The Old Man at sea

Eighty years ago at the age of 42 my dad joined the Royal Navy for the second time having already been in the First World War. We do not know if he was called up or volunteered.

When he was sent to Scotland to serve on HMS Whimbrel the following year he was the oldest man on the crew and also the only grandfather. Even the Captain was seven years his junior.

Whimbrel had only recently been completed at the Yarrow shipyard and was doing its sea trials before being handed over to the Royal Navy.  Dad remained with Whimbrel until he was sent home after VE Day to be demobbed.

Whimbrel was a sloop of the Swan class and had been essentially designed as an escort and submarine defence vessel.  It served in this role throughout the war providing escorts for convoys between the UK and America, Russia and the Mediterranean as well as also being involved in the Sicily landings in June  1943.

It was eventful few years in the war not just for Dad but for Whimbrel. It was never damaged by enemy attack but the weather damage during those fateful Atlantic and Russian convoys during winter months took its toll and the ship was in for repairs on several occasions. The Russian convoys were particularly hard on the crew and the ship because of the extreme weather. It is galling to many of the descendants of those men that the present day rulers of Russia have chosen to ignore the sacrifices of the men of the Royal Navy in saving the Russian people by getting greatly needed supplies through. Putin and co of course were not alive then and it is easy for them to choose to portray "the west" that saved them as now being the enemy.

There are several stories about these years in my book "Tales my father told me" available on Amazon at https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1517297184

HMS Whimbrel is still afloat, although under the name ENS Tariq, having been sold to the Egyptian Navy in 1954 despite many attempts over the years to bring her back to the UK for preservation.

A visit to Malta

In January 1945 HMS Whimbrel visited Malta  as part of a Royal Navy flotilla which was in training to go to the Pacific, The war in Europe was nearly over but the war for the Royal Navy and its crews was far from over, it was to be another year before they returned home.

Whilst moored in the Grand Harbour or adjacent to the bomb damaged Royal Naval Dockyard Dad  would have seen the church of Cospicua sitting just above, opposite Valletta. He did not know that this was the church in which his Maltese grandparents had been married in 1858 and  in which his mother had been baptised in 1862

Cospicua Church amid ruined houses 1942

The church had almost miraculously escaped unscathed from the enemy bombings of 1942 although many of the houses in the vicinity had been reduced to rubble.

Matti Grima Street, Bormla

If he had gone ashore to visit the church and if he had known, he could have walked up the stepped street alongside the church and a few streets away would have seen the house that his mother and grandmother had lived in an and where his great grandmother died.  But he knew nothing of this, as although he knew that his mother had been born in Malta, he had no idea which part of this small island she belonged to.  It was ironic that he was so close to her birthplace and was not aware of it.

Whilst at Malta there was shore leave for the crews and no doubt he would have visited some of the churches to attend mass, and perhaps chance may have taken him to the church of St. Paul Shipwrecked in the centre of the city where his grandfather had been baptised in 1835.

Yo ho ho and a bottle of cold tea

YO HO Ho and a bottle of cold tea

Most people will know that it was a tradition in the Royal Navy for a daily  issue of rum or grog as it was known. Grog was Navy rum watered down, although the watered version was still a lot stronger than the rum that you will find on most supermarket or liquor store shelves today.

There are many who believe that there is some relationship between the drinking of rum and the somewhat strange dances that sailors in days gone by indulged in.

The Ration during World War Two was a quarter of a pint of the grog per day, issued in two halves, the first between ten and midday and the second after 4 o clock in the afternoon.A quarter of a pint is roughly equivalent to 5/6 doubles.

One of the rules regarding the issue of the rum ration,  which had existed since the nineteen century,  was that the issue was supposed to be drunk there and then, not saved up, or given to another rating.

This particular rule was circumvented quite often, there being many men who did not particularly like rum or wanted to save their issue for later. So it was that certainly during the war, quite a lot of rum needed to be smuggled ashore, but for the most part this was not a problem.  Most dockyard security at that time was mainly concerned with the control of anyone going into the docks rather than the sailors going out.  The dock police were quite often ex sailors or merchant seamen who whilst being aware of the practice of bringing excess grog ashore for the most part did not consider it part of their remit to prevent it. After all it was against Nvy regulartions, but not a crime.  This attitude apparently was not apparent at the Liverpool docks for some reason, which is not explainable.  Going into a Liverpool shipyard meant running the gauntlet of officious officers manning the gates and randomly searching the sailors kits.

Unfortunately for HMS Whimbrel they had to go into Liverpool for weather repairs in April 1945 after just completing a more than usually bad run in a convoy from Scotland to Russia.  You would have expected that in the appalling weather, the crew would have been glad enought to drink their rum ration at the time of issue.  However there were still quite a few who had accumulated a stock which they would need to take ashore, as it was necessary to take all kit with them whilst the ship was in the repair yard.

