Second World War wrecks

Diary of the Second World War: May 1943

~ Serena ~ 1 Comment

The mystery of the ferro-concrete ships in the River Wear

Even for relatively recent wrecks such as those of the Second World War, little is sometimes known. Vessels lost offshore, running without convoy and mined in the dark, sinking without witness, are understandable mysteries. Yet there remain ships lost inshore about which very little is really known, and what remains are fragments of a story.

How much more interesting is that story when it involves some of the most unusual vessels among England’s recorded losses? Here is the intertwined story of the Cretestem, recorded as lost in May 1943, and the Cretehawser, 1942.

Towards the end of the First World War steel was both in short supply and in great demand for shipbuilding to replace tonnage lost to war causes. Among the remedies put into execution towards the end of the war, and into the immediate post-war period, was the construction of ferro-concrete ships as barges and tugs. Ferro-concrete ships had been produced in other countries for some years and the adoption of the technology met a significant need. All such British ships of this era had the prefix Crete- as a nod to their common build material, while the naming pattern demonstrated that they were built under official programmes (much as the prefix War had done for ships built under the War Standard programme). [1]

(The Hughes & Stirling collection shows concrete vessels under construction 1918-19 and can be explored online in the Historic England Archive.)

Historic black & white photograph of men at work in early 20th century working gear, on the bottom and side sections of a concrete ship shored up by scaffolding.
General view of men at work on prefabricated concrete sections for a vessel, once believed to be the Cretemanor, at the Concrete Seacraft Company, Penketh, Fiddlers Ferry, Warrington, 10 September 1918. Historic England Archive, BB96/00023

The idea of a concrete vessel seems counter-intuitive – how can such a thing float? – but float they did, and in fact more ferro-concrete barges would be constructed in the Second World War and see service into the post-war period.  

The histories of Cretehawser and Cretestem are relatively briefly recorded, but seem to go adrift around the late 1930s and their circumstances during the war are also somewhat obscure. We know that Cretestem, 306 tons, was built by the Amble Ferro-Concrete Co. Ltd., launched on 31 October 1919, with machinery by McColl & Pollock of Sunderland, and registered in London on 13 December 1919. [2]

In 1920 Cretestem was still under the aegis of the Shipping Controller, changing hands to the Board of Trade in 1921, thence to the Crete Shipping Co. Ltd., London (Stelp and Leighton Ltd.) in 1922, in whose ownership she is still recorded in 1930. [3]

Cretehawser‘s story was similar, except that she was built by the Wear Concrete Building Co. Ltd. at Southwick, Sunderland, in 1919, with machinery by Central Marine Engine Works, West Hartlepool. [4]

In 1935 Creteboom, Cretehawser and Cretestem were to be broken up by the South Stockton Shipbreaking Co. The marine column in the Shields News noted somewhat disdainfully that ‘Dozens of these concrete tugs and barges were built at the end of the war and shortly afterwards. Although they suited the purpose at that time, they were never successful and the majority have since been disposed of for breaking up.’ A month later they were at R Duck’s on the Tees. [5]

Elsewhere they were much admired. A correspondent to the Edinburgh Evening News stated in 1940 that the Creteboom and Cretestem ‘both did service in the Baltic, where they encountered the arduous tests of frozen waters. The Cretestem also survived a head-on collision.’ The author continued that ‘they spent the last few years prior to 1934 in idleness in the Tyne, were examined in that year and found to be as strong and watertight as ever.’ [6]

Attitudes were just as divided as ever when an announcement was made that concrete ships would once more go into production in 1941, for their ‘saving in steel’ with a photograph of the Cretestem used to illustrate the concrete ships ‘of the last war’. [7]

Cretehawser‘s register was closed in 1936, and Cretestem‘s in 1937. [8] Thereafter the waters are somewhat muddied in the records and it is difficult to disentangle fact from fiction, or at least from stories that have gained traction. In 1937 a Tyneside newspaper correspondent wondered ‘if there are any of the war-time stone coffins still afloat? By stone coffins I refer to the concrete barges and tugs which were built in large numbers during the war period.’ The writer continued: ‘Many readers will recall the tugs Cretehawser, Cretestem, etc., which towed concrete barges from the Tyne to London . . . ‘ [9]

As stated above they weren’t actually very far away after being sold to the South Stockton Shipbreaking Co., but it does illustrate that they were a bit of a mystery locally. It is said variously that Cretehawser was gutted for possible use as an emergency breakwater in 1935, dismantled in 1936, and beached 1936 at South Hylton, and likewise Cretestem was dismantled in 1937. Elsewhere both vessels are recorded as having been bought by the River Wear Commissioners for breakwater use. They were then moored in the South Dock until required. [10]

Thereafter the story of the two ships diverges again. In other sources Cretehawser does not end up at South Hylton, where she now lies, until 1942 when she was damaged in a bombing raid, being towed up the River Wear and beached. [11]

Modern colour photograph of the River Wear in the foreground, with the dark shape of a concrete wreck against the backdrop of the green riverbank on the far side.
Hulk on the Wear – the Cretehawser as she now lies © Richard Webb Creative Commons CC-BY-SA and published on geograph.org.uk

The end for Cretestem is said to have come during a bombing raid on 24 May 1943, when, according to Lloyd’s War Losses, she was sunk by aircraft in Hendon Dock. Damage in Sunderland was extensive and there was significant loss of life. We know that there were a number of high explosive bombs dropped in and around Hendon Dock. Two 250kg high explosive bombs exploded in the Dock outside Monsanto works, and another in the works; a smaller 50kg bomb exploded west of Hudson Dock Bridge [sic] and another one ‘outside No.31 Coal Staith, Hendon Dock.’ [12] The latter may be the coal staith shown alongside the Hendon Dock Swing Bridge that divided the Hendon Dock from the Hudson Dock to the north in historic Ordnance Survey mapping (1919-39) – the staith and bridge can be seen in this aerial photograph of 1928 on Britain from Above. (Check out the pins on the photograph.) ‘Hudson Dock Bridge’ in the bomb report could refer to the Gladstone Swing Bridge to the north of Hudson Dock but this seems unlikely as it is clearly marked as the latter on the OS map, so it must refer either to the Hendon Dock Swing Bridge between the two docks, or the bridge from Hudson Dock to the lock to the east and a direct outlet to the sea.

Whatever the ambiguities, it is clear that Hendon Dock received some damage.

What happened to Cretestem after that? Once again the story varies – her remains were lifted and dumped on the docks, or the wreck was towed out to sea.

We know from contemporary reports that ‘one vessel was sunk in the River and two in South Docks [i.e. Hudson and Hendon Docks] received damage.’ [13] Cretestem is the only war loss and only ship sunk of which we are aware for 24 May 1943 and the days immediately before and after, so we cannot find any record of a ship sunk in the River Wear. So the Cretestem must be one of the two ships damaged in the docks: the date is correct and brings together the known damage in the docks with the Lloyd’s casualty report. Could it be that, as often happens with wreck reports, two details have been conflated and the ship that sank in the River Wear is also one of the two vessels which sank in the Docks, i.e. one of the two damaged vessels was in fact damaged so badly that she sank?

But why would the two ships be treated so differently after such a similar fate? Cretehawser towed up the Wear to be dumped, Cretestem dumped in or around the docks or out to sea? As we have seen, Cretehawser survived an air raid and remains indestructibly in the Wear 80 years on. Clearly a vessel sunk in a dock is an undesirable obstruction, so if this did indeed happen to Cretestem, she was almost certainly lifted.

Where she then went is a moot point. She would have had to be fairly intact to be towed out – a vessel in bits would not have been capable of being towed. In a war context, being towed out to sea seems perhaps less plausible, with the vessel towing her making what could be regarded as an unnecessary journey negotiating the convoys plying the swept War Channels, and the war perils lurking outside the Channels – not to mention the risk of causing an obstruction should the towed vessel suddenly sink, as hulks and submarines without their own motive power and damaged or beyond repair have a habit of doing.

Once again aerial photography comes to our aid. We cannot see Cretehawser and Cretestem in dock in RAF aerial photographs of 13 March 1941. However, they are identifiable side by side in RAF aerial photos of 22 October 1941 at the south-eastern end of the Hudson Dock, adjacent to the Hendon Dock Swing Bridge. They can be shown on photographic rectification to be the correct length and to share the distinctive characteristics of the Crete- ships. (Creteboom, also sold to the South Stockton Shipbreaking Co., was sold on out of the country in 1937, so is out of contention.) They are seen again in May 1942, almost exactly a year prior to the events of May 1943 (below).

