mine.’ [12]

Hidden in plain sight

Yet there is an interesting story that is hidden in plain sight and wartime censorship has nothing to do with it. The position of the wreck has received no commentary as far as I am aware, until now.

The wreck’s position and identity have always been known with a consistent charting history since the date of loss, wartime reports on her position and marking, and dispersal activity in 1950 – an unbroken chain of reporting. [13]

The official Lloyd’s casualty report was finally made on 19 February 1940, and stated ‘reported to have sunk in forty minutes after striking a mine off Harwich on the 21st November, 1940’ although further correspondence ensued with the owners, who were reluctant to give up the possibility of salvage. However, by May 1940, they had ‘no objection to the record ‘Sunk – War Loss 11.39′ being made against this ship’s name in the Society’s Register Book.’ [14]

The wreck is charted and located around 3.5 miles or so NNE of the Sunk Head Tower light, and 2 miles ENE of the Inner Sunk light, nearly 12 miles east of Frinton-on-Sea, Essex. [15] The pilot’s suggestion of beaching the ship confirms its proximity to local sandbanks. [16] The Daily Mirror had said ‘crowds’ witnessed the wreck, which appears to be corroborated by the reminiscences of an eyewitness standing as a boy with his friend on the cliffs at Frinton-on-Sea, Essex, on 21 November 1939: he saw a liner he believed to be the Terukuni Maru sailing near the Sunk lightvessel go up in ‘an enormous plume of water’ and ‘turn on her side’. [17] This position also seems consistent with two boats from the Terukuni Maru, still complete with their oars and a quantity of ships’ biscuits still inside, fetching up at Den Hoorn and De Koog on the Dutch coast a couple of weeks later. [18]

What exactly was the Terukuni Maru doing there? She was heading north from the Downs off the eastern coast of Kent for London, so how come she was as far north as off the Sunk light vessel? The location of the wreck is nearly 30 miles north of Margate, where she could ’round the corner’ west into the Thames.

Map showing the location of the Terukuni Maru near the east coast of England, Frinton to the west, the approaches to the Thames to the south-west, and Margate almost due south. — **Maps Data: Google Earth; Image: Landsat, Copernicus; Data: SIO, NOAA, US Navy, NGA, GEBCO**

The Terukuni Maru had a British pilot on board, familiar with the many sandbanks of the Thames, and who will have been up-to-date with the war channels, adding a new layer of requirements for careful navigation – and the vessel was proceeding in accordance with instructions given when boarded by naval officers. She might well have drifted a little after being mined, since her engines were disabled, but she cannot have drifted very far, if at all, in the 40 minutes it took her to sink. Yet she was seen off Frinton-on-Sea near the Sunk light vessel by witnesses, with many vessels coming to her rescue; she was recorded by Lloyd’s as mined off Harwich; and has a consistent history of charting and identification by the UK Hydrographic Office since the time of loss.

So why was she there? Examination of data for wrecks which were mined in English waters during the first four months of the war shows that there is a small cluster off this area corresponding to those few days of activity noted above. It seems natural that the Simon Bolivar, coming across from Amsterdam on 18 November, would have joined the war channel close to Harwich (after all, Harwich and the Hook of Holland have been connected by a regular service for centuries) but it is harder to work out exactly why the Terukuni Maru was so far north of her expected peacetime course, when the weather was not a factor and her crew had expert pilotage and Admiralty advice.

The clue, perhaps, is in the words ‘the expected course’. The vessel will have been directed towards the swept War Channels, and it could be that the wreck remains of the Terukuni Maru form a tangible record of something short-term and ephemeral – a set of instructions, a change of course, a temporary alteration to the war channels, and direction towards known channels believed swept and safe – as the area near the recent wreck Simon Bolivar would have seen significant sweeping activity to make the area safe. Or was she directed away from London to Harwich?

There is an intriguing comment in a secondary source, synthesised from contemporary Australian and Singaporean newspapers, [19] which describes the position of loss as 8 miles north of Margate, 20 miles east of Shoeburyness. That position is some 24 miles south of the known and charted position of the wreck, but it would certainly be a location more compatible with a vessel turning east into the Thames from the Downs. Yet she cannot have drifted 24 miles to her final location of loss when she was seen off Harwich having exploded.

There is clearly more to discover.

Conclusion

The Terukuni Maru demonstrates the sense of menace present in the world’s shipping lanes from the outset of the Second World War and which would finally be brought to a close worldwide on VJ Day. The losses of Simon Bolivar and Terukuni Maru in close temporal and geographical proximity brought home in headlines around the world the danger posed to neutrals by unsignalled minefields in the early years of – and throughout – the war. As a neutral at this stage of the war, Japan was outraged, and this was a rare maritime loss for Japan prior to her entry into the war at Pearl Harbor in December 1941. So this wreck marks a moment in time for Japanese vessels during the Second World War.

Despite press censorship, we see also a positive shift in the documentation of shipwrecks by the growing medium of photography and the development of war journalism. The wreck’s dispersal in 1950 echoes the parallel efforts made in post-war minesweeping and the constant reminders of war debris in various forms. From September 3, 1939 to August 15, 1945, the Terukuni Maru was but one of many victims of the war in English territorial waters: the remains of some 349 vessels, some positively identified, some with potential attributions, and some unknown, are recorded in Historic England’s dataset, with many more known only from documentary evidence. [20]

It seems there is more to discover, so we may well return to the Terukuni Maru in due course.

The one Japanese loss of the Second World War in English waters, the Terukuni Maru has been an appropriate wreck to mark the final edition of the Diary of the Second World War on this blog. We will continue to cover other shipwreck stories within English waters: all Second World War entries, and those for the Diary of the First World War will remain archived and accessible.

Footnotes

[1] Lloyd’s Register Foundation Archive and Library, completion report for the Terukuni Maru, 28th June 1930, LRF-PUN-W283-0129-R. There is some confusion in some secondary sources over whether she was built at Kobe or Nagasaki, possibly because some elements of her construction were overseen by the Kobe surveyor, necessitating some correspondence with the Nagasaki surveyor, all of which is also in the Lloyd’s Register Foundation archives.

[2] Rohwer, J and Hümmelchen, G 2007-2025 Chronik des Seekrieges 1939-1945 November 1939 (Württembergische Landesbibliothek: published online) (in German); New York Times, 23 November 1939, No. 29,888, p2 (subscription service).

[3] Terukuni Maru Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) Line 1930-1939 https://www.derbysulzers.com/shipterukunimaru.html, based on contemporary newspapers. This source covers the Terukuni Maru as a motor vessel fitted with Sulzer engines. Attribution to a parachute mine is supported by eyewitness accounts from Frinton-on-Sea, Essex, reminiscences in 2007 of a witness who had, with a friend, seen parachute mines being dropped as a boy of 14 on 20 November 1939.

[4] The Times, 22 November 1939, No.48,569, p8

[5] ibid.

[6] Malaya Tribune, 22 November 1939, p1

[7] Straits Times (Singapore), 6 December 1939, p10

[8] The Times, 22 November 1939, No.48,569, p8

[9] The Times, 25 November 1939, No.48,572; convoyweb Convoy HXF 8. The falcon was a peregrine falcon which arrived at the Zoo on 23 November 1939, listed as ‘caught at sea’ and presented by the Chief Officer of the SS Beaverford, Surrey Commercial Docks. It died on 29 July 1940. With very warm thanks to the Librarian at the Zoological Society of London for this information.

