Remembering the Merchant Navy - The Forgotten Fourth Service

Post date: Feb 28, 2016 3:47:48 PM

Following his success last year in designing medals to mark the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, Cleethorpes man George Wright’s latest project for the London Mint Office continues on a World War Two theme, this time recognising the sacrifices of the brave men of the Merchant Navy, particularly during the Battle of the Atlantic.

George’s management of the project, which involved working closely with the Merchant Navy Association, culminated on 23rd February 2016 with an evening on board the HQS Wellington (pictured left), a floating museum which is moored at Victoria Embankment in London. The Wellington of course has a local connection, in that it is the last surviving Grimsby class sloop. There were thirteen Grimsby class vessels built in the 1930s, eight for our Royal Navy (Grimsby, Leith, Lowestoft, Wellington, Londonderry, Deptford, Aberdeen and Fleetwood), four for the Royal Australian (Yarra, Swan, Parramatta and Warrego) and one for the Royal Indian Navy (Indus).

Of the British vessels, which primarily served as convoy escorts, only the Grimsby was lost in the war, sunk off Tobruk in 1941. The Yarra, Parramatta and Indus were also lost. The rest were all scrapped in the years following the war, with the exception of the Wellington, which was sold to the Honourable Company of Master Mariners in 1947 and became their headquarters.

At the event on the HQS Wellington, the London Mint Office officially donated a collection of coins commemorating the Battle of the Atlantic, which will be placed on permanent display on the Wellington.

Battle of the Atlantic veteran, radio officer Ron Quested, pictured on the right with George (centre) and the Chairman of the Merchant Navy Association, Captain John Sail, was also presented with a set of the commemorative coins. For more information about the event, visit the London Mint Office Blog

The new £20 coin, pictured left, (visit the official website for more details) is one of the collection that is now available to buy from the London Mint Office and a remarkable story lies behind the silver ingots that were used to make them. For more than 70 years, the silver rested on the sea bed at a depth of 4700 metres and 300 miles South West of Galway. It was part of the huge cargo that went down with the merchant vessel SS Gairsoppa on 17 February 1941, when it was sunk by the German U-Boat, U-101.

The SS Gairsoppa (pictured right) was a steam ship of around 400 feet in length and at the time of its sinking

it was on its way home from India, laden with over 7000 tonnes of cargo, including iron, tea and of course the silver. The size of the Gairsoppa’s cargo contributed heavily to its fate because in trying to keep pace with its convoy in stormy weather, the ship burned up so much coal that the Captain feared he would not have enough to make Liverpool. He requested permission to leave the convoy on 14 February and headed for Galway, but three days later the U-101 hit the Gairsoppa on the starboard side in the no.2 hold at 22:30 hours and she sank within 20 minutes. The torpedo had taken out the radio antennae, so no distress call had been made. There were more than 80 souls on board, but when the order came to abandon ship, attempts to launch the lifeboats were hampered by the machine gun fire that sprayed the deck. In the end, only one lifeboat got away, with 31 men on board, made up of 8 European and 23 Indian seamen.

The only man on board who had the skill to sail a small boat was Second Officer Richard Ayres (pictured left) and he immediately took charge and set an easterly course. He did his best to keep the men alive and rationed their meagre supplies, but the Indian seamen were particularly ill-suited to the conditions. By the eighth day, the water had run out and men had begun to die. After 13 days, land was finally sighted but by then only seven men were left alive and some of them were barely clinging to life. Ayres had steered them 300 miles to the Cornish coast, but the worst was not over. As Ayres sailed towards the entrance to Caerthillian Cove, a huge wave capsized the boat and four of the men perished. Ayres, radio officer Robert Hampshire and gunner Norman Thomas dragged themselves back on board the boat after it had been righted by another wave, only for it to be capsized again. Hampshire was drowned, whilst Ayres and Thomas made it to nearby rocks, but the unrelenting waves came one last time, leaving Ayres the sole survivor.