Aerial view of Hendon Dock to the left, separated from the Hudson Dock on the right with its rail lines leading to the coal staiths by the Hendon Dock Swing Bridge. Cretehawser and Cretestem are the two vessels side by side on the right-hand side of the bridge. Historic England Archive (RAF photography) Historic England Photograph raf_1cu_ah_o_ah413 flown 27 May 1942. This image can be explored in greater detail on its dedicated page on the Historic England Aerial Photo Explorer.

They are both still together in the same position on 1 September 1942. There were both human and building casualties of an air raid in Hendon, Sunderland, on the night of 16-17 October 1942, but the bombs seem to have fallen slightly further west than the later raid, and the casualties were nowhere near as heavy. so it seems unlikely that Cretehawser was damaged in an air raid of 1942, as often stated, and towed away up the Wear then.

It seems likely, then, that it was the Hendon Dock Swing Bridge that was damaged on the night of 24 May 1943, and that Cretehawser and Cretestem were the two vessels that sank in the docks that night. Not quite ‘Hendon Dock’ as was stated in Lloyd’s, but not very far off at all.

So it was probably 1943, not 1942, when Cretehawser was towed away up the Wear. We can surmise that she was the less damaged of the two vessels, and Cretestem took the most impact from the blast, so Cretestem was probably the one immediately next to the bridge, with Cretehawser on the outside. Cretehawser was towed away, perhaps, to allow Cretestem to be dealt with.

We can see in the 1919-1939 mapping that there were travelling cranes around the seaward side of Hudson Dock. Was Cretestem then craned off and then perhaps dumped as infill for war blast damage? That sounds plausible – there is a long heritage of obsolete and damaged ships being used as the foundations of and infill for breakwaters, jetties and harbour walls. Perhaps this happened here.

We may never know – but at least aerial photography has shed new light on the story of Cretehawser and Cretestem.

This article would not have been possible without the invaluable help of my specialist colleague in the Historic England Archive, and Richard Lewis of The Crete Fleet blog. As ever, I am profoundly grateful for their kind assistance.

Footnotes

[1] Further discussion on the Crete– ships, their build and loss, in Cant, S 2013 England’s Shipwreck Heritage: from logboats to U-boats (Swindon: English Heritage); see also The Crete Fleet website

[2] North-East Heritage Library nd “Amble Shipyard” The Ship-Building Archive published online; Morpeth Herald and Reporter, 7 November 1919, p5 Appropriation Books 143951-144000

[3] Mercantile Navy List 1920, p135; Historic England Research Records, Cretestem; Mercantile Navy List, 1930, p136; Shields Gazette, 21 September 1937, p6

[4] Appropriation Books 143101-143150; Mercantile Navy List 1920, p135; Historic England Research Records, Cretehawser; Mercantile Navy List, 1930, p136

[5] Shields News, 9 May 1935, p4; Northern Daily Mail, 5 June 1935, p6

[6] Edinburgh Evening News, 19 February 1940, p4; information regarding Cretestem‘s service in the Baltic attributed by the writer of the letter to Fougner, N K 1922 Seagoing and Other Concrete Ships (London: Henry Frowde and Hodder & Stoughton) but probably sourced from some other publication, as not, apparently, in this text.

[7] Sunderland Echo and Shipping Gazette, 26 September 1941, p2

[8] Cretehawser: TNA BT 110/1015/8 Cretestem: TNA BT 110/1015/9

[9] Shields Gazette, 21 September 1937, p6

[10] Historic England Research Records, Cretehawser and Cretestem; “Sink me if you can!”

[11] “Sink me if you can!”

[12] Lloyd’s War Losses: the Second World War 3 September 1939 – 14 August 1945 Vol.1 p678; Ripley R & Pears B 2011 North-East Diary 1939-1945 Incidents 23rd/24th May 1943 to 9th September 1943

[13] North-East Diary 1939-1945 Incidents 23rd/24th May 1943 to 9th September 1943

Diary of the Second World War – April 1943

~ Serena ~ Leave a comment

Eskdale: The E-boats strike again

Contemporary black and white photograph of ship, bows to left foreground with riverside buildings in the distance at left.
Eskdale seen on the Mersey in a disruptive paint scheme, possibly around the time of launch in March 1942.
(FL 9757) Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205120800

The names of ships matter – they are carefully thought out to display a naval or shipping company heritage, while ships may be renamed for political reasons, as many were in the redistribution of former German ships after the Treaty of Versailles.

Eskdale was a Type III Hunt-class destroyer built under the 1940 War Emergency programme at Cammell Laird, Birkenhead. She became one of three Hunt-class destroyers loaned immediately on completion in 1942 to the Kongelige Norske Marine (Royal Norwegian Navy, also known as the Free Norwegian Navy), her command being assumed by Skule Storheill who would go on to be decorated by not only Norway and the United Kingdom, but also France and the Netherlands, for his war service. (1)

The blog has previously covered the wrecks of Norwegian merchant vessels which were taken into British service during the First World War (see, for example, this post on August 1917) but here the reverse is also true: here are British ships taken into the service of the Norwegian Navy in exile. The Royal Norwegian Navy had escaped in June 1940 after the fall of Norway, along with the King of Norway, Haakon VII, and the government, and would be based in Britain for the duration of the war. Three of the Hunt-class destroyers were loaned to the Royal Norwegian Navy, the first, HMS Badsworth, being renamed Arendal.

It is not clear whether the choice of Eskdale and Glaisdale for the Royal Norwegian Navy had any greater significance than being ships that could be made available for the numbers of volunteers and refugees which swelled the numbers of the Norwegian Navy as time went on, but it would be unsurprising if there was a subtle but reciprocal diplomacy at work: the dale or valley (of Old Norse origin) in those names corresponds to the -dal element of Arendal, so the names were a nod to a common heritage and the compliment was returned by the two ships retaining their English names in Norwegian service. (2)

A group of four Norwegian sailors on board ship making a fuss of a cat and dog. Behind them the ship's funnel blows smoke and the Norwegian flag flies.
Crew of the Eskdale, their cap tallies reading KGL NORSKE MARINE (Royal Norwegian Navy) photographed 27 February 1943, a few weeks before the loss of their ship. This was an official Admiralty photograph intended for publication, as part of the original caption shows: ‘Norway with its long sea tradition has many of her sons fighting alongside the Allies in the battle for freedom. Norwegian sailors with their ship’s cat named Petra and Peggy, a dog visitor who goes on board whenever the ship makes port’
(A 14723) Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205147868

For the next year Eskdale and Glaisdale were primarily on convoy operations as escorts, in the Arctic and Channel, but also deployed on operations elsewhere at need. Over January to April 1943 they became regulars on the Portsmouth to Milford Haven run and back, sometimes together, sometimes on separate PW (Portsmouth-Wales) and WP (Wales-Portsmouth) convoys. Under wartime restrictions photograph locations would not be published, but we can see from convoy movements that Eskdale was back in Portsmouth on 27 February, so it seems likely that Peggy the dog as shown in the photograph above this paragraph was a Portsmouth resident! (3)

Both ships were worked hard, returning to Portsmouth as part of convoy WP322 on 12 April 1943, leaving Portsmouth again for Milford Haven on 13 April 1943 with six merchants, and a combined Norwegian-British trawler force as escort reinforcements. Off the Lizard the convoy was targeted by the 5th S-boot Flottille, which was using St. Peter Port, Guernsey, to refuel on its Channel operations at this time. (4)

At 3 o’clock in the morning S 90 fired two torpedoes at Eskdale in a position ENE of the Lizard, with S 65 and S 112 finally sinking her. Out of a crew of 185, 25 men, all Norwegian, lost their lives. (5) The ship has been identified in the position stated at the time of loss with her stern blown away in two separate sections, listing to starboard and evidently well collapsed. She lies near one of her charges from this convoy, the British cargo vessel Stanlake, attacked in a very similar fashion, initially torpedoed by S 121 and then finished off by S 90 and S 82. (6)

The two ships lie close together, a tangible reminder of a time when ‘Home Waters’ for British ships would be the temporary ‘home waters’ for other naval forces.

Two men stand either side of four cannon pointing right and upwards to the sky
27 February 1943: Norwegians at action stations stand by on a pom-pom used for anti-aircraft action on board their destroyer HMS Eskdale. A few weeks after this photo was taken the attack came, not from the sky, but from an E-boat.
(A 14726) Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205147870

Footnotes:

(1) Mason, G 2004 Service Histories of Royal Navy Warships in World War 2: HNoMS Eskdale (L36) (published online); Wikipedia, Skule Storheill

(2) The diplomatic dance of nomenclature appears to have continued with the formal post-war sale of Glaisdale to the Norwegian Navy, whereupon she was renamed Narvik, which no doubt evoked on both sides the Royal Navy’s participation in the Battle of Narvik only a few years previously.