[10] Daily Mirror, 22 November 1939, No.11,220, pp 1, 10-11, 20

[11] New York Times, 23 November 1939, No. 29,888, p7 (subscription service)

[12] Daily Mirror, 22 November 1939, p20

[13] United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (UKHO) report 14537, 28 November 1939 onwards

[14] Lloyd’s Register Foundation Archive & Library, Report of Total Loss, Casualty, &c. for Terukuni Maru, 29 February 1940 LRF-PUN-W283-0109-W

[15] Correlation of the wreck’s charted position with key seamarks and landmarks using geospatial information tools

[16] The Times, 22 November 1939, No.48,569, p8

[17] Eyewitness writing in 2007 on his experiences as a teenager witnessing the wreck on the Warsailors Forum

[18] e.g. in De Limburger, Vol. 70, No.284, 5 December 1939, p6 (in Dutch)

[19] https://www.derbysulzers.com/shipterukunimaru.html

[20] Examination of the National Marine Heritage Record (NMHR), Historic England, August 2025

Greek freighter, SS Mount Othrys, in collision on the Thames (1945)

June 5, 2025 ~ Serena ~ Leave a comment

Historical photograph of the SS Mount Othrys, a damaged cargo vessel, highlighting its collapsed structure due to the aftermath of a collision. — **Undated photograph of what may possibly be the damaged front section of Mount Othrys at the time of the accident. Unknown photographer.** Copyright: © Historisches Marinearchiv, HMA (by kind permission, 17/01/2025)

Written by Tanja Watson, Maritime Research Specialist, Historic England

This week’s blog looks at the loss event of the SS Mount Othrys (όρος Όθρυς) – a Greek cargo vessel which collided with MV Erinna, a Dutch oil tanker, on the narrower part of the river Thames, near Canvey Island, on Sunday 7 January 1945. While not a war loss, the Greek-owned Panamanian-flagged freighter demonstrates an accident that can easily happen in a busy thoroughfare. Both vessels caught fire in the collision but thanks to the quick response of a nearby fireboat stationed at Holehaven, the oil tanker and most of its cargo could be rescued. The steamer, however, became a total wreck and its remains were later scrapped.

Greek support

Just over 100 losses of Greek-owned vessels have been recorded within the 12 nautical mile limit of England’s coastline; circa twenty of these date from the Second World War.[1] The Mount Othrys offers the opportunity to highlight the important role Greek shipowners played under German occupation during the Second World War. Long-standing connections with the British shipping industry before the War made them an obvious ally, and their continued support of Britain throughout the War – allowing almost the entire Hellenic merchant fleet to be used for transporting goods (40 million tons of supplies) and troops alongside the Allied Forces, at great cost to the shipowners themselves – were invaluable in the fight against the Axis alliance of Germany, Italy and Japan.[2] By the end of the War, the Greek merchant fleet had lost almost 80% of their ocean-going freighters, every passenger vessel, and more than 2,000 seamen.[3]

Mount Othrys

At the outbreak of the War, Greece had the ninth largest merchant marine in the world, consisting of around 500 vessels, with an additional 100 Greek-owned steamships sailing under British and Panamanian flags. The British government chartered a number of these, Mount Othrys being one of them. A regular on the large Allied slow convoys; sailing the Sierra Leone (Freetown)/ Halifax (later New York)/ Sydney (Cape Breton) or Halifax or New York and the UK routes, it participated in 14 convoys between 1940-44, transporting supplies such as coal, pitch, and potatoes.[4]

The steel-hulled freighter was originally built by Harland and Wolff of Belfast in 1919 as SS Newton and under ownership of Lamport & G. Holt, for the Brazil & River Plate Steam Navigation Co. Ltd. in Liverpool.[5] In 1933, Newton was changed to Mount Othrys on transfer to Greek ownership (first Theseus Shipping Co. Ltd, Athens; then Rethymnis & Kulukundis, Panama; and in 1936, Kulukundis Shipping Company). Her final owner, Emmanuel Markou, purchased her in 1938, continuing her registration under Panamanian flag. Markou was related to the family of Manuel Kulukundis – a British-Greek banker, shipowner, and chief negotiator with the British government in the discussions around chartering the Greek merchant fleet around that time. Kulukundis and his cousin had founded the famous Rethymnis & Kulukundis (R&K) in 1921, which eventually became the largest Greek shipping office in London.[6]

The collision

On the morning of the collision, at around 10.30am, the MV Erinna, a 9,100-ton Shell tanker built in 1936, laden with 8,000 tons of motor spirit (80% octane), was pulling out into the fairway from Coryton Wharf, assisted by two tugs and heading down river, outward bound. Meanwhile, the SS Mount Othrys, a 6,500-ton vessel, was about to arrive to its destination, London, having picked up its cargo from the Canadian Port of Saint John on Newfoundland.[7] It was transporting Quaker Oats in cardboard boxes and bulk grain, and was making upriver, passing Holehaven, the creek to the west side of Canvey Island on the lower Thames.

Black and white photograph of the Greek cargo vessel SS Mount Othrys at sea, showing its steel hull and smokestack. — **Photograph of the Dutch oil tanker MV Erinna, date and photographer unknown.** Copyright: Stichting: Maritiem-Historische Databank, (Permission granted)

For whatever reason, as the Erinna moved out into the fairway, the Mount Othrys collided with her – striking the Erinna on the port side and bursting No7 port tank. Some 350 tons of petrol gushed out and showered the two ships and surrounding water. A spark must have ignited and both vessels were suddenly engulfed in flames. The crews on both vessels started abandoning ship, some even diving into the flaming water.[7]

The National Fire Service

Fortunately, the collision was heard by the crew of the National Fire Service (NFS) fireboat, the F.B.282 Laureate, normally stationed at nearby Holehaven, and upon seeing the flames the crew immediately scrambled to assist, laying out hose and foam branches on the deck of the fireboat. During World War II, the London Fire Brigade’s Thames River Formation used fireboats to fight fires along the banks of the Thames and protect ships in the river. It had about 70 craft, including fireboats, fire floats, and other tenders, and was ‘the first to be equipped with radio communications’.[8]

A black and white image showing a group of crew members on a small boat in the river Thames, with some members waving flags. The Tower of London is visible in the background. — **With the Tower of London in the background, NFS firemen of the River Thames Formation travel down the river on their way to an incident in 1943.** (D 17215) Copyright: © IWM https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205200557

As the first arrival to the scene, an immediate decision had to be made as the two burning vessels were starting to drift apart. The section leaders on board the Laureate judged the tanker as in the greatest danger as well as the greatest threat to any nearby shipping, jetties and wharves. Approaching the tanker’s starboard side, the firefighters clambered on board with their hoses which soon changed spraying water to foam. Altogether, the NFS men were reported to have worked for 21 hours, with some injured and taken to hospital.[9]

“The speed and effectiveness with which this was done was due not only to the resolution of the branch operators, but also to the unflagging energy of the pump operators, who, in using nearly 600 gallons of foam solution, had rapidly to unseal and empty more than 100 5-gallon tins into the multiple jet inductor.” [10]

Several members of the crews of the two ships were reported missing, believed drowned. Eventually the flames were put out and the tanker was saved with very little loss to the cargo. Other vessels continued to try and save the Mount Othrys, the Thames tug Sun VIII being one of them [11], but eventually the freighter had to be beached at Scar’s Elbow on Canvey Island.[12]

On January 8th, the day after the collision, the cargo vessel was re-floated and four tugs attempted to tow it to nearby Tilbury. This failed and the vessel was re-beached at Mucking. The superstructure and majority of the accommodation amidships had completely burnt out. The engine and boiler rooms were flooded, and the vessel hogged and was badly cracked. On the 20th January, at 02:30, the ship broke into two parts and was declared a total loss.[13]

Commendations were awarded to some of the Thames firefighters involved in putting out the fires, among the last to be given national gallantry awards: one British Empire Medal and nine King’s Commendations for Brave Conduct.[14] Three of Mount Othrys‘ crew were killed in the accident – two Greeks (both stokers) and a Brit.[15]

Footnotes

[1] National Marine Heritage Record (NMHR), Historic England. Marine records are currently searched via the Heritage Gateway (Mount Othrys, record id 1260991)
[2] Greek Shipping Miracle: Decimation of the fleet 1940-1945
[3] Voudouris, Dr. Ioannis, The Contribution of the Hellenic Merchant Fleet during the WWII (April 30, 2017)
[4] Arnold Hague Convoy Database, OS/KMS Convoy Series
[5] WWI Standard Ships, War Justice (the name given to Mount Othrys in initial construction phase)
[6] Greek Shipping Hall of Fame, Manuel E. Kulukundis (1898-1988)
[7] Historisches Marinearchiv (HMA), Mount Othrys
[8] Pike, David C, A retired London Fireman: A short history of London’s fireboats (April 18, 2021)
[9] The Crawley & District Observer, 22 September 1945, page 2
[10] Canvey Island: History & memories of a unique island community, Thomas Henry Setchell BEM
[11] Thames Tugs: London Tugs Limited, Sun VIII
[12] Historisches Marinearchiv (HMA), Mount Othrys
[13] Pike, David C, A retired London Fireman: A short history of London’s fireboats (April 18, 2021)
[14] Historisches Marinearchiv (HMA), Mount Othrys

VE Day

May 1, 2025 ~ Serena ~ Leave a comment

Flying Fortress B17G 44-8640

To commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe on 8 May 1945 we are republishing this blog looking at the very last craft of any kind to be lost off the coast of England.

