The Tattie Lads Read online

  THE

  TATTIE

  LADS

  To all those members of the Rescue Tug Service who lost their lives on active service, 1939–1945

  Contents

  Introduction

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  Glossary

  1 The lifeline nearly cut

  2 Campbeltown

  3 Saints and Brigands go to war

  4 Dutch reinforcements and the remarkable Salvonia

  5 The Assurance class and the Battle of the Atlantic

  6 Lend-Lease to the rescue

  7 The Mediterranean and beyond

  8 Jaunty, the cripples and the feisty Empire class

  9 The Far Shore

  Envoi

  Appendix

  Bibliography

  Index

  List of illustrations

  Introduction

  I first came across the term ‘Rescue Tug’ when I was writing the history of the Royal Ocean Racing Club in 1998. One of the Club’s founding members, EG Martin, had been awarded the OBE in 1919 for his work in establishing the Admiralty’s Rescue Tug Service during the First World War. It sounded intriguing, but I couldn’t find out anything about it. In 2011 I met Captain Christopher Page RN, the then head of the Naval Historical Branch, and he kindly said he would make enquiries, but he fared no better.

  Then in 2013 I was invited to the unveiling of a blue plaque for Martin at his childhood home in Brixham. The ceremony had been arranged by Martin’s great niece, Clare McComb, and to my surprise – and pleasure – I was introduced to several veterans of the Rescue Tug Service. Then Clare rang me and asked if I was interested in writing a history of the Service; if I was, she would arrange for me to be lent the archive of the Deep Sea Rescue Tugs Association, which was being disbanded. Two of the veterans, Len Reed and Jim Radford, came to see me with Clare, and I was handed a huge amount of material, including photographs, newspaper cuttings, operational and administrative reports from The National Archives, and copies of the Association’s newsletter, Towrope, full of members’ first-hand accounts of their time in the Service.

  It looked as if much of the research had already been done. I became even more interested when I was told that though part of the Royal Navy, and therefore entitled to fly the White Ensign, the contribution of the Rescue Tug Service in the Second World War had been excluded from Stephen Roskill’s four-volume official history of the Royal Navy. Yet the Service had developed what a wartime American newspaper called ‘a new type of naval vessel – the British fighting escort tug’, and had saved millions of tons of shipping, both warships and merchant ships, not to mention the crews and the precious cargoes.

  Could this be true? It seemed it was. It was also true that the official history of the Merchant Navy had not mentioned the Service either, nor had numerous other books on the war at sea. I could find only one that made any attempt to describe what the Service was about. The convoy historian Arnold Hague wrote a three-page chapter on it in his book The Allied Convoy System 1939–1945: Its Organisation, Defence and Operation, which was published in 2000. The chapter’s penultimate paragraph reads: ‘Such instances [of salvaging ships] were numerous and the majority owed their success to the Rescue Tug Service and crews, of whom little has been written and in consequence little remains known even to those who study the maritime war, 1939–45.’

  I hope I have done something to correct this. It is a ‘warts and all’ account and it may give the reader some answers as to why the Admiralty’s Rescue Tug Service has been written out of history, and why one rescue tug had Filius Nullius (belonging to no one; orphan) as her motto.

  Author’s Note

  I have given convoy numbers in the text wherever possible as an interested reader can sometimes trace more information about a particular incident on the various websites dedicated to convoys. I have deliberately excluded giving details of the U-boats involved in the incidents described in this book as I preferred not to clutter the text with too much information. But, again, an interested reader can trace these through the convoy websites and from looking at the ships that have been torpedoed on www.uboat.net

  The files listed in the chapter notes – ADM, MT and T – all come from The National Archives. I am aware that these documents, on which this book is mainly based, have their limitations, and aware, too, that there are gaps in the narrative the written records have been unable to fill. Also, there are many stories of bravery and resourcefulness, which, for one reason or another, I have not been able to include.