(3) Convoyweb, movements of PW and WP convoys; movements of Eskdale and Glaisdale

(4) ibid; Rohwer, J and Hümmelchen, G 2007-2022 Chronik des Seekrieges 1939-1945 April 1943 (Württembergische Landesbibliothek: published online) (in German); Historisches Marinearchiv Lebenslauf S 90 (online: in German) Brown, D 1990 Warship Losses of World War Two (London: Arms and Armour)

(5) World War 2 at Sea: Royal Norwegian Navy, Ship Histories, Convoy Escort Movements, Casualty Lists 1940-1947 (nd: published online)

(6) Eskdale: Hydrographic Office 17429; Stanlake: Hydrographic Office 17430 and 17504

Diary of the Second World War – February 1943

~ Serena ~ Leave a comment

The Lindbergh

Historic colour photograph of fisherman in typical navy blue fishing gear and cap standing beneath drying nets and looking out to sea.
Portrait of a Belgian fisherman. (TR 1868)
Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205123994

Sometimes the tragedy of a shipwreck can also reveal a hidden heritage which has all but slipped out of living memory – and the events that unfolded on that day of 19 February 1943 are all the more moving because of it.

After the fall of Belgium in May 1940 fishermen from Nieuwpoort, Ostend and Zeebrugge left for England either directly or via French ports. They, of course, had better means than many of making their escape in their fishing boats, and were able to take other refugees with them. The testimony of Pierre Logghe, who left Belgium as a boy with his family, recalled their boat, hosting three other refugee families, coming under bombardment at Calais and seeing a mine off Dieppe claiming another Belgian trawler, O.288 Normandie, and they were again bombed as they set out once more on the last leg for England. (See note 1 to read his story in full.)

As Pierre recalled, and as research by the Ministry of Information at the time demonstrated, (2) many of the fishermen remembered only too well the horrors of the First World War, something that in itself we often overlook: those born around 1900 would see war twice before they were 50.

Belgian drifters and trawlers were a familiar sight on the eastern and Channel coasts from the late 19th century onwards, encountered both as working vessels and as wrecks, as for example the Vierge Marie, which stranded west of Tater-Du, Cornwall, in heavy seas in January 1937.

Pierre’s father’s ship was the O.280 Pierre, registered at Ostend, was recognised in harbour as one of their own, having previously been Brixham smack BM 1, Superb, sold on in 1919. Nor were the Logghes the only Belgian refugees to come to Brixham, which soon hosted a community in exile of 2,000 Belgians (3) from fishing families who followed a similar tradition of trawling from sailing vessels as the Brixham fleet – for that very reason, it is unsurprising that at least one Brixham trawler had been sold on into Belgian service. (If you’d like to follow up the heritage of the Brixham sailing trawler, have a look at a past post on a former Brixham sailing trawler that went to war, HMS Brown Mouse.)

Historical colour photo of a group of three fishermen in typical navy blue fishing gear with caps on their heads, with a blurred view of terraces behind them.
A group of Belgian fishermen on the quayside at Brixham, 1944 (TR 1864) Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205123992

The Belgians became well-established in Brixham, settling into homes nearby, a Belgian school for children hosted in the Town Hall, and a sea school for boys established. A documentary short (Little Belgium / Klein België), following the lives of the fishermen, their families, and their community, was shown in cinemas: it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film in 1942.

The film depicted the success of the community at work, school and play, but British gunners shown boarding the fleet setting out to sea to provide some defence against air attack showed the dangers they still had to face. Pierre Logghe recalled his father being strafed by aircraft on several occasions while out fishing, and also the fate of other Belgian trawlers fishing from Brixham: ‘two ships were lost through mines and the third by an explosion in their net.’ (4)

We can identify the Belgian trawler which sank after netting a mine as the Marie Robert, lost off Wolf Rock, between Land’s End and the Isles of Scilly, on 2 April 1942. We cannot confirm with certainty the identities of the other two ships lost to mines, as there are more than two candidates in the frame (including Ster der Zee and Irma Germaine, sunk off Berry Head in October 1942 and August 1943 respectively) but it is likely that one of those to which he referred was another Ostend ship in the fleet operating out of Brixham, O.260 Lindbergh, lost on 19 February 1943.

Our best source for the sequence of events comes from a Flemish-language fishermen’s newspaper, Het Nieuwe Visscherijblad, published after the war, with its attractive masthead of two trawlers, one sailing and one steam, heading into harbour amid strong breakers. (5) Commemorating the third anniversary of a loss that was still raw, under an English-language heading of ‘Remember . . .‘ the newspaper recounts a sequence of events that must have come down from the sole survivor, Arthur Vinck.

The Lindbergh was fishing off Brixham harbour in a position about 15 or 16 miles south of Berry Head together (6) with other Belgian trawlers of the Brixham fleet. Vinck was on deck at the bows, with the skipper Fransciscus Vanneuville in the wheelhouse. The moment of the explosion must have been frozen in his mind, as he recalled the exact position of everyone in the crew: the two Vandammes, father Lodewijk and son Marcel, were chatting behind him to Jozef Monteny, and the cook Jan Michel Duyck was in the galley. ‘Suddenly, there was a tremendous explosion and the stern flew up in the air. The vessel sank immediately.’ N.63 Sincerity of Nieuwpoort, also in the surrounding fleet, and based in Newlyn, (7) set course for the site and picked Arthur up after an hour in the sea, having been kept alive and afloat by a lifebelt. Out of the other five crew, nothing could be discovered other than the body of Marcel Vandamme, the ship’s boy.

The skipper who performed the rescue was awarded a medal for his efforts from the Belgian government-in-exile in London.

Prayer cards for the deceased survive in online Belgian collections. (8) They reveal that Marcel was not yet 16 when he died, much the same age as the boy shown taking his examination at the Belgian Fishing School in Brixham below.

Historical black and white photograph of a teenage boy at left stands before 7 men at a table under fishing nets suspended from a ceiling.
A pupil (left) at the Belgian State Fishing School, run by the Belgian Government, in Brixham, Devon, is questioned on what he has learnt by a panel of experts. (PD 196)
Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205202835

An account of Marcel’s funeral in the local press revealed more about wartime censorship than details of the circumstances behind his death, for details of deaths to war causes were minimised (9) so as not to reveal to the enemy the success or otherwise of their operations:

A spacious public hall, kindly loaned by the public authority in a South-West town, was crowded last week by Belgian and Fighting French refugees at the Requiem Mass for Marcel Dandamme [sic], aged 15, whose mortal remains were brought into the hall by four stalwart compatriots . . . The funeral was attended by the chairman and members of the local authority and officials of the Belgian and Fighting French Mercantile Marine. (10)

Marcel’s body was repatriated after the war and now lies in his home town of Ostend. (11)

The wreck is a tangible memorial not only to the crew, but also to an uprooted culture and community which found a temporary home in a comparable community, but which could not wholly escape the spectre of war.

Footnotes:

(1) Logghe, P 2012 The Story of Brixham’s Belgian Visitors: “Our Escape from Belgium” and “Life in Wartime England” Devon Heritage, published online; Logghe, P 2020 “Pierre’s Story”, Brixham Future, published online

(2) See, for example, a photograph with the biography of fisherman M Major and his family https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205202833

(3) Ministry of Information / Ministerie voor Voorlichting van België (Belgian Ministry of Information) 1942 Little Belgium / Klein België (film) (British Paramount News) See, for example, Brixham Heritage Museum’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDM2nj3eWyw (in Flemish, auto-captions in that language available)

(4) See note 1.

(5) Het Nieuwe Visscherijblad, 16 February 1946, No.12

(6) Lloyd’s War Losses for the Second World War, 3 September 1939-14 August 1945, Vol. 1, p625 (London: Lloyd’s of London Press)

(7) The Flemish newspaper article does not name the ship other than its fishing number, N.63, and the name of the skipper, but the fishing number can be traced. https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~treevecwll/family/belgianfv.htm

(8) The crew’s names vary slightly between the newspaper article and the prayer cards, partly because of different linguistic registers and naming conventions with which the English-language reader may not be familiar. The versions on the prayer cards have been preferred.

(9) For further reading on this topic Thompson, G 1947 Blue Pencil Admiral (London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co. Ltd.) is revealing. Rear Admiral George Pirie Thompson was Britain’s Chief Press Censor during the Second World War.