The last few months of the war saw a significant decline in shipping and aircraft losses over the sea attributable to war causes. The last six weeks of the war saw 10 shipping casualties to war causes in English waters. Over the same period there were 6 aircraft lost to non-war causes (mechanical failure or accident, for example).

The seventh and last aircraft, and last loss of the war in English waters, was the exception, and a war loss, despite its peaceable mission – just one day before the celebration of Victory in Europe. And it is to events in Europe we must turn first of all to understand the mission of the last aircraft of the war to find a grave with most of its crew in England’s territorial sea.

Background:

As the end of the war approached, there was real desperation in the occupied Netherlands after the arduous Hongerwinter [“Hunger Winter”) of 1944-5, of whom one of the best-known survivors was the actress Audrey Hepburn, whose mother was Dutch and who grew up in the Netherlands.

The Hongerwinter arose from a terrible combination of circumstances, any one of which on its own would have been bad enough Although the Allies pushed ahead after breaking out from Normandy, the objective of Arnhem in the Netherlands in September 1944 during Operation Market Garden proved a ‘bridge too far’. Attempted strikes by Dutch railway personnel led to retaliation by the occupiers, preventing food supplies from getting through, and when this blockade was lifted, there were overwhelming obstacles to overseas relief efforts. Although the Allies had managed to capture Antwerp in September 1944, it was several weeks before the port could be used and, even if it had been in use earlier, the the occupied western provinces of the Netherlands with the greatest population density, and least agricultural land, including Amsterdam and Rotterdam, remained cut off. The canals and rivers froze early that winter and fuel for lorries was scarce. Limited relief supplies from neutral Sweden and Switzerland had helped a little but the situation remained dire. (1)

Sepia pen and ink wash of seated woman in hat with a boy and a girl in the background. — ‘They have taken all, and our food’, Netherlands. Eric William Taylor, 1944, purchased by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee. Taylor would go on to record the liberation of Bergen-Belsen in April 1945. © IWM Art.IWM ART LD 4989

The relief effort:

Even as the Allies closed in on Berlin and the end of the war in Europe, they were able to refocus from a purely offensive approach towards a relief effort and the rebuilding of a new Europe. The Lancasters of the RAF and the B-17 Flying Fortresses of the USAAF based in England, which had so recently been deployed on bombing missions were perfectly suited to dropping food parcels to the Netherlands, and thus Operations Manna (RAF) and Chowhound (USAAF) were born.

Historic B&W photo of six men loading the sacks, their uniforms streaked with escaped flour. — Operation Manna: Ground crew of No.514 Squadron at RAF Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire, loading cement bags filled with foodstuffs into the bomb bay of a Lancaster bomber, 29 April 1945, destined for those parts of Holland still under German occupation. © IWM CL 2490

It was a massive logistical effort which drew upon the resources of the Allied airfields of East Anglia at very short notice from mid-April 1945, with the situation becoming urgent against German resistance and the risk of further deliberate flooding both of agricultural fields and transport infrastructure a real possibility. There were no spare parachutes available, so safe conduct for low-level food drops was arranged, to begin in late April 1945.

Black & white photo of Dutch citizen waving at three aircraft flying low over a town. — Dutch citizens wave as food is dropped from Lancaster bombers over the Netherlands in April 1945. Fotocollectie Rijksvoorlichtingsdienst Eigen © Nationaal Archief, CC0 120-0739

The mission:

Flying Fortress B17G 44-8640 of the 334th Bomber Squadron, 95th Bomb Group, set out from USAAF Horham in Suffolk on 7 May 1945, the day after the surrender of German forces in the Netherlands and the day before Victory in Europe day. Along with its precious cargo of food there were 13 on board, including observers from the station’s Photographic Section, all anticipating a routine mission.

Nose and two engines of silver aircraft inside a hangar with white roof. — A B17G Flying Fortress under restoration at the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum, Georgia, USA. Jud McCranie, CC BY-SA 4.0

Following a successful drop 44-8640 turned for home. There were still pockets of resistance from the occupation forces, which is believed to have had a bearing on subsequent events. No. 2 engine was reported as ‘running rough’, with smoke and oil, thought to originate from rogue flak fired by the occupation forces at the aircraft in the IJmuiden area. (2)

According to a crashed aircraft recovery specialist based at RAF Ford, Sussex, in 1944, crew would nurse their crippled aircraft, whether shot up, suffering mechanical failure, or simply running out of fuel, back from overseas missions to the English coastline, but would then often be forced to crash-land at or near the nearest available base, unable to make it back to their home bases. (3)

As the situation worsened, the crew of 44-8640 realised that reaching the coast was going to be impossible and, fearing an explosion, they baled out over the sea off Suffolk, in the vicinity of Benacre Ness or Southwold, with one survivor recalling that the engine dropped away in a ‘ball of flame’ as he got away. The aircraft then fell into the sea.

Two men were picked up alive by a Catalina flying boat after some time in the water, and it is their testimony that enables us to know what happened to 44-8640, but the remainder of the crew were killed, including the observers.

Commemoration:

Those of the crew whose bodies were recovered were interred at the American Cemetery and Memorial, Coton, Cambridge, but others were never found and are presumed entombed with the aircraft on the seabed.

Five aircraft seen in a blue sky with angel h — Detail of a mosaic on the ceiling of the chapel at the American Cemetery and Memorial, Coton, depicting aircraft being escorted by angels. James O Davies DP180621 © Historic England Archive

This, the final loss of any craft in English waters to war causes, was also one of the cruel tragedies of the war: to be shot at over the Netherlands and to keep the aircraft airborne so many miles only to lose the battle so close to the English coast, and all on a humanitarian mission. Somewhere off the coast lie its remains, which are yet to be discovered but which are automatically protected under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986.

Victory in Europe was, perhaps, a collective sigh of relief, but it was not the end of the war, which would only come in August 1945 with VJ Day. It was a victory achieved at a huge human cost which has left legible traces in the historic environment – the destruction of historic fabric from London to Coventry and beyond, the legible traces in standing buildings from the suburban semi to national museums, the construction of military installations that have since become ‘historic’ in themselves, the legacy of commemoration – and the remains of ships and aircraft on the seabed, lost to war causes over the years from 1939 to 1945.

References:

(1) For more detail on this subject, see Sutch, A. 2016 “Manna from Heaven”, RAF Museum blog, online

(2) Onderwater, H. 1985 Operation Manna/Chowhound: the Allied food droppings April?may 1945 Netherlands: Unieboek

(3) Oral history testimony, Ronald Cant (RAF Corporal, 1942-1946) as told to his daughter in reminiscing over D-Day, 2019.

Diary of the War – December 1944

December 20, 2024January 17, 2025 ~ Serena ~ Leave a comment

The archaeology of Allied convoy attacks by U-322

A historic black & white photograph of a man in duffel coat on deck looking out at the convoy with plumes of smoke in the distance, against a swelling sea. — Leaning against a Thornycroft Depth Charge Thrower Mark II, the quarterdeck lookout on board HMS *Viscount* is searching the sea for submarines, with other ships in the convoy in the distance. (A 13362) Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205186129

By Tanja Watson, Historic England

U-322, a German Type VIIC/41 U-boat, departed Horten Naval Base, south of Oslo, Norway, for her second combat patrol on 15 November 1944. Embarking on a less trafficked route around northern Scotland and western Ireland, she entered, nearly six weeks later, the heavily patrolled and mined waters of the western English Channel.