  There are interviews with veterans in Robin Williams’ film Mayday Tugs of War (see www.maydaytugsofwar.com); and the rescue tug Restive appears in Carol Reed’s 1958 film, The Key, about those commanding her in wartime, available on DVD.

  A donation from the advance on royalties for this book has been made to the Mission to Seafarers.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to acknowledge the help of Len Reed in writing this book. Without him managing to gather so much information over so many years about the Rescue Tug Service, and the men who served in it, it would have been an impossible task to construct any coherent history of it. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the late Deane Wynne, the editor of the Deep Sea Rescue Tugs Association’s newsletter, Towrope, and to his successors, particularly Cliff Hubbard, who gathered the reminiscences of the veterans quoted in this book and preserved them in print. Other veterans and their families have generously helped me, too, lending photographs and allowing me to use extracts from personal memoirs, published books and Towrope contributions. To them I say a big thank you.

  Clare McComb was also unstinting in her help, and generously gave me details of her great uncle, EG Martin, which I might never otherwise have been able to track down.

  When I have used quotes from Towrope or other sources, I have naturally asked the permission of whoever wrote them. Where that member is dead I have tried to contact his family to request permission. This also applies to any photographs I have used from the Association’s albums. However, I have not always been successful in tracing everyone, and would like to hear from anyone who should have been credited.

  Glossary and Abbreviations

  A-A Anti-aircraft.

  AFD Admiralty Fleet Dock, a floating dock that could be towed where required.

  AFO Admiralty Fleet Order.

  ASDIC Anti-submarine acoustic device developed secretly between the wars. The initials are purported to stand for Allied Submarine Detection Investigation Committee, but research has failed to find evidence of any such committee. It later became known as sonar (SOund Navigation And Ranging).

  ASW Anti-submarine warfare.

  Attack transport A classification in the US Navy for a troopship that carried its own landing craft to take its troops ashore during an amphibious landing.

  Beam ends When a vessel is forced on to its side by wind and sea. The phrase derives from when the vessel’s position is so extreme that its deck beams are vertical with the water.

  Bollard Upright circular metal fixtures on a ship’s deck or dockside, usually used for securing mooring ropes.

  BEM British Empire Medal.

  Bulkhead Vertical partitions in a ship.

  Bunker In steam-driven vessels where coal or oil was stored.

  Cable As a nautical measurement, it is one-tenth of a nautical mile, or 200 yards.

  CAFO Confidential Admiralty Fleet Order.

  CCRT Captain-in-charge Rescue Tugs.

  C-in-C Commander- or commanders-in-chief.

  Davits Small cranes that lower and lift a ship’s boat by its bow and stern.

  Dog-watch The watch between 16.00 and 20.00 on board a ship is always divided into two dog watches of two hours eac
h. This avoided the same personnel being on duty at the same time every day.

  Dreadnought Generic term for a large, fast, heavily armed and armoured battleship, deriving from the revolutionary HMS Dreadnought launched in 1906.

  Fairlead Deck fixture for leading a rope in a required direction.

  Fleeting in Improving the haul on a rope.

  Fo’c’sle Abbreviation of forecastle, the forward part of a ship.

  FOIC Flag Officer in Charge.

  GI Term for US soldiers. It stood for ‘galvanized iron’ or ‘general issue’.

  Gnat torpedo British name for German Naval Acoustic Torpedo.

  Gunwales A projection above the deck of a ship or boat to prevent water coming aboard.

  HA/LA High angle/low angle. A dual purpose gun.

  Hawsepipe Pipe in a ship’s fo’c’sle that leads the anchor chain to the anchor.

  Hawsers A heavy rope or steel wire used for mooring and other purposes.

  HMRT His Majesty’s Rescue Tug.

  Hotchkiss machine gun Heavy automatic air-cooled weapon of French design, a standard weapon in the First World War but obsolescent by 1939.

  Hove to Not moving.

