J W Booth AUTOBIOGRAPHY C6

Chapter 6 The Navy at Sea

(a)Convoy Signalman.

Coastal convoys were assembled in Southend anchorage and sailed daily to the Firth of Forth and twice a week to Portsmouth. From the fall of France in 1940 until after D-day in 1944 the English Channel was closed to deep-sea ships and they either discharged at west coast ports or came round the north of Scotland for ports on the east coast and London. In due course a high proportion of Convoy Signalmen were drafted from Southend to Liverpool which was the assembly port for many deep-sea convoys including those across the Atlantic and the deadly route to Russia across the top of the world.
Escorts on the coast were a mixture of old V. and W. destroyers from the First World War, newer Hunt Class destroyers and some of the vastly inferior American four-funnelled survivors oft he First War and about 20 years of moth-balling.
It was a fundamental rule that the Senior Officer of the Escort (S.O.E.) was in overall command of the convoy and on the coast where S.0.E's were either Lt. Commanders or Lts. R.N. and Commodores were Commanders R.N.R. this was certainly enforced.This reflected the great gulf fixed between regular officers and reservists. The saying was that an officer R.N. was a gentleman trying to be a sailor, an R.N.R. was a sailor (fromthe Merchant Navy) trying to be a gentleman and an R.N.V.R.was neither trying to be both. It is fair to say that each straight ring (R.N.) was worth two wavy ones (R.N.R.) and any number of R.N.V.R..
I suspect that S.O.E’s on deep-sea convoys handled Commodores rather more warily as the latter were apt to be retired Admirals with friends in high places, but I never saw this at work as I remained based on Southend until I was demobbed. My chalet-mate Bert from Skegness finished up in Liverpool and was once the lone signalman on the ship acting as Vice-Commodore on a trip across the Atlantic eastbound. They had a radio-telephone for use at night, when flashing lights about was frowned on, and at dusk each evening Bert's friend on the Commodore's ship made test call on it, usually of a humorous nature. One evening Bert picked it up and a voice said; "This is the Commodore here" to which Bert replied "That’s a good job you've got there. Don't get drunk and lose it" and the caller rang off. A little later Bert's mate rang to make the test and Bert spent the rest of the trip in mortal fear that had nothing to do with the enemy. On the harbour boat taking them ashore at Liverpool the Commodore said to Bert "Were you the signalman on the Vice - well take note that I've still got that job". He never mentioned it in the Base. Really senior officers were like that.
At Southend we were broken in gently by trips on ships down the line, usually only as far as the Tyne. My first trip, which I shall never forget, was on a 700-ton collier called the Whitley. As coal only moved from north to south all northbound colliers were shown as in ballast although they were never actually ballasted. Most of them were built like small tankers with their engines aft in the hope that the weight would keep the screw in the water most of the time.
I was put aboard overnight in Southend and slept on the settee in the saloon. Breakfast was served before we sailed, and I was turfed out while the table was laid. From outside I heard the Captain ask the officers if they would allow me to sit downwith them, which they did. He asked me if this was my first trip to sea and then said; "Make a good breakfast, from the look of the weather forecast it will be your only meal this trip". How right he was. Years later a clerk in the Customs office on the Tyne asked me if I had ever come across a collier called the Whitley on the east coast. Her Captain in 1942 was his father.
By 1942, E-boat attacks were only spasmodic, most of the aircraft we regularly fired at were friendly and the worse the weather the less the likelihood of enemy action. More importantly, I discovered that I was one of the lucky ones who missed most of the action that there was. E-boats attacked the convoy ahead of mine or the guns on Cap Gris Nez were in action the night before I went through the Dover Strait. As somebody once said: ‘In a dangerous situation the only thing better than presence of mind is absence of body'.
I was on a training trip on a collier in the Channel on the day of the Dieppe Raid. We lay off Shoreham waiting for the tide and thinking there was a lot of air activity. As we were going in about teatime German aircraft were bombing the landingcraft as they arrived back with the Canadian survivors and whole squadrons of fighters were roaring out to drive them off. Later rumour had it that this raid was only mounted to make use of the thousands of Canadians who were frustrated by lack of action in England and it was a ghastly failure. Others have since maintained that it was an essential trial run for the eventual invasion and probably saved more casualties in 1944 that it cost in 1942. I expect the truth lies somewhere in between as it often does.
Once I had stopped being sick quite so often, I became a regular member of the team, so to speak, usually on the Commodore's ship but occasionally on the Vice. Coastal convoys formed two columns once they were clear of the Thames estuary, the Commodore leading the port column and the Vice the starboard. There was a Leading Sig. and two signalmen with the Commodore and one signalman on the Vice, the latter working the daylight hours only. Their duty was to maintain contact with the escorts by lamp and with the other ships in convoy by flags and sound signals on the siren.