This is an account of the archaeological evidence left when she came across two Allied convoys within the space of six days.

The Type VIIC/41 submarine, one of ninety-one made, was built in 1943 by the Flender Werke yard at Lübeck, and was commissioned on 5 February 1944 under the command of twenty-four-year-old Oberleutnant zur See Gerhard Wysk. After completed training, she began her operational career with the 11^th Flotilla on 1 November, departing from Kiel to Horten Naval Base the following day with the standard 52 men onboard. [1]

The 11th U-boat Flotilla was stationed in Bergen (Norway) and mainly operated in the North Sea and against the Russian convoys in the Arctic Sea. The U-322, however, was ordered to Britain and departed nine days after arriving at Horten.

At this late stage in the war, new Allied convoy tactics and technology, using high-frequency direction finding and the Hedgehog anti-submarine system, made any patrol a high risk, but particularly in the confined waters of the heavily protected English Channel a strong possibility.

The first convoy she encountered, MKS 71G (Mediterranean to the UK Slow), was an Allied convoy going from North Africa via Gibraltar to Liverpool. It was made up of 24 merchant vessels (the majority British) and seven escorts which had departed from Gibraltar on 16 December, was due to arrive in Liverpool on 24 December. [2] At 11.50 hours on 23 December 1944, the British-built but Polish-owned steam merchant SS Dumfries carrying 8,258 tons of iron ore from Bona, Algeria to the Tyne, was torpedoed and sunk by U-322 south of St. Catherine’s Point, Isle of Wight. [3]

The crew onboard the vessel, which was owned by Gdynia America Shipping Lines Ltd, Gdansk [4] were rescued by HMS Balsam, a Flower-class corvette who picked up the master (Robert Blackey) and seven crew members, landing them at Portsmouth; and HMS Pearl, an anti-submarine trawler, who picked up the remaining 41 crew members, eight gunners and two passengers, taking them to Southampton. [5]

The sinking of Dumfries was for many years attributed to U-722, but its involvement was disproved after its wreck was discovered elsewhere. [6]

The Dumfries wreck was most recently recorded by the UK Hydrographic Office [UKHO] in 2007 and noted it was sitting upright on a bed of gravel at a depth of 37 metres, largely intact. The remains are 11-12m high, 120m long, and 18m wide with a starboard lean and showing signs of breaking up. [7]

The second convoy encounter occurred seven miles southeast of Portland Bill Lighthouse on the 29 December 1944. This convoy was TBC-21, the Thames Estuary to the Bristol Channel route, bound from Southend in Essex to Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire, Wales. [8]

No longer equipped with her full torpedo load (14), after the attack on Dumfries, U-322 launched at least two torpedoes at the convoy which struck two large US Liberty ships within minutes of each other.

The first to be hit was the SS Arthur Sewell, the fourth ship in the port column. Travelling from Southampton for Mumbles, Wales, she had joined the convoy part of the way for protection. The 7,176-ton American cargo vessel was severely damaged, but the ship held and a tug, HMS Pilot (W 03), towed her to Weymouth. Five men were injured, and one killed out of a crew of sixty-nine. An injured sailor died the next day.

Built in March 1944 by the New England Shipbuilding Corporation, Portland, Maine, she was under the command of the US Maritime Commission at the time.

After the war she was first towed to Portland, temporarily repaired, and then to Bremerhaven where she was loaded with chemical ammunition, towed to sea and scuttled in the North Sea on 26 Oct 1946. [9] Her remains have yet to be located.

Historic black & white aerial photograph of large ship at centre towed by three smaller vessels to the right — Salvaged Liberty Ship, wrecked off Deal in July 1945, towed by three tugs en route to the salvage and repair yards. (CH 15583) Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205454706

The second Liberty ship to be struck was the SS Black Hawk, the last vessel in the starboard column, travelling in ballast from Cherbourg via the Isle of Wight to Fowey on behalf of the US Army Transport Service. [10]

Four of the ship´s 41 crew were injured, one later died. There were no casualties among the 27-man armed guard. [11] The men were picked up by HMS Dahlia and landed at Brixham at 20.30 hours. [12] There is a photograph of the ship sinking.

The torpedo struck the ship on the port side, and the engines were immediately secured as the ship started to sink by the stern. A crack appeared at the #3 hatch and only the two forward compartments kept the ship afloat.

The vessel broke into two large sections, with the aft or stern end sinking into the sea off the Bill of Portland, while the bow or fore section stayed afloat. [13] This section was towed to Worbarrow Bay where it was beached on 30 December 1944. The site was marked by a can buoy until the Worbarrow Bay pipeline was laid and the large section had to be dispersed, using explosives, in 1968. Today the bow lies at a depth of 13-15m, surrounded by 50m of debris. It can be identified by the heavy anchor chain that runs almost 75m south to a 3-ton anchor. [14]

The large stern end (30 feet) which had sunk off Portland Bill, was discovered in 1963, lying in two sections, on its starboard side with a gun still bolted to its platform, at a depth of 31-45m. Dispersal operations were carried out in November that year. At some point a bronze propeller was salvaged, possibly in the 1970s, according to an image published in Diver Magazine, October 1999. The remains were not identified as potentially a Liberty ship until 1975, with the Black Hawk attribution only confirmed in 1987.

Modern colour photograph: elevated aerial view of a long stretch of green landscape with the lines of the hillfort on the left, and a sandy coastline with a bay on the right-hand side — **View of Flower’s Barrow coastal hillfort looking east towards Worbarrow Bay and Worbarrow Tout.**
**DP 438558 © Historic England Archive**

The final wreck that day is that of U-322. Having fatally damaged the two cargo vessels, she was not long after sunk by one of the convoy escorts, HMCS Calgary, a Canadian Flower-class corvette, using depth charges. She went down on 29 December 1944 in the English Channel south of Weymouth. Fifty-two men died; there were no survivors.

The wreck was identified as U-322 by Axel Niestlé after it had been initially thought that it was U-772. [15] She is recorded by UKHO as intact with extended mast, 59m long x 18m wide at a depth of approximately 42m. [16]

The wreck of the U-322 is part of a distribution of archaeological remains telling the story of one series of attacks by a submarine in WW2.

It illustrates the complications of recording and interpreting the submerged remains with a story of partial sinking, conflicting records, misidentification, salvage, clearance for navigational safety and erasure by development.

Footnotes

[1] uboat.net https://uboat.net/boats/u322.htm

[2] MKS Convoy Series, Arnold Hague Convoy Database, http://convoyweb.org.uk/mks/index.html

[3] Uboat.net, SS Dumfries, https://uboat.net/allies/merchants/ship/3396.html

[4] Historic England, NMHR Ref No. 1246514 – record accessed via the Heritage Gateway

[5] Wrecksite, SS Dumfries, https://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?4651

[6] See note [3]

[7] UKHO Wreck Record 18917 (Dumfries)

[8] Convoy route TBC, https://uboat.net/ops/convoys/routes.php?route=TBC; TBC-21 http://www.convoyweb.org.uk/hague/index.html

[9] Arthur Sewall, https://uboat.net/allies/merchants/ship/3405.html

[10] https://uboat.net/allies/merchants/ship/3405.html and https://uboat.net/allies/merchants/ship/3406.html; https://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?78432

[11] Skindeepdiving, Black Hawk

[12] https://uboat.net/allies/merchants/ship/3406.html

[13] UKHO Wreck Report No. 18557 [stern]; UKHO Wreck Report No. 18677 [bow]

[14] See note [11]

[15] https://uboat.net/boats/u322.htm

[16] UKHO Wreck Report 18541

Diary of the War – November 1944

December 20, 2024 ~ Serena ~ Leave a comment

HMS Grethe Mortensen

A light blue vessel is seen in broadside view berthed alongside a quay, with her small wooden cabin on deck. A white oil tanker lies behind, and behind the tanker coastal dunes are visible against a blue sky. — **The 1931-built Esbjerg cutter E1 *Claus Sørensen*, now in preservation, gives an idea of what Grethe Mortensen might have looked like as a two-masted motor fishing vessel.**
**Photographed in 2019 by Thomas Dahlstrøm Nielsen Wikimedia Commons CC-BY-4.0**

‘A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.’ So spoke Winston Churchill during a radio broadcast in October 1939, focusing on what the main actors would do next following the invasion of Poland. One of the key, and much-repeated, phrases that have come down to us from the Second World War, it could have been applied to many of the war’s subsequent events.

