17Forster

These two excellent books relate the stories of two Second World War destroyers. Havock was at the centre of the action from her commissioning and was almost worked to death after only five years of very active service, literally bursting at the seams. Venomous was also an active ship, but also a lucky ship, with a near 30-year career which only finished in the breaker's yard. Both books are based heavily on the personal recollections of crew members, both oral and written, family memories and photographs. Each tells a gripping story of action at the sharp end. At the same time both books are sound in technical detail.

David Goodey's father joined the Royal Navy as a Rating in 1938 and served with Havock as a stoker until 1941, five months before her sinking. During the 1980s the author tracked down 50 of the crew whom he interviewed, and he arranged reunions and took part in the unveiling of a memorial to those lost in the sea battles at Narvik. Richard Osborne is a well-known naval historian and had been working on the history of Havock. A chance meeting between the two at a World Ship Society event led them to realize they had a shared interest and complementary evidence which could be combined.

The book uses eyewitness accounts, news-paper reports and official documents to provide a detailed account of the career of what was described at the time of her sinking as the second most famous destroyer of the Royal Navy after Cossack. In her brief career she served in the Spanish Civil War, on the Palestine patrol and in her 32-month wartime career won a staggering eleven battle honours.

The book is well balanced, while also being full of detail on her very active service. It begins with a brief but good account of destroyer development in the pre-war years, culminating in Havock's completion early in 1937. Only two weeks later she sailed for Malta and Spanish Civil War patrols, which saw her unexpectedly in action and under fire for the first time. In April 1939 she moved to Haifa and anti-immigration patrols off Palestine. That summer she returned to Chatham to refit, but within a fortnight the looming war saw her sent back to Gibraltar then on to the River Plate patrol. This section offers a good example of the book's style where the seemingly relentless account of the ships movements is enlivened with a description of her first ‘crossing the line’ ceremony.

After a three-month winter refit at Chatham she joined the Home Fleet and instantly found herself at the heart of the Norwegian campaign, playing a key role in the first battle of Narvik and more generally in the campaign. Almost immediately she moved south to Harwich to operate against the German invasion of the Low Countries. Intense activity was followed in mid-May 1940 by a transfer to Alexandria. Arduous action followed at the battle of Cape Spada, the sinking of an Italian submarine, duty with the Mediterranean Fleet and convoy duty including escorting Illustrious for the Taranto raid. The year ended on a bad note with a collision with Valiant after gunnery practice. Repairs were made in Malta while bomb attacks on the island were taking place. A shortage of escorts meant that the patched-up destroyer was back on duty within a month.

She was in the thick of the battle of Matapan in March 1941, and followed this with convoy work to Greece, a bombardment of Tripoli, then the evacuation of Greece. The frenetic pace continued with a bombardment of Benghazi and the Operation Tiger convoy. She suffered more damage during the fight for Crete and spent a month being patched up and having new anti-aircraft guns fitted, before moving to Haifa on the Syrian coast, being pitted against Vichy forces for a relatively quiet spell leading to Vichy surrender. By the early autumn it was back to the heart of the action on the ‘spud run’ to Tobruk under regular air attack and interspersed with fraught or quieter runs to Cyprus. Working inshore she ran aground twice and had to spend time having shaft damage repaired. The year ended with a return to duty and the first battle of Sirte then running repairs in a Malta under regular air attack.

The year 1942 saw the unending convoy work continue, but her luck ran out in March during convoy MW10 to Malta, which morphed into the second battle of Sirte and serious shell damage to Havock. She limped in to Malta with the convoy at half speed and again spent time in dockyard hands under Luftwaffe attack. In the end she was ordered to make a run for Gibraltar. Exhausted officers unfamiliar with the close inshore route misread the course and she ran hard aground on the Tunisian coast before dawn. The crew abandoned ship and reached the shore where they surrendered to the French then spent six months in a PoW camp at Laghouat. They were shipped home after the North African landings. Both the imprisonment and the inevitable court martial of the captain are fully described.

Overall, then the book manages to combine the seemingly relentless and mind-numbing pace of the war with a mix of interesting data on life both on the lower deck and in the wardroom. The demands made both on the ship and on the crew were simply overwhelming.

A Hard Fought Ship was first published in 1990 by Robert Moore and he was working on a second edition at the time of his death in 2007. His American friend John Rodgaard took over and the second edition was published in 2010, receiving a very favourable review in the Mirror (Mariner's Mirror 97:2 (2011) 97–8). In a further twist, William Forster of Holywell House Publishing then took on much of the research work for this new edition, in part because his father had served on Venomous. This third edition is published in hardback since it is intended as the definitive version. Like the Goodey work, it is full of photographs and personal recollections with the stated aim of having the photographs assume equal importance with the text. A further novel aspect is that the book has an associated website where documents, recorded interviews and video can be accessed and added two.

Venomous was completed at the end of the First World War as one of the large class of V&W destroyers. In the inter-war years she served in the Baltic and Mediterranean and in the Second World War served in the Channel, on the Murmansk run, in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. There are much expanded sections on her role in the evacuations from Boulogne and Dunkirk and also more information on her service in the Channel and with Atlantic convoys. On 30 December 1940 she was mined near the Mersey and was under repair for almost two months, leading to more Atlantic service. After a collision with Keppel she spent the first three months of 1942 in dock repairing then served on the Murmansk Run with convoys PQ15 and QP12 which are fully described. She took part in the Pedestal convoy to Malta, was a major player in the action surrounding the loss of the repair ship Hecla, next joined Force H, based at Gibraltar, then moved slowly east through the Mediterranean, covering convoys and invasions such as Operation Husky in Sicily. In late 1943 she returned to the UK for a ten-month long refit at Falmouth, finally seeing out the war as a target ship based in the Isle of Man.

This third edition is over one third larger than its predecessor. Much new information has been added, mainly in the form of personal memories, but the number of personal photographs has also been increased significantly. These are notably well reproduced and to some extent it is clear that the volume is a labour of love. It tells a good tale well, but is also beautifully produced.