Dad did not know how the arrangement came about, but a scheme was concocted to try to bamboozle the dock police regarding the bottles of rum in the kit.  It was quite complicated in that a large number of rum type bottles were filled with cold tea, and  placed in a somewhat conspicuous position in some of the kitbags.  The decoys carrying the tea, had a buddy who carried their rum ration.  The tea carriers pushed their way forward to the front of the line waiting to go through the gates, with non bottle carriers in between.   The first tea carrier being stopped, asked to open his kit bag and identify the contents of the bottle.  "It's tea" say he.  A knowing nod from the the policeman, who opens the bottle and takes a swig. By the time the policeman had tasted half a dozen bottles of tea, he knew that he was being conned in some way but was not able to work out how to deal with it.  There were over a hundred sailors waiting in line and the delays were causing much unrest, particularly amongst those who were not involved.  The policeman called a sergeant, who decided to make a test for himself, walked down the line, chose a kitbag at random and asked for it to be opened.  Fortunately this also contained a tea bottle.

Dad was of the opinion that the Sergeant either had a sense of humour, was towards the end of his shift or had other reasons, but he just went to the front of the queue, told the constable to open the gates and waived them all through.
This always seemed like a most unlikely story to me, but Dad insisted that it was true. 

1943 Mediterranean cruise with the Royal Navy

Mediterranean cruise.

Service on Board HMS Whimbrel between 1942 and 1946 almost amounted to a world cruise with visits to America and Canada, the Mediterranean, Russia and finally the Pacific.
June 1943 was a reasonably pleasant time on board. Whimbrel had recently been in the Clyde shipyard for a refit following a fairly hard winter serving as escort on the North Atlantic convoys. Refits of course meant that there was an opportunity for home leave, but the train journeys from Glasgow to London and then on the Guildford, mostly took a couple of days.  Many of the younger crew members for various reasons stayed in Glasgow.

 Following the refit and the usual workup trials they joined with a Naval  group escorting convoys from England to Gibraltar.
The weather was quite good and there was not a great deal of enemy activity on these trips. Arriving in Gibraltar Ernie learned that his eldest son was stationed there serving in the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment, so he applied for shore leave to go ashore and visit him.  He was a bit surprised to find the request was granted, without question.
He went ashore and found where young Ernie was stationed and they spent the day together and the evening in the Naafi, having rather more to drink than they should perhaps, but it was an exceptional circumstance after all. Time approached to be back at the ship and young Ernie said that he could arrange for his Dad to be taken back to the docks. Going outside the Naafi, Dad was surprised to find a Military Police jeep waiting for him outside, the occupants of which were two lads, brothers, from Wapping. So a Military Police escort back to the docks.
The Petty Officer on duty at the gangplank naturally assumed that Dad had been arrested and was being brought back to be charged, so he was also surprised when the two MP's shook hands with Dad and wished him good luck, and “see you when we all get home.”
After Gibraltar the next port of call was the North African coast. The allied armies were being built up there in preparation for the landings in Sicily which were to take place the following month.

Serving in Tobruk at this time was second son Tommy, who learned that Whimbrel was in the area and made contact to let his father know where he was. This kind of information was not supposed to be passed around, especially in the lead up to a major operation, but there are always ways and means.
So once again an application for shore leave but this time he had to go up before the skipper.
“Do you think you are on some sort of Mediterranean cruise, going round to visit all your relatives?” he asked.
“No sir”
“Well all right, but come back without a police escort this time”
The story of the previous return to the ship had obviously filtered upwards.
As it turned out, there was no chance of an escort and only time for a quick drink together as Tommy could only get a couple of hours off, his C.O. being less accommodating than Whimbrel's skipper. There was however time to have a photo taken.

Bread Pudding On the High Seas

On board HMS Whimbrel, Dad was the messman for the Petty Officers Mess.  Probably regarded as a cushy number but it wasn’t, but he got the job because he was the oldest member of the crew.  The role of the messman on board a Royal Navy ship was normally to keep the mess clean and tidy, serve up the meals and to clear away afterward.  He collected the meals from the galley and carried to the Mess  and  served them up.
Whilst the POs were not on the same level as commissioned officers in the wardroom, none the less they expected to get a better class of food than the ratings. Presumably it was related to the fact that unlike ratings, mess bills were deducted from the Petty Officer's pay, so that they were well aware of the fact that they were paying for the meals.  Or it may just be that a world war would not end the usual class system in the Royal Navy.