Prize of war

One of those events was the loss of HMS Grethe Mortensen, whose name suggests origins outside the Royal Navy. The first we hear of her in English records is as as the MFV Grethe Mortensen in prize case TS 13/1429 [1] taken by the King’s Proctor, a legal official acting for the Crown in the High Court of Admiralty (now HM Procurator-General and Treasury Solicitor). However, as the record has not yet been digitised, more details are only accessible by visiting the National Archives in person.

So little is known about her that one standard secondary wreck work states: ‘built as a large private steam yacht, this vessel was completed as a special service vessel in 1943. Was abandoned in a sinking condition after detonating a German-laid mine’, extrapolated from the bare-bones details available and accessible at the time of compilation, primarily from secondary sources. [1]

Nevertheless what we do learn from a brief glance at the Prize Court catalogue entry is that the three letters MFV demonstrate that she was a motor fishing vessel, so she was neither a private yacht nor steam-powered.

Prize cases are redolent of an earlier era, of privateering and sea battles during the Age of Sail in fact, but they occurred in both World Wars. When a ship is captured she becomes a prize of war: the capturing nation will interrogate the case according to prize rules, distribute any bounty to the capturing crew for the capture, and reassign the vessel in either their merchant navy or naval forces.

The key is that to all intents and purposes the Grethe Mortensen was an enemy vessel, and her name is distinctive enough for us to be sure we have the right vessel when we trace her in records. Names such as Two Sisters or Friends (in any language) are as difficult as Smith or Jones in genealogy!

A Danish ship

We can track her down in a Danish shipping register for 1944, wherein we can confirm that she was a 2-masted fishing vessel built of oak, beech and fir at Nordby in 1943, fitted with an engine developing 77HP, with a draught of 7.5ft, 40 tons gross, 14 tons net, and owned by H Mortensen of Esbjerg, Denmark. These details are confirmed by an official record of Danish losses in 1946, which include a retrospective record for Danish vessels lost during the war: according to that source, the loss was apparently not reported at Esbjerg until 16 January 1946. There was a war on, after all, and she was in a foreign service.

What we can now see is that she was small, and new, and we can also now confirm that she was definitely a motor fishing vessel, her original Danish nationality, and her service under the British flag. The official shipping statistics state her tonnage as 38 tons – close enough.

Why would Britain have regarded her as an enemy vessel? – because Denmark was under occupation by Nazi German forces from 1940. Grethe Mortensen was built in Denmark during the occupation years and thus was not a pre-existing vessel which had, for example, made her way to an Allied or neutral port on the fall of Denmark. Without sight of the prize case, which would no doubt shed light on the matter, we can only surmise that she was captured while out fishing, perhaps during a raid or after straying into English waters.

Transformation to Special Service Vessel

We turn now to British sources to see if we can discover a little more. We find out from an officially published list that Special Service Vessel, the requisitioned Grethe Mortensen, of 35 tons, built in 1943, was abandoned on 7 November 1944 in a sinking condition off North Foreland, Kent. [3] We know it is the right vessel – the name, the year of build, and the slightly variant tonnage again, this time 35, and it reconfirms her service under the British flag.

We can now see that she is classified among Royal Naval vessels and is a somewhat obscure ‘Special Service Vessel’, so she was on some form of war duty when she was lost. She is very small, and constructed of wood, so her role in that guise remains unclear.

What we can understand is that ‘Special Service Vessels’ is a label for ships that did not fit easily into any regular category of naval forces, and that during the Second World War a variety of ships of all shapes and sizes played a variety of roles.

We don’t really know exactly what she was doing, but from her position of loss – not in harbour in the role of harbour defence, like many small vessels, but offshore, located between the gateway to the English Channel at the Downs and the approaches to the Thames Estuary – we can surmise that she was probably in some sort of patrol role.

Danish sources shed very little light on the matter: ‘G.M. sailed in the British navy, and was lost in October 1944.’ is the terse one-liner in official loss records. [4]

Danish fishermen in Britain in WWII

She is mentioned again in passing in a 1961 article on Danish fishermen in Britain during the war, including the efforts of Danes living in Britain to raise money to build Spitfires. [5] Like the Belgians in Brixham (February 1943) Danes plied their fishing trade under the British flag at Fleetwood and Blackpool, fishing the cod-rich grounds off Iceland, and were ‘welcomed with open arms’.

It is said that four fishermen came over – their vessel sadly not named – in ‘quite an unusual way’: they rescued the crew of an American bomber which had crashed ‘into the drink’ (the English phrase is used!). The fishermen, with limited petrol for their engine, were going to make for home in Vestjylland (West Jutland) with the rescued crew. Instead the Americans persuaded them to set sail for England, helped along by a fair wind, and on arrival they were permitted to make use of British Danish-language radio channels to let their families know they were alive and in good health.

According to the article, two cutters from that Danish-British fleet were lost ‘during the war’, one being Grethe Mortensen of Esbjerg, 38 tons. It goes on to relate that she was taken over by the Royal Navy, and there were no Danes aboard when she was lost in October 1944.

It would appear from this article that Grethe Mortensen was part of the fishing fleet that had escaped and made its home in Britain, but voluntary action like this seems inconsistent with a Prize Court action. Curiouser and curiouser.

A July 1945 edition of the same source [6] has another virtually throwaway comment. It tells us that there is ‘sad news from England’ with a number of Danes drowned on a British-flagged fishing vessel on 21 April 1945, including a man from Esbjerg. He and that wreck form the focus of the article: we learn that he came over as first mate on either the Erling or Grethe Mortensen, both of Esbjerg, ‘which were taken over by the English on 14 May 1943’, which sounds both forcible and as if Grethe Mortensen had not spent very long at sea before this happened, given that 1943 was her year of build.

Her ‘circumstances’

Thus both British and Danish official and informal sources alike suggest that Grethe Mortensen was compulsorily taken over by the British under some obscure circumstance: she was more than requisitioned, she was the subject of a Prize Court action. So was the Erling. So there was definitely something about their ‘circumstances’. [7]

I have written frequently about wartime censorship, but it struck me that this might have made a newsworthy story even if published some time after the event (weeks or months). It had all the right ingredients for a snippet that contained a modicum of good news after four years of war.

We read on 11 September 1943 that: ‘Six Danish fishing vessels arrived last week in a British port, having been intercepted in the North Sea by British naval units . . . The boats set out from Esbjerg when Denmark was in a state of extreme tension . . . Each ship had a good catch of prime North Sea plaice, which was landed and sold.’

The article ends: ‘Approximately one third of the boats [two, then!] will be available again for fishing, and the older men, including the skippers, will man them. The younger men will go into the forces here . . . ‘ [8]

This does sound like a ‘capture’ and it hints that the fate of the other four boats was intended to be in some other capacity to be assigned but not publicised. Further, like the Erling and the Grethe Mortensen, they came from Esbjerg. We lack any confirmatory detail, as we would expect under the conditions of wartime journalism, but this seems that this might refer to the incident that led to the portals of the Prize Court.

What was her fate?

What happened to Grethe Mortensen on the day she was lost in November 1944, however, is less clear. As we have been able to demolish any assertion in a key secondary source that she was originally a steam-powered private yacht that was completed at the builder’s as a ‘special service vessel’, and as none of the other sources mention loss to war causes, any suggestion originating from the same secondary source that she was lost to a mine may also be unlikely.