  Hydrophones Underwater microphones to detect submarines.

  In ballast Without cargo.

  Limpet mines Explosive device used by frogmen on both sides during Second World War. It was attached to an enemy vessel with magnets.

  Log Instrument measuring a vessel’s speed by means of a rotator towed astern.

  Luff tackles Single and double block where the rope’s standing part is secured to the single block, the other end being rove through the double block.

  MBE Member of the British Empire.

  Messenger rope Light rope, which could be thrown or fired across to a vessel. It was attached to a larger and heavier one like a hawser, which could then be brought aboard manually or by a capstan.

  NOIC Naval Officer in charge.

  North-Western Approaches Northerly part of the Western Approaches.

  OBE Order of the British Empire.

  Oerlikon 20mm Swiss autocannon derived from a German design. Used in and against aircraft, the licence to produce it in Britain was granted just before the fall of France in 1940.

  PO Petty Officer.

  Pom-pom Two-pounder automatic anti-aircraft weapon with multiple barrels. So-called because of the noise it made when firing.

  Poop The raised deck at the after end of a ship.

  Q-ships Merchant ships fitted with concealed guns to sink U-boats that surfaced to challenge or attack them.

  RA Rear Admiral.

  RFA Royal Fleet Auxiliary.

  RNO Resident Naval Officer.

  RNR Royal Naval Reserve.

  RNVR Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.

  R/T Radio telephone which transmitted and received voice messages.

  Scantlings Standard dimensions for materials used in a ship’s structure.

  Sheering See yawing.

  SNO Senior Naval Officer.

  Stone frigate Naval slang for naval shore establishments.

  Taffrail The after rail at the stern of a ship.

  Tannoy system Public address system used aboard a ship or in barracks.

  TDC Tug Distribution Committee.

  Three Sheets to the Wind Drunk.

  Towing horse Curved rail at stern of a tug fixed athwartships so that it lifts the towing wire or rope clear of the deck or any obstruction.

  Trot boat Boat used to take crews to where their tugs were moored.

  ’tween decks Abbreviation of between decks, the space contained between any two whole decks of a ship.

  Western Approaches Rectangular area whose north and south boundaries were the two extremities of the British Isles and extended west to 30 degrees of latitude, which passes through Iceland.

  Whaler Royal Navy’s standard ship’s boat, a 27 ft overall, ketch-rigged centreboard sailing boat which could also be rowed.

  Whelps Ridges on the drum of a capstan to help the anchor chain or rope from slipping.

  Whip A rope rove through a single block for hoisting.

  Windlass A horizontal winch, a smaller form of capstan.

  W/T Wireless telegraphy, which transmitted and received messages in Morse code.

  Yawing In rescue tug terminology this was when a towed vessel veered from one side of the tow to the other. It was not unknown for a towed vessel, which could not be steered, to come up parallel with the rescue tug towing it.

  1

  The lifeline nearly cut

  When the First World War erupted in August 1914, submarines were mere adjuncts of the dreadnought surface fleets Germany and Britain had amassed. The use of German U-boats as commerce raiders had been studied in Germany before the war, but it wasn’t until a small and obsolescent U-boat sank three old British cruisers in September 1914 that the U-boat High Command was alerted to the potential to cause havoc with Britain’s commercial lifeline. However, U-boat commanders later claimed the real impetus for this new type of warfare came from a short story written by Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Baker Street detective Sherlock Holmes. Published in July 1914, it described how a small European power, deploying just eight submarines, decimated Britain’s merchant fleet, forcing her to sue for peace.1