Although I heard this story many times I did not fully understand how the episode of the bread pudding came about.  I think it had something to do with some grizzles from the Petty Officer about a particular dessert served up.  Not that the menu as such had anything to do with the messman, but being the sort of man that he was he probably decided off his own bat to do something about it and serve them bread pudding.

A bread pudding is not to be confused with bread and butter pudding, it is a different animal completely.  Presumably most people know what a bread and butter pudding is , made with slices of buttered bread in layers with dried fruit placed in a dish with an egg custard and then baked. ( How's that for a one line recipe?).  Anyway a bread pudding is completely different, being made with stale bread which is soaked in either water or milk and then squished into an amorphous mixture to which is added dried fruit, butter and sugar and mixed spices.  This is then baked very slowly until it is crisp on top.  If eaten hot it is like a steamed pudding, and if served with custard is perhaps like a poor mans Christmas pudding.  Left to get cold, however, it is different and is more like a fruit cake.

Anyway, somehow or other Dad got involved in making a bread pudding in the galley, presumably because the messman had a fair amount of spare time in between serving the meals to the various watches and clearing away before the next.  Not one to be sitting about, no doubt he spent a fair amount of the spare -time to nosing around to see what others were doing.

 Dad was fond of bread pudding and knew how to make them.  Bread pudding is a traditional Maltese dish called Budina tal hobz and as his mother was Maltese his liking probably stemmed from that.  Dad's version of the pudding is not strictly the Maltese way, perhaps he didn’t remember how his mother made them or he just developed his own recipe.

If you know what bread pudding is, then you may not understand that there are people who have never come across it, and so it was that when Dad introduced it into the Petty Officers Mess as a dessert one day, then he was surprised to find that not a single one of them had ever tasted it before.

Now a bit like the island of  Malta itself, you either love it or hate it and that was the response in the PO's Mess.
On another occasion the complaints were about the spotted dick coming from the galley.  If you have ever tasted catering style spotted dick you will no doubt appreciate the complaint.  “Like mother makes” it is not.  (Had better add here for those who don’t know,  “spotted dick” is a suet pudding with sultanas in)  Of course he was asked if he could produce a spotted dick in the galley for the Petty Officers Mess, which of course he could.  Unfortunately by this time he was becoming a little unpopular in the galley as it appeared that he was trying to upstage the cooks, which of course was not his intention.  In typical east end style he circumvented the antagonism by making two puddings, one for the POs and one for the cooks.

A Warm welcome in Murmansk

Seventy years ago this month my dad arrived in the the Russian port city of Murmansk to a rapturous welcome.  The welcome wasn't just for him of course as he was with the other members of the crew of HMS Whimbrel which had arrived in port as part of the escort of the convoy JW58.  He never said too much about the actual voyage only remarking it had been "bloody cold" so that the young crew were happy to accept whatever kind of warm  welcome the young women of the town were prepared to offer.  Dad being 44 and the oldest member of the crew opined that he would  look for some quieter relaxation for the two days that they were in port before turning round and going back, to Loch Ewe in Scotland.

Dad had been a member of the crew of HMS Whimbrel since it left the shipyard at Yarrow in January 1943.  Whimbrel was a sloop of the Black Swan class designed as fast escort vessels.

Convoy JW 58 was one of a series of convoys of merchant ships sailing from British ports to Russia carrying supplies to help in  resisting the advance of the German armies into the Soviet Union .  The convoy had left Loch Ewe on 27th March 1944 and  consisted of 47 merchant ships with an escort of three destroyers and three corvettes plus the  US cruiser Milwaukee.  Further ships and escorts joined from Iceland  and then the Second Escort group which included HMS Whimbrel.

Two days out the convoy was encountered by a lone U boat U.91 which was depth charged and sunk by HMS Starling and HMS Magpie, both sloops of the Second Escort Group.  This group is said to be  the most successful anti-submarine unit of the war, being credited with the destruction of 23 U-boats during two years of active service.

On 31 March JW 58 met a  patrol line of enemy U boats.  Over a  48 hour period  the submarines   mounted eighteen  attacks on the convoy. None of the  ships were hit, but three U-boats were destroyed.

On 2 April during  another submarine  attack HMS Keppel destroyed U-360 and later  U-288 was destroyed in a machine gun attack from HMS Avenger.

On the following day the convoy wa joined by a local escort and arrived safely off Kola inlet on 4th April, with all the merchant and escort ships intact.

This was to be  the last Arctic convoy for many months.

The return voyage to Lock Ewe with convoy RA58 was uneventful and the crew were given leave as the ship required "weather repairs".  The cold obviously affected the vessel as well as the crew.

Eventually all the sailors, Merchant as well as Royal Navy were awarded the Arctic Star, but by the time this happened, most of them including Ernie McKie, were dead.