(10) Western Morning News, 2 March 1943, No.25,940, p2

(11) Entry for Marcel Vandamme: https://www.wardeadregister.be/fr/dead-person?idPersonne=71888

Diary of the Second World War – January 1943

~ Serena ~ Leave a comment

A fairly quiet month – apart from the weather

January 1943 was a fairly quiet month in terms of shipwrecks in English waters: 8 ships were recorded as lost, of which one, Bolbec, was refloated in September 1943.

There were a few ships lost to war causes: first, patrol trawler HMT Kingston Jacinth was mined with considerable loss of life off Portsmouth on 12 January. Two wooden sailing Thames barges were lost to mines off Burnham-on-Crouch on the Essex coast: on 13 January, Ailsa struck a mine on the edge of Foulness Sand off the Essex coast, although fortunately her crew were saved, and on 28 January, Resolute, bound from London to Ipswich with wheat, struck a mine off Holland-on-Sea. When the lifeboat arrived on scene the crew found only wreckage, but the master had been picked up by another barge and was transferred to the lifeboat, although the mate was lost with the vessel. It sounds as if the barge had been blown to smithereens by the explosion.

Two groups of Thames barges moored on the river, with their sails furled. Behind them lies an industrial landscape of chimneys and dock cranes on the far bank of the river.

Thames barges moored at Greenwich, taken by photographer S W Rawlings between 1945-1965. He was the photographer for the Information Office of the Port of London Authority, recording the working river in the postwar period. S W Rawlings Collection, AA001107 © Historic England Archive

The cargo vessel Longbird collided with the Beltoy off the north-east coast while sailing independently for Hull with foodstuffs on 16 January 1943, having parted convoy on her ‘northabout’ voyage round the Scottish coast from the Clyde. She was a fairly unusual vessel type, having been launched as a steam naval gunboat in 1919, but sold into commercial service in 1920 and converted to a cargo vessel.

The 7-ton Landing Craft Personnel (Medium) No.17 or LCP (M) No.17 was lost off the Isle of Wight on 5 January, cause of loss unclear. There does not appear to have been anything exceptional about the weather, but loss even in fairly calm conditions is not unknown.

It was a different story for our other wrecks this month, where the weather appears to have been the major factor accounting for their loss. Firstly, the cargo vessel Wyetown foundered in ‘heavy weather’ off the Suffolk coast on 14 January, while bound from Hull for Ipswich, consistent with the gale warning issued for London and the east coast at 01.45am earlier that day. (1)

On the last day of the month HMS Bloodhound, a pre-war motor torpedo discharge vessel built by Vosper of Portsmouth in 1937 was wrecked at her station off Bincleaves, Portland.

Historic aerial photograph taken only four years after our wreck, showing Bincleaves groyne, one of the breakwaters enclosing Portland harbour, from the east, looking towards the land, with small harbour craft dotting the water. To the right, outside the groyne, the water is fast-moving and agitated, within the groyne on the left, much calmer: a breakwater captured doing its job. If wrecked within the groyne, the water must indeed have been turbulent that day.
© Historic England. Aerofilms Collection Historic England photograph: EAW010943 flown 24/09/1947

Bloodhound was an interesting small experimental vessel, with a fascinating background. She had been part of ‘stone frigate’ (shore establishment) HMS Vernon, Portsmouth, as part of the Admiralty Torpedo, Mining and Electrical Training Establishment, based on the old Gunwharf (now the Gunwharf Quays development). Vernon was dispersed after air raids on Portsmouth, the Establishment being based at Roedean School for Girls for the rest of the war, and Bloodhound sent to Portland.

The wreck of HMS Bloodhound occurred in severe weather, with a gale warning issued for points on the SW coast at 6am on 30 January; a further prediction was a ‘south to southeast gale, veering southwest to west, severe at times especially on parts of the coast, beginning to moderate tonight’. (2)

Not only were there few wrecks for January 1943, detail on the ships involved is sparse and/or widely dispersed among sources, not helped by wartime censorship of sources we would normally rely on, such as newspapers. As Wyetown and Bloodhound demonstrate, weather data helps to fill the gap for vessels not lost to war causes.

Footnotes:

(1) Daily Weather Report of the Meteorological Office, Air Ministry, London, Wednesday 14th January, 1943, No.25638 https://digital.nmla.metoffice.gov.uk/IO_5245f1c2-b185-42e0-99d5-3aefd5c4acaf/

(2) Daily Weather Report of the Meteorological Office, Air Ministry, London, Saturday 30th January, 1943, No.25654 and Sunday 31st January, 1943, No.25655 (Met Office Digital Library and Archive, Daily Weather Report January 1943 https://digital.nmla.metoffice.gov.uk/IO_5245f1c2-b185-42e0-99d5-3aefd5c4acaf/

Diary of the Second World War – November 1942

~ Serena ~ Leave a comment

The E-boats keep coming . . .

Trawler seen in port bow view, with her pennant number 252 in white to left, and land marking the horizon in the background.
HMT Ullswater (FL 20361) at a buoy. Ullswater was lost off the Eddystone in November 1942 while acting as escort for a south coast – Wales convoy. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205121578

The war at sea in English waters in November 1942 was a slightly quieter one than October 1942 had been, and December 1942 would be. For all that the E-boats kept coming (S-boote in German).

On the evening of the 9th the 2nd, 4th and 6th S-boot Flottille, responsible for the loss of several ships of convoy FN 832 off Norfolk in October 1942, opened fire once more on another FN convoy, FN 861, again off the east coast.  

According to Wehrmacht reports, 4 ships from a convoy were sunk, and three ships, two steamers and an escort, were reported damaged. [1] In fact, the only victim sunk on the 9th was the Norwegian steamer Fidelio, torpedoed east of Lowestoft. The steamer Wandle was badly damaged in the same attack, her bows virtually blown off but still partially attached and sinking. Somehow she was kept afloat, albeit awash, and ultimately she reached the Tyne for repair after several days under tow in fog and heavy seas. She would go on to be rebuilt and continue in service until 1959. [2]

On the 15th the British steamer Linwood, on convoy FS (Forth South) 959, struck a mine laid by air off the Long Sand Head in the approaches to the Thames, with the loss of three DEMS (Defence of Merchant Ships gunners). Elsewhere, in the North Sea and the Baltic, similar mines laid by British aircraft accounted for at least 7 ships during the month. [3]

In the early hours of the 19th the six ships of the 5th S-boot Flottille, S-68, S-77, S-82, S-112, S-115, and S-116 located convoy PW (Portsmouth-Wales) 250 off the Eddystone with the assistance of ‘Lichtenstein’ radar apparatus. Most sources state that the attack was carried out by the E-boats alone, but the Merchant Shipping Movement Cards for the three cargo vessels lost in this incident suggest that it was a coordinated E-boat and aircraft attack. [4] That said, there is no explicit mention of attack from the air in the evidence given by the Norwegian survivors of one of the ships on 21 November 1942 at Plymouth before the Norwegian vice-consul though there was a hint by the carpenter, Peder Andersen, that on his lookout he saw a ‘bright light shining down’. [5] The master, Emanuel Edwardsen, introduced his evidence in an understated fashion, stating that he was unable to produce the logbook due to circumstances which would become clear in his account. All the witnesses confirmed that they had felt the shock of not one, but two, successive torpedoes and they were unable to release one of the boats, but successfully got away in the other, to be picked up by a British vessel.

The victims were the former Danish Birgitte now sailing under the British flag, with the loss of 10 crew, the Norwegian Lab with the loss of 3 lives in the stern part of the ship, the British steamer Yewforest laden with steel billets, with 9 crew and 2 of her gunners, and their escort, HMT Ullswater, which was lost with all hands. The four wrecks lie in close proximity to one another and Ullswater is on the Schedule of Designated Vessels under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986. [6]

Like many of her compatriots, the Danish Birgitte had come under the control of the Ministry of War Transport (MOWT), having been seized as a prize and requisitioned by the British authorities at Gibraltar in May 1940 after the fall of Denmark.[7] Lab became one of the famed Nortraships (Norwegian Shipping and Trade Mission), at that time the world’s largest shipping fleet, while Yewforest had spent her career with Scottish owners since being built in 1910. Intended as a steam whaler, Ullswater was requisitioned on the stocks on the outbreak of war and had spent the war on escort duty.

Their attackers can be seen together at Travemünde in May 1942 on this German-language site, 4th image down: from left to right, S-115, S-112 with the Lichtenstein radar antenna visible, and S-116.

In English waters at any rate the rest of the month was quiet, with no further shipping losses.