Navigation was assisted by lighted buoys anchored in the centreof the swept channel which were identified and listed in theroute book. The signalmen worked 4 hours on and 4 off, theleading hand was up as required day or night and all signalsand the time of passing each channel buoy was logged. Strong and irregular tides and frequent gales made navigation much trickier that it sounds and watch keeping officers usually welcomed an extra pair of eyes. Nearly all the ships were coastal colliers at that time and I remember the winter of 1942/43 mainly for the weather.
On one trip we had a full gale from the North West and took three days to reach the Tyne instead of the usual 36 hours.We were on a 3,000-ton collier with the engine aft and she pitched heavily in a big head sea. From midnight to 4am one night I logged only one buoy were only about five miles apart, but with the wind and tide against us a speed of some 8 knots through the water was only about one and a bit over the ground and we were virtually bouncing up and down in thes ame hole.
She also 'milestoned' continually. This was an alarming phenomenon caused by the bow rising and the stern being kept down by the weight aft and the drag of the screw causing the bow to hang in the air and finally come down not in the trough but across the next wave. This jarred her from stem to stern and felt just like striking a ledge of rock. The credulous newcomer to the coast was told that there were actual milestones in the channel as an aid to navigation and the ship was scraping over them. The mate told me not to worry until the siren sounded continuously which would mean that the ship's back was broken and the connecting wire from the siren to the bridge had tightened. I was not reassured.
When we did make the Tyne we discovered that the convoy which had sailed 24 hours before us had only just beaten us to it.The Commodore of the one before that had met the worst of the storm when he attempted to round Flamborough Head and been forced to run for shelter in the Humber with his funnel beaten flat and lifeboats carried away. So I had missed the worst of it again.
One of my best trips in that period was on a 700-ton Norwegian coaster which was acting as Vice-Commodore. It was my firsten counter with Norwegians, who appear to be a race of courteous giants. I slept on the lockers in the saloon as was usual on small ships, but the steward made me up a bunk with sheets. Normally it was my duffel coat as a blanket and life-jacket as a pillow. I was awakened by a man giving me a cup of lovely coffee and as he disappeared into the pantry I realised that it was the Captain. Apparently his steward had brought him a tray as usual and he had poured the first cup for me and was off to find another cup for himself. On Norwegian cargo boats, the officers have a mess room and the Captain eats alone in the saloon, but on this trip I ate with him. This was not due to any mistaken idea of my status but because the Captain spoke perfect English and we could thus have ordinary conversation, whereas I should have been an odd man out elsewhere in the ship. I really think they must be the politest nation on earth.
We spent Christmas 1942 in the Tyne but not much of the YMCA. As it got light at sea on Christmas Eve mustered the usual party aft to hoist the White Ensign only this time it was a huge flag bearing the slogan; 'Guinness is good for you'. At the same time she ran up the signal;' Home for Christmas – the convoy will proceed at 30 knots.' We would have burst a few boilers at eight.
When it was my turn to see how the other half lived, I was put aboard the Hunt Class destroyer 'Whaddon' and had a very pleasant trip in a flat calm with no untoward incidents although it was perfect E-boat weather. I felt much more uneasy on a warship than I normally did on a coaster because the mess deck was down below in the bows and in certain circumstances getting out would have been a major problem. Thank God I never became an E.R.A. The Whaddon's signals staff, who were much more experienced than I was, were very friendly and pleasant to me and, strangely, so was the Captain. He was just the type of Lt. Commander R.N. who could be firm with convoy Commodores and his signals to junior escort Captains were quite curt, but to me, the lowest of the low, he was always courteous.
Between convoys we were apt to be put on shore duties or jobs on the harbour craft operating around Southend. One of the least interesting of these chores was 'back door sentry' at the baseon Royal Terrace. The sentry was duly equipped with belt andgaiters, the traditional gear that indicates that a sailor is going to play at being a soldier. He also carried a World War One rifle in a dubious state of repair. When one sentry came to the 'Present' to salute a brasshat his rifle butt fell off. What would have happened if the thing had been fired is anybody's guess. Prospective sentries were briefed by the Chief Yeoman, who read them the standing orders including the requirement that the sentry should walk his post in a seamanlike manner. The Chief said that from what he had seen of seamen that should mean 'three-parts pissed with his cap flat aback' but it didn’t. The Signals Branch always expressed contempt for all other branches of the service.
Harbour duties were rather more entertaining even if less comfortable. There were a number of Thames tugs with civilian crews, a Sub. Lt. R.N.V.R., an R/T operator and a signalmanon board used to patrol the Barrow Deep ushering convoys inand out. Sometimes they performed a trick called 'buttoning on' which involved going alongside ships of an incoming Channel convoy, swapping over their papers and tacking them on to a departing northbound convoy. In windy weather this could be exciting stuff.