Looking at the weather for 7 November 1944 in Met Office records [9], there does not seem to be anything particularly unusual about the meteorological conditions that day either: predominantly westerly, wind forces approximately 3-6. As we have shown before, however, vessels can be lost in similar conditions if they are unlucky enough, and the one clue we may have is that observations at 6-hourly intervals show the wind alternately veering and backing a couple of points either way. Perhaps that was enough for a small vessel to spring a leak or take on water and be overwhelmed by the sea.

It’s also interesting that Danish sources consistently report the vessel as lost in October, rather than November, but that information appears to be second-hand. On the other hand, dates in British Vessels Lost at Sea tend to be reliable, so I suspect that 7 November at least is accurate. It is difficult to know whether the date of capture in early September 1943 is reliable (‘last week’ could hide a multitude of sins if you wanted to be vague and escape the censor’s pencil) but I suspect it is, because reference is made to the Danish general strike or ‘August Uprising’ of August 1943. It would also seem more plausible for the date of capture than 14 May 1943 for a vessel recorded as newly built that same year.

At the moment we appear to be no further forward with the wreck event beyond this sparse detail, but at least we have been able to put some flesh on the bare bones of the vessel herself, and understand better what she actually was – even if the mechanism by which she became a Special Service Vessel, what she was doing at the time of loss, and the circumstances of the loss itself, all combine to form ‘a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’ that is only partially unravelled.

Footnotes

[1] Larn R & Larn B, 1995 Shipwreck Index of the British Isles: Vol 2, Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Sussex, Kent (Mainland), Kent (Downs), Kent (Goodwin Sands), Thames (London: Lloyds of London)

[2] Prize Case for the MFV Grethe Mortensen, TS 13/1429, 1943-1946, The National Archives, Kew

[3] HMSO, 1947 British Vessels Lost at Sea 1939-1945 [London: HMSO]

[4] Ministeriet for Handel, Industri og Søfart, 1948 Dansk Søulykke-Statistik 1946 (Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Søkort-Arkiv) (in Danish)

[5] Tidsskrift for Redningsvæsen: Medlemsblad for Foreningen af danske Redningsmænd (Journal of the Rescue Services: Members’ magazine for the Association of Danish Lifeboatmen), Vol. 28, No.1, January 1961 (in Danish)

[6] Tidsskrift for Redningsvæsen: Medlemsblad for Foreningen af danske Redningsmænd (Journal of the Rescue Services: Members’ magazine for the Association of Danish Lifeboatmen), Vol. 12, No.7, July 1945 (in Danish)

[7] Prize Case for the MFV Erling, TS 13/1293, 1943-1946, The National Archives, Kew

[8] Hull Daily Mail, Saturday 11 September, 1943, No.18,048, p1 (British Newspaper Archive online)

[9] Meteorological Office, 1944, Daily Weather Report 7 November 1944 DWR 1944.11 Met Office Digital Library and Archive

Diary of the War – October 1944

December 20, 2024 ~ Serena ~ Leave a comment

Another Landing Craft Tragedy off the West Coast

October 1944 was a relatively quiet month in terms of shipping losses with 10 vessels reported lost during that month, none to war causes (e.g. torpedo, mine). In fact it was the weather that seems to have been the major factor for most of them, although the loss of LCP(L) 52, a Landing Craft Personnel (Large), was attributed to foundering following a fire in the Solent on 11 October.

Barge Norman sank off the Kent coast on 7 October, and another barge, Congo, is reported as having similarly sunk off the Essex coast on 13 October. LCT(A) 2454 (Landing Craft Tank, Armoured) was forced ashore in wind conditions SW 4, freshening to force 5, on Chesil Beach, Dorset, on the latter date. [1]

Things were not looking good for vessels of shallow draught in high seas in autumn gales.

In a previous edition for November 1943 we looked at the collective loss of several landing craft from a single convoy off the Isles of Scilly. Almost a year later, a similar tragedy occurred with convoy KMS 66 (UK–Mediterranean Slow), which set out from the Clyde on 14 October 1944, with some LCTs under tow by the merchants in the convoy, a mixture of British, Belgian and Norwegian vessels. Further vessels joined convoy from Belfast the next day, and Liverpool and Milford Haven the day after, as the convoy steamed south out of the Irish Sea.

On 18 October 1944 KMS 66 ran into trouble off Land’s End in wind conditions reported at 6am that morning as WSW force 7 at the Lizard, W x S force 6 off the Isles of Scilly. [2] At 10.50 Nairnbank, which was towing LCT 494 and LCT 7014, reported that contact had been lost with the former. [3]

By 12 the conditions had worsened to WSW force 8 at the Lizard, SW x W force 7 at the Isles of Scilly.

All hell subsequently broke loose over the next 24 hours. Calls for assistance were made from the foundering LCTs, towing merchants reported on the status of their ‘children’ and issued commands, orders were issued to escorts and merchants to search for the LCTs and assist in rescue, widening beyond the immediate convoy to other convoys in the area, and contact repeatedly made with the Admiralty and Commander-in-Chief Western Approaches. It was a frantic period. [4]

At 6pm conditions were force 8 from both the Lizard and the Isles of Scilly but it is also stated elsewhere that conditions were force 9. [5] Conditions remained similar at midnight and 6am the next day (19 October) abating somewhat towards the Isles of Scilly. The weather abated further over the course of the evening but by midnight of 19/20 October LCTs 480, 488, 491, and 7014 had either foundered or been sunk following rescue efforts, and LCTs 494 and 7015 remained unaccounted for. There were men lost from all of these vessels, from other LCTs which, however, survived the incident, and from rescuing vessels.

History has a nasty habit of repeating itself and never more so than on this occasion, which was almost a carbon copy of the events of November 1943.

It seems that one of the LCTs lost in this incident may have been discovered, as reported by Royal Navy News in 2023, while LCT 7074 survives in preservation and is open to the public.

Broadside view of LCT 7074 in preservatiion at the museum, painted in camouflage battleship grey colours, set under an exterior canopy with steps leading up to her open bow doors. — **LCT** **7074**, the last surviving LCT from D-Day, at the D-Day Story, Portsmouth.
**Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA 4.0**

Footnotes

[1] Data recorded at Portland Bill for 00.00, 06.00, 12.00 and 18.00 on 13 October 1944, Meteorological Office Daily Weather Report, October 1944, Met Office Digital Library and Archive

[2] Data recorded at the Lizard and the Isles of Scilly for 18, 19 and 20 October 1944, Meteorological Office Daily Weather Report, October 1944, Met Office Digital Library and Archive

[3] Chapman T, and Shipston, B, nd “9th LCT Flotilla – A Tragedy at Sea: the lost flotilla” Combined Operations online

[4] ibid.

[5] Data recorded at the Lizard and the Isles of Scilly for 18, 19 and 20 October 1944, Meteorological Office Daily Weather Report, October 1944, Met Office Digital Library and Archive

Diary of the War – August 1944

December 20, 2024 ~ Serena ~ Leave a comment

Modern colour photograph using time-lapse photography of a concrete hard standing with side features as a mock-up of the open ramp of a landing craft. It is set in grassy dunes with grass growing in the crevices between the concrete slabs.

The concrete 'landing craft' is shown at twilight with the time-lapse photography showing the movement of stars in the sky, to illustrate the time that has elapsed since it was built and had a function. — Replica landing craft in concrete in the dunes at Braunton Burrows, North Devon, seen at twilight, 2019. These features were used as training facilities for embarkation and disembarkation practice in preparation for the Normandy landings, and are listed as a group of eight at Grade II.
DP248202 © Historic England Archive

The Ongoing Support of the Normandy Invasion

D-Day was one day in history. It finally marked the day that the war turned, in Churchill’s famous phrase, from the ‘end of the beginning’ to the ‘beginning of the end.’ [1] As an equally famous saying has it, ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’, and it would take some months before the Allies were able to encircle the Germans at the Falaise Pocket [12 to 21 August 1944] south of Caen and the Normandy landing beaches, to clear the way to Paris, liberated shortly after [19 August to 25 August 1944]. It would take until the end of the war to fully drive the occupiers out of France.