Footnotes:

[1] Convoyweb; Rohwer, J and Hümmelchen, G 2007-2022 Chronik des Seekrieges 1939-1945 November 1942 (Württembergische Landesbibliothek: published online) (in German)

[2] Central Office of Information 1947 British Coaster: The Official Story (London: HMSO)

[3] Chronik des Seekrieges

[4] Chronik des Seekrieges; Merchant Shipping Movement Cards: Birgitte, BT 389/4/172; Lab, BT 389/38/249; Yewforest, BT 389/32/198, all The National Archives (TNA)

[5] This account is available in English: https://www.krigsseilerregisteret.no/forlis/221161, and click on Sjøforklaring tab

[6] UK Statutory Instruments 2019 No.1191 The Protection of Military Remains Act (Designation of Vessels and Controlled Sites) Order 2019 Schedule 1

[7] TNA BT 389/4/172

Diary of the Second World War – October 1942

~ Serena ~ 2 Comments

Convoy Battle!

The summer of 1942 had seen two key convoy battles – Arctic convoy PQ17 which battled through during the first half of July to Archangel and Murmansk with the loss of two-thirds of its ships; and Mediterranean convoy WS21S of August, in which victory was snatched from the jaws of defeat by delivering the tanker Ohio to the relief of Malta.

It is these famous incidents, and others like them, which we tend to think of when we consider convoy battles of the Second World War – yet convoy battles were an everyday reality and took place not only ‘over there’ during the Battle of the Atlantic and in the foreign theatres of war, but ‘in home waters’ also around the coasts of Britain.

Every convoy was a potential battle.

In the early hours of 7 October 1942 three groups of E-boats were lurking off Cromer to intercept any passing convoys. The term ‘E-boat’ is a linguistic legacy in English of the Second World War: ‘E-boat’ (‘Enemy boat’) referred to the German Schnellboot or S-boot (‘fast boat’), broadly equivalent to an Allied motor torpedo boat, so the terminology differs between British and German sources.

E-boats and E-boat Admiral surrender, 13 May 1945, HMS Beehive, Felixstowe. (A 28559) Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205159904

Out of the three E-boat groups present that day, the 2nd S-boot Flottille, with six craft, and the 4th, with three, found a target in convoy FN (Forth North) 832, an east coast convoy from the Thames for Methil, Scotland, with a Trade Division Signal report of 26 ships. Shortly after 4.30 in the morning they opened fire on FN 832. [1]

Some 10 or so miles NE of Cromer lie the remains of some of the convoy, all securely charted since the day they sank in 1942. {2] To seaward lies the remains of ML 339, a British motor launch of Fairmile B type that became a versatile multi-function asset used in several roles and theatres of war, particularly as a submarine chaser.

ML 340 seen in port view with troops on board, off Skiathos, Greece. (A 26457)
Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205119921

Around half a mile to port of ML 339 lie the remains of the Jessie Maersk, a British freighter under the control of the Ministry of War Transport (MOWT). As her name implies, she originally belonged to the Danish shipping line of Maersk, whose ships are still a familiar sight in ports around the world.

In 1940 Jessie Maersk had been at sea with a cargo bound for London when Denmark fell under Nazi occupation, and on that voyage was ordered over the wireless by the new regime to put into a neutral port. The master decided initially to put into an Irish port, but, as more information came in, the crew mutinied, took charge of the ship, and put her instead into Cardiff. There the master lodged a complaint with the police, who arrested the crew, but it did not quite end as he clearly expected. Far from being had up before a British court for mutiny, the crew were released by the British authorities with thanks for their action, and the Jessie Maersk, as with so many ships from Nazi-occupied countries, came under the auspices of the MOWT. (On her final voyage two years later she would be crewed by both British and Danish sailors. [3]) By contrast, in 1940, the possible internment of the master as an enemy alien or enemy sympathiser was discussed at Parliamentary level – in the Commons. [4]

Jessie Maersk had an eventful, if not positively hard, war, with a litany of incidents necessitating repairs – collisions in convoy, aircraft damage, and groundings, before being torpedoed and sunk on that day in October 1942. [5]

Another half a mile to port again lie the remains of HMS Caroline Moller, an Admiralty tug, i.e. one requisitioned from civilian service to act as a rescue tug. On the seabed the three ships appear at regular intervals, as if keeping station as they did so long ago in convoy above, with ML 339 still in her protective position guarding against seaward attack on the starboard flank.

Ships lost from the same convoy naturally frequently lie in close proximity, sometimes very close together, but to see three ships in a clear pattern on the seabed, a similar distance apart, is slightly more unusual. This pattern seems consistent with the rapidity of the simultaneous attack from multiple E-boats, and suggests that their victims all sank equally rapidly.

The British coasters Sheaf Water and Ilse were also damaged in the attack, and dropped out of the convoy, returning under tow to the southward. The damage they had sustained overwhelmed them as the turned back, and they too also now lie relatively close to one another, but as a distinct group, some distance from their convoy sisters. [6]

The Merchant Shipping Movement Card for Sheaf Water reveals what we would now call a ‘live feed’ or a ‘real-time update’ in red ink: ‘Torpedoed by E-boat between 57F and 67B buoys [of the swept War Channel], 7.10. Badly holed, now anchored Sheringham buoy. (8.10) Vessel now partly submerged. Report 9/10 states: only two masts visible high water. No further action will be taken (10.10). Now in about 8 faths [fathoms], salvage not practicable. (5.12)’ [7]

This was the second major incident in the Ilse’s wartime career. On a similar convoy voyage from Southend for the Tyne in June 1941, she had struck a mine on the 20th off Hartlepool. She seems to have gone down by the bows as her Shipping Movement Card notes: ‘the after end of the vessel floatable. Fore end constructive total loss.’ The stern half arrived at Hartlepool 10 days later and was docked, before being taken up the river to Middlesbrough for repairs, where a new forepart was built on, and by February 1942, she was back on the east coast convoy run. She was ‘presumed torpedoed by E-boat’ between the same two buoys as Sheaf Water. She then ‘sunk in tow’ (8.10) and by the 12th October she was ‘Submerged 2 mls [miles] E of Haisboro, 4ft of mast above water at low water spring tides.’ Salvage was also dismissed ‘not practicable’ on 5 December. [8]

The Ilse herself is thus also an unusual wreck, where parts of the same ship are charted in two distinct locations from different wreck incidents a year apart. [9] (In a previous blog, we’ve covered the loss of the Nyon, 1958/1962.)

We can see that the events of 7 October 1942 resulted in archaeological patterns not always seen on the seabed as a result of convoy attacks, in which ships scatter, take evasive action, drift after being struck before finally sinking, return fire, cover for other ships in convoy, put themselves in the line of fire in rendering assistance, or are attacked several times over the course of a voyage, with separate losses in quite different locations. On that day it seems that the E-boats swept in with such speed there was little time to return fire, resulting in three ships sinking together in short order and two that sank shortly afterwards as they turned back.

It was less a convoy battle than a devastating ‘hit and run’ raid leaving an archaeological legacy which forms a memorial to the lost crews. That archaeological legacy also preserves in lasting and concrete form some rather less tangible things: firstly, the locations of the buoys marking the swept War Channel, against which all the attacks were recorded, and which naturally disappeared after the war; secondly, it would appear, the disposition of the convoy relative to one another as they turned north-west on their voyage.

Crew of the Pole Star refuelling a war channel buoy, seen from HM Trawler Stella Pegasi. (A 18188) Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205150957

Footnotes:

[1] Convoyweb; Rohwer, J and Hümmelchen, G 2007-2022 Chronik des Seekrieges 1939-1945 Oktober 1942 (Württembergische Landesbibliothek: published online) (in German)

[2] United Kingdom Hydrographic Office: ML 339 UKHO 9243; Jessie Maersk, 9238; HMS Caroline Moller, 9231

[3] Daily Herald, 22 April 1940, No.7,546, p10; widely reported in national and regional press

[4] Hansard, House of Commons Debate 30 April 1940, Vol.360, c.541

[5] Merchant Shipping Movement Card, Jessie Maersk, BT 389/17/22, The National Archives

[6] United Kingdom Hydrographic Office: Sheaf Water, UKHO 10554; Ilse, 10562

[7] Merchant Shipping Movement Card, Sheaf Water, BT 389/26/230, The National Archives

[8] Merchant Shipping Movement Card, Jessie Maersk, BT 389/16/65, The National Archives

[9] United Kingdom Hydrographic Office: UKHO no. 5624 (section, off Hartlepool, 1941); UKHO 10562 (off Cromer, 1942)

Diary of the Second World War – September 1942

~ Serena ~ 2 Comments

LBBB 332 and LBBB 362: two unlikely ships go to war

The tragic heritage of Exercise Tiger off Slapton Sands, south Devon, in April 1944 as preparation for the D-Day landings in June that year is well-known: the exercise was disrupted by enemy action, with the loss of Landing Ship Tanks LST-507 and LST-531, both now scheduled monuments. (Learn more in this Historic England article with a contemporary photograph.)