The R/T operator was actually a seaman and he received and sent messages between the various tugs and Southend base (Call Sign32.) With the set switched on all tugs heard all messages which passed whether they were concerned or not, and also ones from warships coming in to Sheerness. These were mainly in coded groups of letters but sometimes in exceedingly plain language.We once heard an incoming destroyer read a lengthy coded message to Sheerness and then some incompetent there asked for repeats of bits and pieces until the exasperated operator on the ship said; "I will repeat my message in its entirety for the last time. Can't you hear me, you fatherless child".
One of our R/T operators asked for leave because his wife was expecting their first child at any time, but was refused. Later we heard the Wren at the base pass him a routine message incode and add at the end - 'A girl. Out.' The new father came on in great excitement 'Hallo 32 32 - say again please last word'. The Wren did so, and being overheard by the P.O.Telegraphist, was put on a charge. She was marched in to theFirst Lt. charged with passing a private message on the official set and the P.O. described the crime at some length. Jimmy said"Is this true"? and she replied "Yes, Sir, Very well" said Jimmy, "Case dismissed". Collapse of miserable old bugger.
Another job regularly performed by the outer patrol tug was putting a signalman aboard an outgoing destroyer for an educational trip. This was usually abandoned in bad weather but I was on the tug once when the officer insisted on trying it on a very rough morning. As we closed in the signalman grabbed the destroyer's guard rail and hung on as the tug rose and the ship dropped away leaving him standing on his hands with his feet in the air. Before he could fall to almost certain death between the two vessels, a couple of heroes on the destroyer grabbed him by his clothes and hurled him inboard.

(b) Leading Hand - Acting Up.

When I returned from Cookham in 1943, and started acting up as Leading Signalman, there was a steady increase in the proportion of deep-sea ships in East Coast convoys as Allied mastery of the air in the area made it less dangerous and enabled the overloading of the west coast ports, and the consequent idleness of those on the east side, to be eased. From the middle of 1944 Southend became an assembly port for new convoy routes, first to Arromanches in France and then to Antwerp in Belgium. On the east coast one normally went north on one ship and returned on another but round trips to France or Belgium were usually made on the same ship both ways. Either way a Convoy Signalman saw very little of the real Navy, except an occasional daunting look at Chatham Barracks, but he saw a great deal of the Merchant Navy, being on as many as 50 ships a year, though only a few days on each.
From our point of view, small coasters were the least desirable- with a few honourable exceptions - having little or no spare accommodation and not being victualled on the scale of deep-seaships. They did not carry duty-free cigarettes either. A Commodore frequently had an unfortunate preference for some of the regular coasters because their officers knew the routes thoroughly giving no cause for concern about navigation and, of course, they found a cabin for him. As these ships were regularly lumbered with the job, they had little time for signalmen, who were a strange animal to the Merchant Service anyway. In the Royal Navy both Visual Signalmen and Telegraphists are lower deck ratings. In the Merchant Navy Sparkers are officers, visual signalling is done by the deck officers or apprentices and there are no signalmen as such. They never knew quite where we fitted in.
Deep-sea ships had more space, were better victualled and carried duty-free stores. They were usually much more pleased to see us, or less displeased anyway. We were less trouble to them and most deck officers were not too proud to accept a little help in buoy-spotting which was the basis of coastal navigation. Deep-sea men professed to despise coasters, the traditional jibe being 'What do you do if you lose sight of the land?' The answer was 'The same as you do if you see it. Shit myself.' I never saw a coaster officer deep-sea but deep-sea men on the coast were usually nervous wrecks.
Merchant Navy officers accepted the risk of being sunk by enemy action without worrying about it too much. They were more concerned about running aground or any other mishap which migh tbe attributed, however unfairly, to professional incompetence.When we were in a north-westerly gale once on a coaster the Commodore suggested that if it got any worse we might shelter in Bridlington Bay. The skipper was horrified. He said that if the wind shifted a ship in the bay might be driven ashore and he would rather go out of the swept channel and ride it out in the open sea. He preferred to risk being mined, in which case nobody could blame him and he would probably be dead anyway, to going aground and surviving to face the Board of Trade.
There was one tanker running regularly up the coast which was a deep-sea ship relegated to coasting by age and infirmity and still having a full complement including apprentices so from a Commodore's point of view she was the best of both worlds. She was frequently used and bitterly disliked by the signalmen because she not only had the largest and bleakest bridge on the coast but also a very unpleasant First Officer and a senior apprentice to match. Most apprentices were eager to assist the signalmen and thus to pick up knowledge of morse and flags which they needed for their mates ticket exams but this lad was superior to all that. One windy morning the signals staff was a bit pushed and my regular Commodore, a kindly man who had been a liner Captain in peacetime, hauled down a hoist of flags himself. The wind got hold of them and thus the ship's Captain arrived on the bridge to see a senior officer struggling with a stream of bunting while an apprentice stood looking on with his hands in his pockets. A lifetime at sea had equipped the captain with the right vocabulary for dealing with that situation and we saw very little of the unfortunate lad for the rest of the trip.