  Fictional it may have been, but Conan Doyle’s tale was a good example of Oscar Wilde’s dictum that life imitates art. Despite having just twenty-one U-boats operational – only nine of which were diesel-powered with the range to reach England’s Atlantic coast – at the end of February 1915 the Germans launched an unrestricted U-boat campaign. All merchant ships, including neutral ones, would be attacked and the Laws of Naval Warfare would be ignored. However, fear of neutral countries, particularly the United States, entering the war diluted the campaign and on 18 September 1915 it was abandoned. It had shown what U-boats could do, but not nearly enough had been available to obtain the campaign’s objective of bringing Britain to her knees. When asked after the war how his naval staff had so badly miscalculated the numbers necessary, one German admiral had ruefully replied that it ‘had put too much faith in Sherlock Holmes’.2

  In December 1916 – by which time more and longer-ranged U-boats had taken a serious stranglehold on Britain’s commercial trade – the German government instigated a second unrestricted U-boat campaign by declaring a war zone around the British Isles, and that any vessel found there after 1 February 1917, whether Allied or neutral, would be attacked without notice. The Germans knew this would almost certainly bring the United States into the war, but with the armies in France still locked in stalemate, the betting was that Britain would be starved into submission before the Americans had time to intervene effectively. It was a gamble that nearly succeeded.

  The British Admiralty had so far refused to introduce the convoy system, but the threat of this new campaign must have prompted it to do more to save those merchant ships that remained afloat after being mined or torpedoed. ‘It was considered that there would be a very good chance of getting some of these vessels into port,’ one document recorded, ‘if arrangements could be made for tugs to be held available for assisting such vessels. The plan was, therefore, conceived of basing tugs – to be termed ‘rescue tugs’ – round the English and Irish coasts and in the Mediterranean for the express purpose of rendering prompt assistance to damaged ships. All tugs detailed for this work were to be armed and fitted with wireless.’3

  To oversee this decision a Tug Distribution Committee (TDC) was created on 2 February 1917 within the Admiralty’s Trade Division. Then on 2 May 1917 a rescue tug section was formed to control all rescue tugs and their dispositions, which was attached to the Admiralty’s War Staff as a section of the Trade Division. The TDC’s chairman, Captain EPFG Grant CB RN (replaced later in 1917 by Captain CR Wason CMG RN), was appointed to head the section as Captain-in-Charge Rescue Tugs (CCRT), and was given a staff of two commanders, or one commander and one lieutenant-commander, and one assistan
t paymaster who would also act as the TDC’s secretary. The TDC would continue in being as a standing committee to co-ordinate the work carried out by tugs under the control of the director of transport and shipping, and the director of the Trade Division.4

  After preliminary investigations, the TDC informed the Admiralty of the acute shortage of ocean-going tugs and that a redistribution of those available was urgently required. Subsequently, all tugs were brought under the committee’s authority and a search overseas for suitable tugs was instigated. The Admiralty requisitioned some, but others were hired and were still managed by their civilian owners.

  Organising the country’s tugs more efficiently was only a part of the answer. No one knew what kind of tug was best suited for ocean rescue work in wartime, or how it should be equipped, much less what techniques were needed. Towing was, and is, a highly technical branch of seamanship, and while efforts were always made to save the crew of a torpedoed ship, saving the ship itself – often in adverse weather a long way from land – was quite another matter.

  In fact, a start had already been made to remedy the lack of ocean-going tugs, as the Admiralty had purchased two 457-ton Stoic-class tugs being built in Britain for the Argentinian government. Stoic was launched in March 1915 and Cynic in October 1915, and in January 1917 the Admiralty had ordered three more, Dainty, Dandy and Spry. The pulling power produced by their 1200 indicative horse power (ihp)5 engines made them capable of towing most cargo ships, and their endurance and speed of eleven and a half knots able to reach any casualty.

  A month later the Admiralty ordered six more tugs, later called the Resolve class, which were based on the design of a commercial tug, Sir David Hunter, built for South African Railways in 1915. At the same time the government’s Department of Transport and Shipping ordered the first three of what became known as the Frisky class. These were based on Racia, an ocean tug built for the legendary Dutch tug company L Smit and Co., the world’s foremost experts in ocean salvage.