Less well-known off Salcombe, south Devon – perhaps because they were on exercise for an operation which never took place – is a similarly fateful attack on two Landing Barges (Landing Barge Barrage Balloon) LBBB 332 and LBBB 362, on 19 September 1942.

A Balloon Close-Hauled on a Barge, Francis Edwin Hodge, 1941 (Art.IWM ART LD 1931) A barrage balloon attached with ropes to a barge being moved at sea. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/13253

During the spring and summer of 1942, the Allied Powers had been in discussion about undertaking an invasion attempt on France in the forthcoming autumn, codenamed Operation Sledgehammer. Heavily promoted by the Soviet Union and the United States, it was viewed in Britain as having little prospect of success and costly in human and material resources, a view to which the US was also eventually persuaded. [1] The debacle of the Raid on Dieppe on 19 August 1942 only served to highlight that the Allies were not yet ready to open a second front in Europe, and instead Allied resources were poured into the North African campaign which would lead to victory at El Alamein in November 1942.

However, with Sledgehammer in mind, over the summer of 1942, Britain pressed some apparently rather unlikely vessels into service. [2] The ‘dumb barges’ of the Thames – so called because they had no propulsion of their own, and could only be towed, or operated with long ‘sweeps’ or oars – would now play their part in the war.

Two bargemen manoeuvring a barge laden with cargo along the River Thames, c.1930-1945. The long ‘sweeps’ can be seen in action. Julian Joseph Samuels Collection, SAM01/03/0089: Source Historic England Archive

They were requisitioned for repurposing as landing craft, valuable for bringing materials ashore from larger ships, their ‘swim’ ends easily convertible into ramps for offloading, and easily beached because of their shallow draught. [The second photo in this gallery of a contemporary model of a Thames lighter, made around 1940, depicts a sloping flat ‘swim’, rather than pointed or rounded and blunt, end.]

They were then initially fitted with British engines, but were soon re-engined with US-made Chrysler marine engines, supplied under Lend-Lease. [3] Some of this group were then able to perform exercises under their own power at various locations, with five barges undergoing trials at Salcombe in September 1942.

It would seem that among them were LBBB 332 and LBBB 362, each converted into a Landing Barge Barrage Balloon, amphibious vessels tethering airborne craft. Barrage balloon vessels were not, in themselves, a new idea. From the early days of the war, barrage balloons had been deployed for home defence, compromising the accuracy of enemy aircraft in range-finding and gunnery by forcing them to fly higher. Barrage balloons were thus placed around towns, strategic sites, and, crucially, harbours – anywhere that was a target for air attack.

ROYAL AIR FORCE BALLOON COMMAND, 1939-1945. (C 726) A Barrage Balloon Section, housed in a converted sugar barge in the Thames Estuary, sends up a kite balloon from its cradle. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205207526

Those balloons defending ports and harbours were flown from requisitioned barges and other small craft, and several were themselves victims of air attack, among them British drifter Lavinia L, sunk off Sheerness June 1941; and two ex-Belgian fishing vessels in British Admiralty service following the fall of Belgium in 1940, the Borealis, off the Isle of Wight, August 1940, and the Cor Jesu off Alnmouth, August 1941. These losses expose one of the key weaknesses of barrage balloon defence – their very presence signposted sites of importance. (Indeed, the contemporary photograph in Historic England’s aerial photography collections shows barrage balloons off Slapton Sands.)

Other barrage balloon vessels, while guarding against attack from the air, fell victim to the sub-surface wartime dangers of the sea, such as the British drifters Lord St Vincent, mined off Harwich in July 1940, and Carry On, also mined off Sheerness, December 1940. A similar fate befell the tug Lion, again off Sheerness, in January 1941. Her actual role is slightly unclear: she was requisitioned by the Air Ministry for barrage balloon duty but was towing a barge at the time of loss, which might perhaps have been a barrage balloon vessel, given the numbers stationed at Sheerness. [4]

The vessels at Salcombe and elsewhere represented a development of the need for harbour defence from the air. There were two new elements: one was the idea of an air shield while en route, supplementing conventional air cover, and the other the amphibious component, providing cover forward for the offloading of troops and ammunition on the beach. Salcombe was an ideal test location, since it was one of the existing harbours covered by seaward, but static, barrage balloon defences. [5]

However, as the other barrage balloon barges sunk elsewhere in the war attest, the barges on exercises became very visible targets for bombing raids. On 19 September 1942, a Luftwaffe air raid took place on Salcombe. It was in that raid that Landing Barges Barrage Balloon LBBB 332 and LBBB 362 were sunk by a Focke-Wulf of 10/JG 26. [6]

The papers of those involved in the extensive discussions over Operation Sledgehammer laid a documentary trail for something which never, ultimately, took place: the wrecks of the LBBBs form the tangible archaeological counterpart for that documentary trail.

Those wrecks also form a historical bridge between two events which did take place: in their small size and unlikely guise, they were akin to the ‘little ships’ which participated in Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940; and they were the precursors of the landing barges and the barrage balloon vessels that went in 1944 to the D-Day landing beaches as part of Operation Overlord with both British and American units – the history of the barrage balloon barges has, until recently, has been a crucial, but largely overlooked, heritage in both ships and personnel. [7] In the same vein, the LBBB wrecks at Salcombe help chart the little-known story of Britain’s preparations for Overlord as early as 1942.

Footnotes

[1] The National Archives, Churchill Archive, CHAR 20/77/87-90; Matloff, M. & Snell, E (1990) Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare (Washington DC: Centre of Military History, US Army) 266-292, as published online

[2] Smith, G. nd “Thames Lighters at War in Time for D-Day”, Naval-History.net – Part 1 and Part 2

[3] Ibid.

[4] United Kingdom Hydrographic Office 12806

[5] “Barrage Balloon Vessels”, Barrage Balloon Reunion Club, published online

[6] Designated as LBBB 332 and LBBB 362 in British Vessels Lost at Sea, 1914-18 and 1939 45 (Yeovil: Patrick Stephens Ltd) (reproduction of HMSO originals), p51; described as ‘dumb barges of 150-ton type’ in Smith Part 2; Brine, M nd “Casualties of the Bombing at Salcombe”, Devon Heritage (published online); Goss, C, Cornwell, P, and Rauchbach, B, 2003 Luftwaffe Fighter-Bombers over Britain: The Tip and Run Campaign 1942-3 (Manchester: Crécy Publishing Ltd.)

[7] Hervieux, L 2015 “How Black Barrage Balloon Troops Kept the D-Day Beaches Safe”, Military History Now, published online; Military Health Systems Communications Office, 2022 “This D-Day veteran hit the beach strapped to a barrage balloon”, We Are The Mighty, published online

The Battle of Britain

~ Serena ~ Leave a comment

The maritime aspect of the Battle of Britain: 80 years on

Battle of Britain Day, 15 September, is so designated since it marks the anniversary of the day the tide turned in favour of the RAF in the aerial battle for Britain 80 years ago in 1940.

Text: 'Never was so much owed by so many to so few' at top of image over a group portrait of five airmen
Never Was So Much Owed by So Many to So Few (Art.IWM PST 14972) © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/32404

That day, though a turning point, was by no means the end of the Battle of Britain, which continued until 31 October 1940. The end of the Battle overlapped with the beginning of the Blitzkrieg (‘Lightning War’), shortened in Britain to ‘The Blitz’ – the aerial raids on British towns, cities and infrastructure – which continued on until May 1941, and which included the destruction of Coventry and its Cathedral in November 1940. 

The Battle of Britain was not wholly unique in the six long years of the maritime war. Throughout the duration, ships and aircraft attacked one another, but the Battle of Britain saw a significant shift in the conduct and outcomes of the war at sea that was not replicated at any other time within English waters. 

The data from Historic England’s National Record of the Historic Environment (NRHE) captures the significance of Battle of Britain over the sea as the RAF sought to intercept and repel the Luftwaffe.

The Battle was fought primarily in the skies over the south-eastern counties of England. Figures for those aircraft recorded as part of the historic environment show that one-third of the aircraft lost on both sides during the Battle of Britain were actually forced down into the sea in English waters, a total of 353 aircraft, of which 217 were German and 136 British. 

In turn these 353 aircraft account for 24% – almost one quarter – of all aircraft lost in the sea in English waters during the entire war in Europe from September 1939 to May 1945, a total of 1476 altogether. 