But the answer to every signalman's prayer was a 'Yank'.
Generally speaking the Americans got a very bad Press in England during the war. Much of it was undeserved, but they brought it on themselves. Long before we saw their Air Force I remember boastful tales of a bomb-sight that could drop a bomb in a barrel from 30,000 feet. We didn't take this literally, of course, but it shook us a bit when on one of their early daylight raids on Germany they dropped bombs in Switzerland. Bombing was never a very exact science but you were expected to hit the right country.
The real trouble started when the Yanks began to accumulatein England in 1943/44. There were brawls in pubs, of course, just as there were between our own soldiers, sailors and airmen, but the main trouble centred on girls. All women seem to be fascinated by foreigners, presumably because a change is as good as a rest. Lads from their own village have no chance; boys from another part of their own country are better but anyone from overseas is tops. Our girls had been running after Frenchmen and Poles and, given the chance, Italian prisoners-of-war, since 1940, but the Yanks scooped the pool.
In those days the cost of living in America was two or three times as high as in England and by our standards they were handsomely paid. Their bases were loaded with ice-cream and nylon stockings and food and cigarettes were also in unlimited supply. With these advantages I never understood why they didn't carry off the flower of British womanhood. I have nothing against G.I. brides but they were rather a mixed bunch so I suppose not all G.I.'s were good pickers. They doubtless handled a lot of goods they didn't eventually buy, so to speak, but that has happened all down the ages.
The general public saw the Americans at their worst when they were apt to be a bit drunk and behaved as though they owned the place. Convoy Signalmen saw them at their best on American ships which were commonly dry and they did own the place. They always behaved as though we did. It was not only their open-handed generosity, which even their worst enemies could hardly deny, but their great sense of hospitality. They treated us with a consideration we rarely received on British ships, for example.
Merchant ships generally serve meals rather earlier than places ashore and convoy conferences followed by embarkation usually meant that the signalmen were afloat too early for lunch ashore and arrived on the ship too late to get any there. This was no problem to the Americans who invariably enquired if you had 'et' and if you hadn't they made sure that you did regardless of the time of day. The food was unlimited and magnificent by British wartime standards. One of our lads who was married had two children and mentioned on a Liberty ship that neither of them had ever seen tinned fruit. The steward said 'Come and see me before you go and I'll give you a can'. The can produced looked nearly as big as an oil-drum and we wrapped it in a duffel coat and lugged it ashore. When the signalman got home he alerted all the neighbours to line up with basins when he opened it and there was enough for the whole street.
My first Yank was a pre-war ship named 'Marina'. She was superior to the Liberty ships which became so common later on but the set-up was standard on all their ships. They were much more heavily armed that ours and carried about 20 U.S. Navy gunners commanded by an Ensign - the equivalent of a Sub. Lt.- and also two U.S. Navy signalmen. They were notoriously bad navigators and station-keepers in convoy because they had built up their fleet so quickly that most of the officers had little or no sea experience. It reminded me of the man who crossed a homing pigeon with a parrot so that if it got lost it could ask its way. That was what the two Navy signalmen were for.
The first myth to be exploded on the 'Marina' was the idea that Americans had no respect for their officers and called them by their first names to their face. The Gunnery Ensign introduced us to the riotous assembly in the gunner's mess room in the evening. When he walked in his men immediately fell quiet and came to attention, because he was obviously a good officer and was treated as such. One gunner went to rouse out the steward- because we hadn't et - and another showed us to a real cabin with bunks. Thereafter we had a steady stream of callers with magazines, cigarettes - in cartons of 200 - and candy.
I soon found that the one thing to be avoided was the tea, which didn't matter once I had convinced them that I was the only Englishman in the world who preferred coffee. Their coffee was great. They had a machine in the mess room which had two taps,one for coffee and the other for hot, but not boiling, water. To make tea they scooped up dry tea from an open chest in a wire mesh tea strainer, placed it over a mug, ran the hot water through it and then threw the tea leaves out. The water was barely discoloured though each mug used several ounces of tea at a time when the ration ashore was, 2 ounces a week per person. I sent the signalman of the watch down one morning on a Libertyship and asked him to bring me one when he came back. He was gone longer than expected and finally staggered up with a tray carrying a huge coffee pot, about a quart of milk, a couple of pounds of sugar and a pile of biscuits. Apparently the steward was cleaning out the machine and wouldn't hear of the signalman going without his coffee.