The ongoing invasion effort required ongoing logistical support. Resistance came not only from land forces but also from seaborne forces, so for this entry we take a look at a number of ships wrecked while supporting operations in France, the common theme of the wrecks this month.

It is a tale of landing craft, Liberty ships, and ‘Government stores’.

The first of this group were lost on 8 August when convoy EBC 66 [Bristol Channel to France] was attacked while bound from Barry for Seine Bay. EBC 66 was a multinational convoy comprising British, American, Norwegian and Dutch ships, and escorted by three Flower-class corvettes from different forces: HMS Petunia; ex-HMS Lotus loaned to the Free French as Commandant d’Estienne d’Orves, named after a French naval officer executed by the Nazis in 1941, and HMCS Regina of the Royal Canadian Navy.

Simple modern colour digital photograph of the land silhouetted in black to foreground (rocks) and right (cliffs) of image, with the white lighthouse and its light appearing to right background. The blue sea comes in from the left background to right foreground, and dark clouds are visible in the dark blue sky. — View looking north across Stinking Cove towards Trevose Head lighthouse at midnight, 2023.
DP 437442 © Historic England Archive

Off Trevose Head, north Cornwall, U-667 struck among the convoy. First to be attacked was the American Liberty Ship Ezra Weston, laden with ‘Government’ and general cargo, specified as 20mm guns, acid and military vehicles, from Avonmouth for Falmouth and the invasion beaches, which was torpedoed below the waterline at around 7.30 in the evening. This attack was initially attributed to a mine. Her captain attempted to beach her but she was in a sinking condition and beginning to break up. She broke in two at 9.45pm and had to be abandoned, fortunately without loss of life. LCT 644 took off the majority of the crew, 4 officers later leaving the vessel in a lifeboat. [2]

HMCS Regina stayed nearby to ‘become a sitting duck for the next torpedo’, as survivors put it. [3] She was struck at 10.48pm, and though 30 men were lost in the engine and boiler room, the survivors owed their lives two factors: to the Ezra Weston, as most were on deck watching over the stricken merchant in their care, and to the crewman on watch who had had the foresight to order her depth charges to be made safe. The survivors were picked up by LCT 644 and the Admiralty Trawler Jacques Morgand (formerly a Dieppe trawler and seized at Falmouth in July 1940). [4]

The two ships lie virtually side by side off the coast of Cornwall, within a few hundred metres of each other, and Regina showing evidence of an implosion on the seabed after her rapid sinking in less than half a minute, with a debris trail of unexploded depth charges. The Ezra Weston is split in two.

Historic colour photo of ship in starboard bow view, painted white, green and blue in dazzle camouflage, with spray at the bows as she cuts through the water under a blue sky with multiple white clouds on a fair day at sea. The paint is battered in places illustrating her hard work at sea in wartime. — Photo: Corvette HMCS *Regina* pennant number K234
© Government of Canada. Reproduced with the permission of Library and Archives Canada (2024).
Source: Library and Archives Canada/Department of National Defence fonds/e010777224

On the same day Fort Yale, a vessel on Lend-Lease to the UK from the US, was mined and damaged onthe other side of the Channel at Arromanches while on convoy ETM 56 (Southend to Seine Bay, motor transport to France) having been on ‘Special Services’ shuttling between the Thames and the Seine since the early days of the Normandy invasion. She was released from service on 12 August with engine damage, but apparently still afloat. On 15 August any further service was deferred pending repairs, but she was able to proceed back to Southend from the Seine under tow of two tugs, one British and one American, on 19 August. [5]

On 23 August she was torpedoed in mid-Channel SE of the Isle of Wight, with the majority of the crew being picked up and landed at Portsmouth.

On 14 August a near carbon-copy of the attack on Ezra Weston and HMCS Regina in roughly the same area, off Hartland Point this time, dispatched the American LST 921 and British LCI(L) 99, respectively a Landing Ship Tank and a Landing Craft Infantry (Large). They too were on an EBC convoy, EBC 72, and that number shows the frequency of convoys bound for Normandy: daily increments since EBC 66 on 8 August. [6] Their attacker was also U-667, which would herself not last much longer: her last known radio contact was on 25 August, but she failed to arrive at the rendezvous point the following day, having been lost in a British minefield off La Rochelle. [7]

Historic black & white photo of LCI(L) seen in starboard view on the water against a backdrop of hills. Seagulls circle the ship while a barrage balloon flies overhead. — **LCI(L) 98 (OPS 41), seen while underway in home waters. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205200182**

We return now to another Southend to Seine Bay convoy, this time ETC 72, a coastal convoy. On 19 August they were in mid-Channel when U-413 torpedoed Saint Enogat SE of St. Catherine’s Point, Isle of Wight. Most of the personnel survived to be picked up and landed at Juno Beach. In a strange way, her place of loss reflects her service career. Built as part of War Standard tonnage in 1918 as War Clarion, she was sold post-war to one of the French railway companies: her new name Saint Enogat reflected the Breton area served by her new owner, the Chemins de fer de l’État, but she passed in 1920 to the Société Maritime Nationale. [8]

Historic colour poster in mid-century style showing a black and white ferry crossing Dieppe harbour dotted with fishing craft seen against a backdrop of cliffs with a church on top. There are strong colours of blue (sea and sky) and orange (cliffs, reflections on the sea) to evoke warm sunny days. The text below advertises the ferry service in French. — Poster by René Péan for the Chemins de fer de l’État linking Paris & London via Newhaven & Dieppe
© The Board of Trustees of The Science Museum, London / National Railway Museum York
**https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co229706/chemins-de-fer-de-letat-et-de-brighton CC-BY-SA-4.0**

After the fall of France in 1940, Saint Enogat was seized at Plymouth and was transferred to the Ministry of War Transport (MOWT). She would return to France on the ‘Store Transport Service’ following the Normandy invasion, regularly shuttling between Southend and the invasion beaches, until her loss. Her sinking was initially attributed to a mine, but a later note adds: ‘Considered vessel more probably torpedoed by s/m.’ [9]

Our final and most famous wreck of the vessels bound for Normandy during August 1944 is undoubtedly the Liberty Ship Richard Montgomery, wrecked the following day on 20 August and regularly making headlines since.

Unlike the others, however, she was not lost to war causes. She crossed the Atlantic as part of convoy HX 301 from New York for Liverpool, arriving in Oban on 8 August, thence joining convoy ‘northabout’ round Scotland, after which she fed into a southbound convoy bound for the Thames. She then anchored in the Thames Estuary on Sheerness Middle Sand to await yet another convoy for her final destination of Cherbourg to support the invasion with her cargo of munitions.

There she broke her back and started to settle into the sand, with only half her cargo salvageable. She is designated under Section 2 of the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973 as a dangerous wreck, administered by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency through the Receiver of Wreck. [11] She lies within a well-demarcated exclusion zone and it has often been said that no other ship can now run onto Sheerness Middle Sand because of her, a most unusual case of one maritime hazard replacing the previous hazard at that location. [12]

Her story, from her background to her modern-day management, can be read in full in a dedicated article on GOV.UK

Wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery, off Sheerness, showing her upperworks and looking towards the resort of Southend-on-Sea across the Thames. — The superstructure of *Richard Montgomery* on Sheerness Middle Sand, Thames Estuary, seen here attracting numerous cormorants in 2014.
© Christine Matthews CC-BY-SA 2.0 **https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4194776**

Famous in her own right, the Richard Montgomery is nevertheless part of a wider story, a bigger picture, and a maritime landscape of war that fed into the continuing battle to liberate France after D-Day.