The figures for August 1940, perhaps the most acute phase, show that 174 aircraft found a watery grave that month, whether off the south-east coast or in the Thames. For what has become known as ‘The Hardest Day‘, 18 August 1940, when operational losses and destruction of aircraft on the ground, reached their zenith, 12 aircraft are recorded as having been lost in the sea. On the British side the losses that day were four Hurricanes and a Spitfire, while the Luftwaffe lost a He111, four Ju87s, and a Me110. 

Historic B&W photograph of two soldiers standing in mud on the foreshore examine aircraft wreckage.
THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN, JULY-OCTOBER 1940 (HU 89288) Soldiers examine an MG 15 machine gun and part of the tail assembly of a German Dornier Do 17Z bomber of the KG 2, shot down over the Thames Estuary during attacks on Eastchurch aerodrome, 13 August 1940. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205094199

Eighty years ago today on that first ‘Battle of Britain Day’ on 15 September, the losses had diminished somewhat, all German, and all in the Thames Estuary. That day three Do17s came down: Do17Z (3405) U5+FT crashed and Do17Z (2578) F1+BS was shot down, both off Herne Bay, Kent; Do17Z (1176) 5K+DN was shot down into the Thames.

What is perhaps most distinctive about this phase of the sea war was that during the Battle of Britain aircraft losses within English waters outstripped ships sunk in the same area by roughly 2.5 to 1.

Those figures reveal a completely opposite pattern to the figures available for maritime losses in the other months of 1940: in the previous six months aircraft comprised one-third of maritime losses, and likewise for the remainder of 1940.  In other words, there was a unique spike in aircraft lost to the sea. 

The Battle of Britain was an aerial battle, stretched out over many long, exhausting, days, weeks and months, but what these figures also show is that during the Battle of Britain the sea war became an air war. 

 

Diary of the Second World War: July 1940

~ Serena ~ Leave a comment

The Talvaldis 

This month we commemorate something of a mystery ship lost 80 years ago in July 1940, as we take a look at the Talvaldis: the aim of publication is to see if we can discover more and flesh out the history and details of this vessel for the record.

Here is what we know:

The Talvaldis was built as Teign I in 1912 for E P Hutchinson of Hull, then renamed Westerham in 1916, when she passed into the ownership of Cunningham, Shaw & Co., Ltd. She remained registered at Hull through two more changes of ownership until being sold in 1927 to M Stahl & Co (M Štāls, D Tomsons & Co.)  of Riga, when she received her Latvian name of Talvaldis. (1)

Thereafter she was a regular trader between the Baltic and Britain and further afield, appearing frequently in arrivals and departures lists in British regional newspapers with a variety of cargoes: trading herring from Fraserburgh to Riga and Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) in 1931, timber to Bordeaux via London and Hull in early 1939, and discharging bog ore from Delfzijl at Sharpness in April 1939. (2)  She is last heard of in print before the war in late August, passing Dover from Bordeaux for Gravesend on the 27th, with a quick turnaround, being seen once more southbound off Dover on the 30th.  (3) 

Just above the last notice for the Talvaldis in the Liverpool press, a stern notice appears in bold:

Owing to the international situation, news concerning the movements of British ships is necessarily restricted, and publication of the foreign mail list is suspended.

The news of a week earlier had been grim indeed with the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact on 23 August 1939, a German-Soviet mutual non-aggression pact leading to the invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, and the declaration of war by Britain and France on 3 September. On 30 August, therefore, when the Talvaldis appeared for the last time in pre-war English-language shipping columns, the world was four days away from six years of war.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact led to the Soviet Union increasing pressure on the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which had enjoyed just over 20 years as independent nation-states – then in June 1940 Soviet troops occupied them all.

During the period between the outbreak of war and the Soviet occupation, Talvaldis then seems to fade from view, with the exception of a probable sighting in March 1940. Censorship of shipping movements played its part here, of course.  A Latvian ship named Talwadis, which seems otherwise attested anywhere, shows up in convoy OB21 bound from Swansea to Oporto with coal in March 1940, and is reasonably suspected of being the Talvaldis. (4)

So when we next discover the (correctly spelt) Talvaldis, it is as part of a 21-strong British convoy coded CW2 from Southend to Yarmouth Roads on 8 July 1940, by which time Latvia is no longer a free nation. (5) Her captain may have been the A Lejnieks who was recorded against her name in a list of Latvian shipping as at 1 January 1940, but this is not certain, as anything could have happened in the interim.  (6)

Most of the ships in this convoy were British, but it also included one ship each from Denmark and Norway, and three from the Netherlands – all neutral countries which had recently fallen under Nazi occupation.

What were they all doing in the convoy? These, and other ships from those countries, may have been in, bound to, or diverted their course to, Allied ports at the time their respective nations were invaded, and thus able to operate out of the reach of occupation authorities. 

For example, ships slipped out of Amsterdam or other occupied ports all over Europe and ran under cover of darkness to Allied ports. Similarly, intense negotiations between Norway, the UK and the US saw the creation of the world’s largest shipping company, the Nortraships (Norwegian Shipping and Trade Mission). (7)

Negotiations also took place around Latvian and Estonian ships in both the US and UK, and may offer a clue as to why and how the Talvaldis disappeared from the records for several months, in addition to the censorship situation. In the US it was reported that: ‘The USSR has failed in some quiet finagling to obtain use of the Latvian and Estonian ships sequestered by the US Treasury when the Soviet [sic] seized the Baltic states . . . this Government still refuses to recognise Russia’s Baltic conquests, and, hence, release of the ships is out of the question. Actually ten of the vessels are now plying the New York – Liverpool run in British convoys.’ Their earnings went to the support of their respective diplomatic representatives in the US. (8) 

As in the US, Latvia retained diplomatic representation in London looking after Latvian interests in the absence of any formal government-in-exile. It is also clear that there were similarly high-level discussions in Britain over the prevention of Russian control, and the possibility of British requisitioning, of Latvian, Estonian and Lithuanian ships. (9) 

After arriving at Yarmouth Roads on 9 July, the Talvaldis left later the same day, sailing independently for Lisbon. At 7.10 that evening the Prawle Point Signal station on the south Devon coast reported a steamer three or four miles out to sea under attack by enemy aircraft, Ju87s (better known as Stukas) of StG 2. (10)

German aircraft with Iron Cross painted on its wings in vertical position against a cloud backdrop.
Bombs falling from a Ju 87 Stuka dive bomber during the Battle of Britain, July-October 1940., taken by a German photographer in an accompanying aircraft © IWM GER 18

Local RNLI services swung rapidly into action as the Salcombe lifeboat, Torbay lifeboat, and a motor boat from Lannacombe all put to sea. The motor boat was first on scene, finding one man dead from the combined bombing and machine-gunning of the vessel, which was by now rapidly sinking, and taking off six men, but standing by the other six crew in the ship’s boat until the arrival of the Salcombe lifeboat at 8.45pm, for which service the master of the Talvaldis gave each man of the Lannacombe motor boat £1. The lifeboat then took all 12 survivors on board. (11) 

In the meantime the Torbay lifeboat passed the Dutch motor vessel Jola, which had also been attacked and was putting into Dartmouth, with three crew having been wounded by machine-gun. This reveals that the Talvaldis was not the only vessel sailing independently, after parting company with Convoy CW 2. The Jola had also been one of the three Dutch ships in the convoy, and was also continuing her journey, some distance behind – sufficient distance, probably, to ensure that they were not mistaken by hostile eyes as forming part of any convoy or association for mutual assistance. (12) 

The remains of a ship believed to be the Talvaldis are charted some 2 miles south of Start Point, more or less three miles east of Prawle Point. The vessel is recorded as intact, broken amidships, but with bows WNW, orientated in the direction of travel, but little is known about the remains. Thus the Talvaldis remains obscure in terms of both her history and final voyage and her physical remains which have not been positively identified. (13)

Where had she been between August 1939 and March 1940? What was her cargo, if any, to neutral Lisbon? Does  the March 1940 voyage shed any light on her later voyage – was she bound once more on a Swansea-Portugal run with coal? This in itself would suggest that the vessel was operating in British colliery interests.

Her obscurity is rooted in the very nature of the intense period of the war in which she was lost. Latvia had just been occupied and would shortly be formally annexed by the USSR. News of the loss reached Riga fairly quickly, but we can only tell this from an intermediary report printed in neighbouring Estonia: ‘Riga: 12 July. Unverified reports from England state that the Latvian steamer Talvaldis has been sent to the bottom after an air attack.’ (14) This was just one incident in the Kanalkampf, the Luftwaffe battle against Channel shipping which began in early July 1940, but which would intensify and broaden its scope the day after the attack on the Talvaldis.