Our ideas about Americans mostly came from Hollywood films, and although they didn't act like film stars they generally sounded like them and I always had the odd sensation that I was on a movie set. In conversation they showed a nice dry sense of humour and they didn't mind if the joke was on them. On one convoy one of the escorts was one of the famous 50 old destroyers that Churchill got out of Roosevelt for a piece of the Empire, and it had the usual four funnels. An American officer asked me 'Why has she got four stacks?. I said 'You tell me. You built her. The theory over here is that there's one for smoke and three for bullshit'. He loved it and passed the crack round the bridge where it was universally well received.
One gunner came of a military family and proudly informed me that his eldest brother was a Colonel in the Air Corps, hisother brother was a Major in the Marines and he himself was a seaman - First Class. Another gunner on the same ship was a farmer from the mid-west and he told us that they had a free and easy attitude to property there. If they were short of anything they helped themselves to each others. One season he was short of corn and went to his neighbour's barn. But everyone was short of corn that year and on the way back with a sack on his shoulder he met his neighbour coming the other way with a sack of his corn of his. Someone said 'What did you do?' He said 'What could we do? We said 'Good evening' but we never did it no more. We figured we wasn't getting no place'.
The Yanks usually hadn't been ashore in England before and asked us many questions about prices. One asked me if it was true that beer was very dear and I said that by his standards it was cheap. But a 'buddie' had told him it was half-a-crown(12p) a half pint. This showed how shamefully the Yanks were ripped off as the going rate was actually about a shilling (5p)a pint. I suggested that it would pay them to chum up with a couple of our lads and let them do the buying. Even if the Yanks provided all the money it would be much cheaper all round.
During the last couple of years of the war virtually all American ships seen round the coast, and an increasing proportion of British ones were Liberty ships. They were clumsy-looking ships of about 7000 gross tons with a high centre structure and a short funnel amidships. They had been pre-fabricated all over the States and the large sections welded together in conventional shipyards. They were not as stoutly built as coastal colliers, for example. Their ribs were lighter and set further apart and their longitudinal strength was questionable to say the least. They were also great rollers even in a moderate sea. Ironically, I believe the man behind all this was a genius named Kaiser. Not the Kaiser, of course, he was on the other side in an earlier war.
These ships were turned out by the thousand at an incredible rate and this accentuated the shortage of qualified officersso they were notoriously bad navigators. They used the convoy system not so much to protect them from the enemy as to prevent them getting lost and even in convoy they sometimes did. Their reported structural weaknesses did not create much of a problemon the coast where we commonly had what was called a short sea,with confused motion due to conflicting wind, tide and currents and the presence of shallows and sandbanks. In the long rollers of the Atlantic they had a tendency to break in two - as tankers occasionally do even today - due to being unevenly supported either across two waves which made them sag in the middle, or one really big sea which broke them in two as one might break a stick across ones knee. Nevertheless, if two could be produced in less than the time taken to build one conventional ship a small percentage of losses in heavy weather to be added to the much greater losses due to enemy action was reckoned to be acceptable. At least by the powers-that-be ashore, I'm not so sure about the crews. I heard of an Atlantic convoy which lost five in one night when the weather was too bad for enemy action.
They went in for heavy deck cargoes too. I have seen full-sized locomotives on their decks, and we once boarded one at Methilwhich had a marked list to port even in the anchorage. She had set off from the States with four bulldozers stacked square on her after hatch in huge packing cases secured by steel wires. When she began to roll the top two cases smashed down through the bottom two and thus slackened the wires. The whole mass was continually being flung into the scuppers on one side and then clean over the hatch into the other and threatened to capsize the ship. Instead of cutting the wires and letting the whole lot go overboard, the Captain turned up all hands, waited until the mass of metal and wood crashed over to port and then jammed it there with balks of timber between it and the starboard bulwarks and hove the wires taut. I bet the unsung heroes who did that cursed the Old Man.
For diplomatic reasons U.S. ships were used as Commodore or Vice-Commodore whenever convenient, usually when they were carrying a North Sea pilot, which they did whenever they could get one. The poor man faced about 48 hours on the bridge with his ticket at stake if anything went wrong but no doubt he was well rewarded.
At one Methil conference a U.S. Liberty ship which we will call Hiram. K. - they were all named after people - was made Vice despite the protests of the skipper of a British tanker called the Bombardier who had already followed the Hiram across the Atlantic and said her station keeping was dreadful. However, she had a pilot and all went well until we were off Flamborough Head where we had to make a big turn to starboard. As we were leading the port column and Hiram was abreast of us in the starboard line, we signalled her to drop back on to our quarter so as not to run ahead of us when we made the turn, and she did so. The Bombardier instantly increased speed and signaled that the Hiram was astern of station and he wanted to take her place. We told him not to but he had passed her by then and was well ahead of us.