Footnotes

[1] Winston Churchill, Prime Minister’s Address to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, Mansion House, 10 November 1942

[2] Ezra Weston, Historic England, National Marine Heritage Record (NMHR) record 766919

[3] Quoted from Deep Wreck Mysteries: Fatal Decision, broadcast ITV West, 25 January 2007, 7.30pm

[4] HMCS Regina, Historic England, NMHR record 1102944; Jacques Morgand, photograph and details online

[5] Fort Yale, Historic England, NMHR record 766513; Shipping Movement Record card, BT 389/13/246, The National Archives, Kew; Report of Total Loss, Casualty &c. No.75,092 Fort Yale, Lloyd’s Register Foundation Archive & Library, LRF-PUN-W244-0106-W,

[6] LST 921 Historic England, NMHR record 1534459; LCI(L) 99, NMHR record 1534460; convoyweb

[7] U-667, uboat.net

[8] Saint Enogat Historic England, NMHR record 1246470; uboat.net

[9] Shipping Movement record card, St Enogat [sic] BT 389/28/120, The National Archives, Kew

[10] Richard Montgomery Historic England, NMHR record, 904735; convoyweb

[11] Statutory Instrument 1973 No.1690 Protection of Wrecks (Designation No.2) Order 1973

[12] Cant, S 2013 England’s Shipwreck Heritage: from logboats to U-boats (Swindon: English Heritage)

Diary of the War – July 1944

December 20, 2024 ~ Serena ~ Leave a comment

Contemporary oil painting depicting Tower Bridge at night with white streaks representing searchlights all heading towards the rocket flying over Tower Bridge. In the background red flames can be seen in various locations representing buildings on file. — *A Flying-bomb over Tower Bridge* (Art.IWM ART LD 4719) Frederick T W Cook
**Searchlights track a V1 or V2 over Tower Bridge.**
**© IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/5500**

Naja

Following the launch of the D-Day invasion on 6 June 1944, the citizens of Britain knew that reprisals would come. On 13 June the first of the V1 rockets, known as the ‘Doodlebugs’, struck London, and it was London and the Home Counties which would bear the brunt of the damage.

Despite this life carried on. My mother never forgot her own encounter with a doodlebug in Chelmsford, Essex, scrambling for shelter with her little brother. According to a bomb map in Essex Archives, it was probably the V1 attacks on either 18 June or 9 July 1944. [1]

Only a few days after the 9 July incident in Chelmsford, on 12 July another V1 struck near Tower Bridge. The 2-ton steam tug Naja, built in 1924 and owned by Gaselee & Son, was destroyed and sunk in the Upper Pool, east of Tower Bridge, with the loss of six men during a crew changeover.

She is the only wreck in our records known to have been destroyed by a V1.

We do know, however, that the wreck was raised immediately by PLA Wreck Lighter No.2 as shown in an image taken by City of London Police, now in the London Museum. She is badly damaged aft but the idea that has gained traction in commentary on the Naja that she suffered a direct hit cannot be correct otherwise there would have been, at best, only debris left.

It is quite understandable that she was raised instantly in a busy waterway where wreck remains would pose both a navigational hazard and a risk of accretion and siltation if not dealt with immediately.

It is a reminder that destruction and death do not always equate to archaeological remains, although the vessel was definitively written off and her register closed. [2]

Historic black and white photo of very small tug in the river against a line of much larger ships berthed on the left with the tall masts of the loading infrastructure of cranes and derricks beyond. — The tug *Plaboy* heading for a line of ships moored in the London Docks, July 1965. One of the Port of London Authority (PLA) tugs which at this period had punning names beginning PLA-. The 1957-built *Plaboy* was sold out of service in 1970.
AA064981 John Gay Collection © Historic England Archive

Footnotes

[1] D/2 65/1 Essex Record Office

[2] Appropriation Books, official No. 148526, Crew List Index Project; catalogue entry for the Registers of Shipping and Seamen, Naja, BT 110/1261/13, The National Archives, Kew

Diary of the War – May 1944

December 20, 2024 ~ Serena ~ Leave a comment

MMS 227 – Hr. Ms. Marken

The focus this month is on motor minesweeper MMS 227 and to recognise the contribution of the Free Dutch forces.. After the fall of the Netherlands, Dutch vessels contributed to the Dunkirk evacuation and to the British trooping and convoy effort, including the liner Johan de Witt, which became a troopship and convoyed many British troops around the world, including my own late father in 1944. [1] Dutch ships also served in other theatres of war such as the Italian campaign of 1943 and at D-Day. [2]

A number of small motor minesweepers were built during the war by small contractors in sheltered coastal waters around the country. As always, production was dispersed for security and to take advantage of the specialist skills of the smaller boat-builders.

These builders, like Curtis of Par, Cornwall, who built MMS 227/Marken, specialised in the manufacture of wooden ships. Wood was ideal for motor minesweepers for several reasons: to take pressure off raw materials for steel ship production and because, unlike steel, it would not set off magnetic mines.

It remained a dangerous job: over the course of both World Wars this blog has highlighted how frequently minesweepers fell victim to the very danger they were working to save others from, and small wooden craft were extremely fragile in such an explosion.

Nevertheless over 400 of these vessels were built in two classes, one slightly larger than the other, either 105ft or 127ft long. [3] In an official Admiralty photograph campaign showcasing the work of the motor minesweepers and their crews from all walks of civilian life, they were labelled as ‘The Little Ship with a Big Job.’ [4]

Several of the smaller class of minesweepers were then cascaded to Free Dutch forces operating in the 139th Minesweeping Flotilla out of Great Yarmouth and Harwich. They were all renamed after locations in the Netherlands, rather than merely numbered, as they had been in the Royal Navy.

Thus it was that MMS 227 became Hr. Ms. Marken, after the island on the IJsselmeer. (Hr. Ms. or Harer Majesteits is the prefix of ships of the Koninklijke Marine or Royal Netherlands Navy, which is conventionally translated into English as HNLMS or His/Her Netherlands Majesty’s ship.) Several would survive the war and be incorporated into the peacetime Dutch Navy to continue the postwar work of mine clearance in the North Sea.

On 18 April 1944 Queen Wilhelmina visited Dutch minesweepers at Harwich, an event that would not be reported in the press until 9 May, and even then in only the briefest of terms: ‘Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands recently visited men of the Dutch fighting forces and Dutch minesweepers whose crews were originally trawler fishermen.’ [4]

Historic black & white photograph of a dockside scene. Queen Wilhelmina, in a coat and hat and accompanied by 3 men in navy uniform, clutches a large bouquet of flowers in her arm. She walks along the quay with shipping beside her on the right, and dockside infrastructure, such as cranes, to the left and in the background. — Queen Wilhelmina inspects Dutch minesweepers at Harwich in the company of Dutch and British officers. To the right the name *Putten* can be seen, another of the motor minesweepers lent to Dutch forces. (A 22874) Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: **http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205155024**

On 20 May 1944 Marken was clearing the War Channels when she struck an acoustic mine near the Sunk Lightvessel in the Thames Estuary, and was blown in half with the loss of 16 out of her 17 crew, including her captain Gerardus Albertus Smits of the VRH (Vrijwillige Reserve Hulpschepen, approximately equivalent to the Royal Naval Voluntary Reserve). [6]

The wreck was clearly visible as broken in two until around 1981, but by 1990 had shown signs of further deterioration and beginning to be covered by sand and buried by the following year. [7] MMS 113, of similar type, lies on the western foreshore of Portsmouth Harbour, another relic of the era of the ‘little ship with the big job’.

Footnotes

[1] Oral history reminiscence, Corporal R F Cant RAF, recorded in unpublished family notes

[2] Karremann, J, 2019 “D-Day en de Koninklijke Marine”, marineschepen.nl [in Dutch]

[3] Nautical Archaeology Society, nd “Minesweeper MMS 113” nauticalarchaeologysociety.org

[4] See, for example, IWM (A 15539) et seq. in the collections of the Imperial War Museum

[5] Press release widely published in e.g. Evening Dispatch, 9 May 1944, p4, Gloucestershire Echo, 9 May 1944, p3, etc.

[6] Visser J nd “105 feet class – minesweepers” Royal Netherlands Navy Warships of World War II; Hr. Ms. Marken Wikipedia

[7] United Kingdom Hydrographic Office record No.14566; Historic England National Marine Heritage Record no. 908141