On 10 July 1940, the Battle of Britain began.

Footnotes: 

(1) Miramar Ship Index[subscription service]: entry for the Talvaldis; Latvian orthography from Jurnieks, 1 January 1940, No.1 [in Latvian], accessed from the National Library of Latvia, Digital Library 

(2) Fraserburgh Herald, 14 August 1956, p ; Gloucester Citizen, 17 April 1939, p7

(3) Liverpool Daily Post, 28 August 1939, p3, Newcastle Evening Chronicle, 28 August 1939, p6, Liverpool Daily Post, 30 August 1939, p14

(4) Convoyweb ; the name Talwadis is not attested elsewhere in standard shipping sources, e.g. the Miramar Ship Index 

(5) Convoyweb 

(6) See note 1. Jurnieks means ‘Sailor’ in Latvian, so this publication is ‘The Sailor‘; cf. the Jurneks of Riga, lost off the Tyne in 1901 (also recorded in variant spellings in English, and even on its own nameboards, as Jourhneeks, Jurhneek, Juhrneeks, and Jurneek). 

(7) For example, the Dutch Johan de Witt, which saw worldwide service as a trooper for the Allied cause, carrying over 39,000 troops, from 1940.

(8) Newsweek, ‘The Periscope’, Aug 11, 1941, p11, repr in Magazine Abstracts, Vol. VII, No.34, 20 August 1941, p106, (Washington: US Office of Government Reports, Division of Press Intelligence)

(9) A number of relevant documents survive at the National Archives for 1940-1,  e.g. Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian ships: prevention of Russian control (CO 854/331/8) and the Requisitioning of Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian ships (MT 59/502B) As early as 1939 there were also discussions over the possible chartering of Latvian tonnage (MT 59/1564).

(10) Sturzkampfgeschwader (‘Dive Bomber Squadron’)

(11) Miramar Ship Index [subscription service], entry for the Talvaldis; Bertke, D, Kindell, D, Smith, G,  2009. World War II Sea War Vol. 2 Britain Stands Alone: Day-to-Day Naval Actions from April 1940 through September 1940 (Dayton, Ohio: Bertke Publications); RNLI, 1940. Services by the Life-boats of the Institution and by Shore-boats during 1940 , p88, p146 [which, incidentally, spells Lannacombe as ‘Lannercombe’.]

(12) Convoyweb: Jola would survive the war, being scrapped in 1984: as part of her war service, she took part in Operation Neptune.

(13) UKHO 18046

(14) Uudisleht, 12 July 1940, No.181, p3, [in Estonian]; accessed via the National Library of Estonia, DIGAR (Digital Archive)

Diary of the Second World War: June 1940

~ Serena ~ Leave a comment

Armstrong Whitworth Whitley N1476

Historic black & white photograph of aircraft on the ground, nose to left of image.
Whitley T4162, (like N1476, a Mark V), of 102 Sqn at RAF Topcliffe, North Yorkshire. This aircraft failed to return from a raid on Cologne in March 1941. Serials T4151, T4159, T4160 and T4172 are also known to have crashed or ditched into the sea off the English coast. © IWM CH 2052

Our War Diary for the month of June 1940 focuses on another rare aircraft, Armstrong Whitley Whitworth N1476, lost on 20 June 1940, which, like the Blackburn Botha (February 1940 entry), was another example of an ‘extinct’ aircraft of which no complete or airworthy examples survive. (1)

This aircraft had entered service just a month earlier, on 20 May 1940, when it was allocated to 77 Sqn, RAF Driffield, Yorkshire. Introduced into service in 1937, the Armstrong Whitworth Whitley was a heavy bomber used by the RAF until 1944, although its main period of service was 1939-41. (2)

Historic watercolour showing four aircraft lined up, with the wing frame of a fifth being built in the background.
The distinctive rear turrets of the Whitley bomber are seen in this record of aircraft production in which the artist specialised. Rear Turrets of Whitley Aircraft. Raymond McGrath, 1940. Purchased by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee. © IWM Art.IWM ART LD 149

On the night of 19 June 1940 N1476 left Driffield for a bombing raid on the Ruhr piloted by Pilot Officer Andrew Dunn. N1476 and its five-man crew were struck by repeated anti-aircraft fire en route to their own target of the marshalling yards at Wanne-Eickel, before then coming under attack ‘by a Messerschmitt 109’. (3)

Contemporary artwork showing 4 bombers in action over Germany.
Target Area: Whitley Bombers over Berlin. Paul Nash, 1940. © IWM Art.IWM ART LD 827

The first attack put the intercom out of action and wounded both the observer, Sgt Bernard Savill, and the wireless operator, Sgt Joseph Dawson. The rear gunner, Pilot Officer Leslie Watt, managed to shoot down the Messerschmitt as it attacked again, but not before it had hit and disabled the Whitley’s port engine, which caught fire.  (4)

The crew then managed to attack their target and turn around for the return leg. The fire on the port engine was extinguished, but it burst into flames once more, was put out again, and the engine shut down. It was a long three and a half hour flight on a single engine across the North Sea, dropping as low as 400ft, while the second pilot, Pilot Officer Charles Montagu, made everything ready for abandoning the aircraft. (5)

They then ditched in the sea just off Hastings Pier (reported at the time as merely ‘off the south coast’) at 04.27am and issued a mayday call to which motor launches of Coastal Command responded. All five crew survived and were immediately recognised for ‘gallantry in flying operations’, the three Pilot Officers receiving the Distinguished Flying Cross and the two Sergeants, as ‘other ranks’, the Distinguished Flying Medal (a distinction which has since been abolished). (6)

Historic black & white photo of Hastings beachfront taken from an aircraft, whose wing is visible top left.
The town and seafront from the pier to Claremont, Hastings, shortly after the Second World War in 1946. EAW002408 © Historic England Britain from Above https://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EAW002408

Parts of the aircraft have been reported from the sea from time to time: a tyre from the undercarriage recovered in the 1980s, initially believed to be a bomb, now in the Robertsbridge Aviation Society Museum, which was identified as being part of N1476, and in the 2010s, a nut stamped with the RR logo, indicating a Rolls-Royce engine was also discovered near Hastings Pier. (7)

As the Whitley was powered by Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, N1476 is likely to be the prime candidate for this latter find, since the five other aircraft reported as having ditched or been shot down off Hastings during the Second World War were all German. Thus other aircraft which also had Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, such as the Spitfire, can be excluded from the candidates for consideration. (8) 

However, as the ‘bomb’ which was a tyre demonstrates, these finds are open to revision and interpretation: a find in the sea reported off Norfolk through the Offshore Renewables Protocol for Archaeological Discoveries (ORPAD) in 2015  was initially attributed to a recorded loss of another Armstrong Whitworth Whitley in the same vicinity, but after re-examination of the evidence in 2017 it was reported as being a part from a German Jumo engine and thus from something like a Junkers Ju87 or 88 or a Heinkel He111H. (9) 

This means that the Armstrong Whitworth Whitley off Hastings is a rare confirmed find. To date there has only been one other report of an Armstrong Whitworth Whitley in the sea off the south coast, without an identification attribute, so even as a subset of aircraft wrecks in the sea, they are rare.

I would like to thank Trevor Woodgate, Museum Manager at the Robertsbridge Aviation Society, for his very kind assistance.

Footnotes: 

(1) Holyoak, V, and Schofield, J. 2002 Military Aircraft Crash Sites: archaeological guidance on their significance and future management (Swindon: English Heritage)

(2) Holyoak & Schofield 2002, p8; Leverington, K (ed.) 1995 The Vital Guide to Fighting Aircraft of World War II (Shrewsbury: Airlife Publishing Ltd.) p5

(3) London Gazette, 12 July 1940, No.34,896,  p4,289; this aircraft is variously referred to as the Bf109 or the Me109. Detailed target information from the Museum Manager,  Robertsbridge Aviation Society pers. comm., 2020

(4) ibid; Allenby, R. (nd) Whitley N1476 at Finningley Airfield in Yorkshire Aircraft: aircraft accidents in Yorkshire

(5) London Gazette, 12 July 1940, No.34,896, p4,289

(6) ibid.; medal group and log of Sgt Bernard Savill; information from Robertsbridge Aviation Society

(7) The Museum Manager, Robertsbridge Aviation Society, pers. comm., 2020; Forces War Records 2013 Rare WW2 bomber found near Hastings

(8) Source: National Record of the Historic Environment database, Historic England

(9) ORPAD reports DOW_10284 (2015, 2017), as recorded in the National Record of the Historic Environment database, Historic England