We hoisted the flag signal 'Stop Instantly' which was repeated by the leading destroyer and acknowledged by the Bombardier, but the latter was still going ahead at full speed. The destroyer closed her at speed and fired a burst from a heavy machine-gun across her forward deck just in front of her bridge. Bombardier stopped and resumed her proper place explaining that her engines had jammed. I often wondered what would have happened if that excuse had been true. If she had been fired into she might well have caught fire and although the Articles of War empowered escorts to enforce their orders by force of arms and indemnified them for any damage or loss of life which might result I doubt if Their Lordships would have been very pleased.
In the build-up to D-day many Liberty ships carried very nasty cargoes. We did a run to Methil on one with a full load of aerial bombs. She rolled heavily all the way and I had a mental picture of large round bombs rolling from side to side and clanging together. I don't suppose they did but I was haunted by the thought. On another occasion we were alongside an ammunitionship in Southend anchorage when a flying bomb passed close overhead on its way to London. The Yankee skipper laughed heartily, a thing I couldn't have managed at the time.
After D-day we did a few runs to the artificial harbour at Arromanches usually in British managed Liberty ships, all of which had names beginning with 'SAM'. They were not nearly so well regarded as the Yanks, but the trips, like most of mine, were without serious incident.
Towards the end of 1944 the port of Antwerp was opened up to us and we made regular runs up the Scheldt, usually on Sam boats.We rendezvoused with the escorts in Margate Roads and our Vice Commodore was sunk there on one occasion. There was a tremendous explosion and the destroyer signaled 'Lisita mined or torpedoed.
Extinguish all lights and proceed at your utmost speed'. We needed no second bidding.
Returning from Antwerp once we were moving up the line to ourstation when another Sam boat we had just passed was torpedoed and all hell broke loose. By the time the column of water and debris had subsided she had broken in two at her after mast and the stern sank at once. All the other ships, including ours, were firing at a periscope which had been sighted near an old wreck, while the leading escort came pelting down the line through a hail of shot flying the 'Cease Fire' on one halliard and a black pennant on the other. The attacker was a one-manmidget submarine. They each carried two torpedoes slung one on each side of the hull and nobody wanted the other one. The black pennant meant 'I am attacking an underwater object' and the destroyer made a tight turn round the wreck and dropped a pattern of depth-charges. Water, sand and pieces of wreckagewere hurled high in the air and it was incredible that anyone could have survived, but the midget was actually forced up and the intrepid one-man crew picked up unhurt. We later saw him walking on the escort's deck apparently on the best of terms with her officers. The ship sunk was one on which we had done a previous trip and I feared the worst for her gunners whose quarters were near the point of impact, but we learned later that there were only a couple of deaths in the actual explosion and all other hands were quickly picked up. This was the nearest I ever got to being in action.

c) Commodores, S.O.E.'s and Gunners.

Having mentioned that Convoy Signalmen saw very little of the 'real' Navy, it is convenient to consider the people they did see quite a lot of as a kind of postscript to my uneventful career at sea.
Shortly after I began to act up as Leading Hand each of us was linked to a particular Commodore. Only a couple of the latter were generally regarded with some apprehension and I did not draw either of these short straws. I was allocated to a mild-mannered, pleasant man in his fifties named Lunnon, who had been a Captain with the New Zealand Shipping Co. pre-war. He seemed as old as the hills to me at the time but we got on very well.
Generally speaking it was the kiss of death to get a bad report from a Commodore but the First Lt. knew enough to make allowances for the two 'arch-bastards'. Only one Leading Hand ever got actual praise from one of them and he did it by a trick. Leaving the Firth of Forth, they had a pre-arranged mock torpedo attack by aircraft and the Commodore had the Leading Hand on the upper bridge with him to note down his report of the attack. 'No.l aircraft attacking ship 12 - dropped two - one hit, one miss etc..' the whole idea was to attack concurrently from all angles so the thing soon got hopeless and the killick gave up after a couple of lines.
When it was over and the Commodore said 'have you got all that',he brazenly replied 'I'll have to make a fair copy, Sir. It's a bit of a mess.' He then retired to the chartroom and compiled the whole thing as a work of fiction. He was a salesman in civil life and could spin a good yarn. The 'report' was sent in to the Admiralty - and the Air Ministry, I expect - and probably formed the basis for attacking ships for the rest of the war. The Commodore was pleased, which was a first, and the Leading Signalman was commissioned as Sub. Lt. which was another.
Most signals were drafted like telegrams for obvious reasons, but one red-bearded, piratical-looking Commodore either drafted them like business letters or in rhyme. Once when an escort ventured to suggest that his ship was off-course he made a polite reply beginning 'My dear Sir, I would have you know that there are on this bridge at present no less than four master mariners.' On another occasion, asked for his ETA (Estimated time of arrival) he startled the S.O.E. with:-
I hope that we shall not be late,
My sweetheart's waiting at the Gate.