As he too despaired and prepared for death, Ayres was spotted by three young evacuee girls from London who summoned help and eventually he was thrown a rope and pulled to safety by a local coastguard. Ayres was later awarded an MBE for his heroic effort to keep his fellow crew members alive, whilst Hampshire, Thomas and two Indian seamen were laid to rest in the local cemetery. For more information on Ayres, the Gairsoppa and the operation to recover the silver, read Daniel Miller’s article in the Daily Mail Online

The fatal voyage of the Gairsoppa is featured on one of the other coins in the collection, whilst the rest are on themes of attack from above, horrors from beneath and the war sailor. Each of the coins features a different line from the John Masefield poem “For All Seafarers”. There is also a gold coin, which features an anchor and the inscription “In gratitude to the Merchant Navy 1939-1945”.

We indeed owe a great debt of gratitude to them because of the 185,000 men who served, more than 30,000 merchant seamen lost their lives during World War Two and over half of the total Merchant Navy fleet was lost.

Among the merchant vessels that suffered during the war was the steamer S.S. Kildale (pictured right) from Whitby which, on 3rd February 1940, was attacked in the

North Sea. One of the survivors, Seaman Williams from Hull, described the attack. “Two Heinkel bombers circled the ship repeatedly, dropping bombs and raking us with machine-gun fire. We were unarmed and helpless. We sent out a call for help. Two explosive bombs hit us. One burst in the engine room, wrecking it and killing the men below. Several incendiary bombs landed on different parts of the ship and started fires. The Germans gave us no rest for 40 minutes or more. We could not get a boat out to escape, because every time we attempted it, they machine-gunned us. It was simply murder.”

Given their inability to defend themselves, it is a miracle that only six of the crew died that day. Both the survivors and the dead were reported to have been landed at an East Coast port, which was presumably either Grimsby or Immingham because the six who died are all buried in Cleethorpes Cemetery. The dead men were:

Albert Edward Doughty, Fourth Engineer, from Whitby

Wallace Allen, Second Engineer, from Sunderland

Joshua Waring, Chief Engineer, from Sunderland

Nicolas Kritsinis, Fireman, from Greece

Josi Hermogene Leon Rojas, Fireman, from Chile

Sinforiano Soriano, Fireman, from Spain

A seventh man, Emanuel Mayaracus, from Belgium, at the time listed as a survivor, died in Grimsby Hospital on 6th July 1940 and is buried in Scartho Road Cemetery.

Attacked at the same time as the Kildale was the Grimsby trawler Rose of England but, despite being hit by bomb splinters and machine gun bullets, none of the crew was hurt.

Newspapers at the time reported that,

The skipper of the trawler Rose of England, Charles Bruce, of Grimsby, stuck to his wheel throughout the attack and attempted, despite the bullets flying around the wheelhouse, to steer a zig-zag course to confuse the aim of the bombers. His mate, George Darwen, who was in the wheelhouse when the attack began, made his way aft to try to launch the life-boat, but each time he strove to get the boat away the enemy fire drove him to take cover.

Three times the vessel was hit by parts of exploding bombs, one hit being directly in front of the wheelhouse and another smashed the skylight above the galley. The sides of the ship and the wheelhouse were hit by many bullets, and it was remarkable that not a single member of the crew was hurt except for the cook, whose leg was bruised when a boom swung into him.

“We saw the Germans attacking the Yewdale (a Glasgow collier, the skipper of which was killed that day), and then they came on to us,” said Skipper Bruce. “They dived just above our masts one after the other and dropped bombs, six at a time all round us. The explosions shook us badly.”

The following year, in May 1941, whilst giving news of Merchant Navy awards, the Hull Daily Mail reported that “60 year old Third Engineer William Walker of Wellington Street, Grimsby, stayed alone in his engine room when his ship was torpedoed and carried out orders though the engine-room was flooding. His devotion to duty was such that he closed off the boilers before leaving, thus preventing any chance of an explosion. He is awarded the MBE.”

These are just a few local examples of the bravery and sacrifice of the men of the Merchant Navy and unlike the six men laid to rest in Cleethorpes Cemetery, the majority of those who died in World War Two have no grave to visit. However nearly 24,000 of these lost merchant seamen and fishermen are remembered on the extension to the original Tower Hill Memorial in London, which was designed by Edwin Lutyens and opened in 1928 to commemorate those of the merchant and fishing fleets (more than 12,000 men) lost at sea in the First World War.

A list of their names can be viewed online at London Remembers Them