According to my ETA,
We reach the boom at noon today.
It was hard work with him but great fun.
An equally cheerful character was one of the regular S.O.E's, the Captain of the destroyer 'Valorous'. She bore the number L.OO and was commonly referred to as the Chinese destroyer Loo.Luckily that word was not then in common use to mean a lavatory.This Captain was promoted out of her to a bigger destroyer and we were subsequently overtaken by his new ship one evening. She came tearing up in a flurry of foam and flags and the Commodore said’ me 'What the hell does that mean?. Look it up in the book.' Greatly daring I said 'Never mind the book, Sir. In plain language it reads 'Hello Boys'.
Apparently several Commodores had frequent brushes with Lt. Cdr. Archer of the 'West' but we frequently had him as S.O.E. withnever a cross word. Cdr. Lunnon remarked on this when we had the West northbound to Methil, and when we started the returntrip there she was again roaring down from Rosyth to greet uslike old friends and take us south. In the meantime we had spent a couple of days ashore and Cdr. Lunnon had been to Rosyth to see his daughter who was a Wren officer at the base there. She was not available, being out on a date with Lt. Cdr. Archer.
When the Commodore's ship northbound was a Tyne collier, theS.O.E. sometimes offered to give the Commodore and his staffa lift to Methil, taking them off the collier by whaler off the Tyne. On one occasion when Lt. Cdr. Archer did this for us the boat handling left something to be desired and he kept up a running fire of acid comment to the coxwain through the loudhailer. Finally he said 'Ship your oars, Coxwain, I'll bringthe ship alongside you', and he did. To anyone of a nervous disposition, like me for instance, the sight of a destroyerbearing down on a boat is very impressive.
Afternoon sailings from Methil were frequently delayed by fog off May Island in the Firth of Forth and there were various incidents, some hairier than others. We anchored there once in'Nil' visibility and a northbound convoy arrived and attempted to force its way in, which would have been reckless if no other ships had been in the Firth. With a whole convoy anchored inthe fairway it was suicidal. Her leading escort glanced off our anchor cable, and a huge loaded U.S. tanker missed us by a few feet, let go her anchor as she passed us at about 8 knotsand brought up without hitting anyone. A clear example of the way the Lord looks out for the daft.
On another occasion, we were anchored in the same area in fog when our escort, HMS. Wallace, came ghosting down from Rosythlooking for us. It was normal for papers from the Naval Controlin Methil to be passed to the S.O.E. by firing a line across.This time the Wallace crept in under our stern to come alongside. I climbed on to our guard-rail holding out the papers but was completely ignored by about 20 men on her forecastle who were busy protecting her paintwork with fenders. However, a weary voice from her bridge said 'Well somebody take the bloody papers. That's what we're here for', and I was nearly snatched overboard in the rush. Then Wallace backed off into the grey and was seen no more until it lifted. I remember reading somewhere that the Duke of Edinburgh served on the Wallace at one time but I do not know if he was on her then. Her Captain's voice put me in mind of Charles Laughton as Capt. Bligh in 'Mutiny on the Bounty
Fog was always a problem on the coast. The normal practice was to anchor and wait for a clearance but this was impossible in places like the Pentland Firth where tides of eight knots were common. Ships frequently arrived north-about at Methil with their lifeboats, which were always carried swung out at the davit heads so as to float off if the ship was sunk, hanging in ribbons due to bumping a Jid boring in fog. With the development of radar since the war, I believe ships now keep going in fog and, in relation to the number of ships at sea, there are more serious collisions than we ever had.
Arriving at Methil after dark involved rousing the Signals Station to get taken ashore, not an easy thing to do. In this situation, a certain Cdr. Hutchins brusquely hailed a passing harbour craft saying ' Come alongside. I want to go ashore’. The Subby in charge, who must have had a hard day, thought this was a skipper looking for a lift and replied 'I'm not running a water taxi here. Who do you think you are? Hutchins, who was a rather fussy little man very conscious of his dignity, fairly danced with rage and roared back 'I think I'm Cdr. Hutchins, you impudent puppy. Get alongside and get up to this bridge before I have the coat off your back'. The fact that the ship's officers were all falling about and the signals staff trying in vain not to, didn't help either.
One of the perils of being, or acting as, a leading hand wasbeing responsible for the gear, aldis lamps, batteries,confidential books, etc. In the nature of things there wereoccasional losses usually overboard in the course of transferfrom harbour craft to ship or vice versa. I was fortunate in that the one time I lost a lamp, value £14-odd - a fortune to me at the time, Cdr. Lunnon backed my report that this was an unavoidable accident. Nevertheless, I was marched in as adefaulter accused of negligence and the Maintenance Cdr. wasnot amused, this being the second such case in a couple of days.He commenced by saying 'The Commodore reported this as an accident, and I accept that, but-------'. He then bawled me out at some length which I bore with fortitude as his opening words amounted to an acquittal and meant that the cost of replacement would fall on the Crown, which was, and is, richer than I. "When he finished, the Jaunty shouted 'Lost due to accident' and marched me out.
One unfortunate Killick dropped an aldis lamp into Methil Dock, luckily the actual dock not the anchorage. It was recoveredby a local diver who was a civilian and asked the officer in charge of the operation if he should complete the usual formof claim for his fee. The officer said 'No, the Leading Hand is personally responsible' where upon the diver, with typical Scottish generosity which is so much at variance with their reputation, waived his fee altogether. He said 'If you see me in the Brig you can buy me a pint'. I don't know if he did so, but if he did I bet the diver bought the next round anyway.
Mentioning the Jaunty reminds of a story which deserves to be true but probably isn't. A rating on a ship about to go foreign had got his girl into trouble and she was seven months pregnant. A marriage was hastily arranged to be conducted by the Chaplain in the Captain's cabin. The Jaunty, who had had his tot and a couple of others, was roped in as a witness and stood throughout the ceremony in a pleasant daze. The surroundings and procedure seemed vaguely familiar but he was not sure of his ground until the Chaplain firmly stated 'I now pronounce you man and wife'. That was the Jaunty's usual cue. He came to attention and shouted ' Rated man and wife. Backdated seven months' and marched the happy couple out.
The only section of the Forces which had much in common with convoy signals was the D.E.M.S. (Defensively Equipped MerchantService.) The gunners were not merchant seamen; they were a mixture of naval ratings and soldiers of the Maritime Regiment of the Royal Artillery, who seemed to serve together with little or no friction. I suppose they were a little better off than us in some small respects but they were certainly worse off in others. Even in quite big ships there were rarely more than a dozen of them under a P.O. or a Sergeant and they saw little of their officers who were based on the ports, not the ships.They did not flit from ship to ship as we did for each trip so they had regular sleeping quarters and messing arrangements. On the other hand they were much more at the whim of merchant skippers than we were and were commonly treated with less consideration ashore.
We got a good deal of short-term leave between trips which the DEMS seldom did. If their ship was in dock for a few days theCaptain could give them leave for a quick trip home for which they had to get pay and ration cards at the nearest base. They were often subjected to the notorious arrogance of office wallahs and I heard of cases where they arrived from sea mid-morning to be brusquely informed that pay parade was at 9am and they stuck until the next day. The presence of an officer, a real officer not a pay Subby, invariably prevented this nonsenseand we frequently drew advances of pay in the Tyne with the help of the Commodore.
My crew arrived there broke one Saturday afternoon without aCommodore - the ship's Captain having acted as such - and discovered that the R.N.V.R. officer who normally checked us in was on leave. We were processed by the Naval Control Service Officer himself, Captain de Burgh R.N. He bore a striking resemblance to Will Hay, especially when ticking off a convoy conference of sheepish coaster skippers, but this did not make him any less intimidating to us. However, spurred on by the daunting prospect of a penniless weekend in Newcastle YMCA, I ventured to mention it to the great man. He picked up a phone and informed the Pay Office that he was 'sending a couple of signalmen down to be paid'. Evidently pay parade was when he said it was.
More seriously, DEMS gunners must have suffered much more than we did on 'bad' ships. On and off every few days we could take the rough with the smooth but they might be stuck with the rough indefinitely. We once did a trip to the Tyne on a dreadful Baronboat where the food was awful and the gunners’ quarters so cramped and filthy that we refused to sleep and used the saloon settees. The DEMS P.O. and a Corporal had a separate room and the others, left to stew in their own juice, almost literally, had become demoralised and made no effort to improve their lot.
At the other end of the spectrum, we once had a southbound tanker on which, P.O. looked and sounded more like a university graduate than a gunner and had the whole system tightly sewn up. The food was good and the quarters spotless and he made very short work of some quibble about issuing extra blankets for the signalmen. I asked him what he would do if faced with a really bad ship. He said he had been in that situation once and had exercised his right to insist on the hoisting of the DEMS flag. This was an International Code flag which, when hoisted singly in harbour, means 'The DEMS officer is required onboard'.The officer boarded the ship and heard the complaints, inspected the quarters and withdrew the gunners. The ship was not allowed to sail until improvements had been made and inspected and then different gunners were put on her.
I said 'That was all very well for you, but they must have had a hard time of it. He said 'My dear chap, you should have seen the gunners they did put on her. The ship's officers were probably terrified of them'. I hadn't thought of it before, but of course a system of general conscription had to take the rough with the smooth and some of the rough were very rough indeed. In the DEMS, as in all service set-ups, the vital factorwas first-class N.C.O.'s.