Convoy Commodore

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Text originally published in 1956 under the same title.

© Arcole Publishing 2017, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

CONVOY COMMODORE

BY

REAR-ADMIRAL SIR KENELM CREIGHTON, K.B.E., M.V.O.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

FOREWORD 4

DEDICATION 5

AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 6

THE BACKGROUND 7

CHAPTER I—STRANGE UNIFORM 9

CHAPTER II—MY FIRST CONVOY 17

CHAPTER III—HALIFAX 32

CHAPTER IV—HOMEWARD BOUND 36

CHAPTER V—CAPTAIN KNOWALL 43

CHAPTER VI—OVER TO WESTERN APPROACHES 50

CHAPTER VII—THE DANGERS OF THE SEA... 53

CHAPTER VIII—TOWARDS THE ARCTIC CIRCLE 59

CHAPTER IX—CASABLANCA 63

CHAPTER X—A WINSTON SPECIAL 72

CHAPTER XI—BOMBS AND A PAIR OF SILVER FOX 79

CHAPTER XII—CONVOY ATTACKED 86

CHAPTER XIII—DOWN TO THE SEA AGAIN 97

CHAPTER XIV—ICEBERGS 106

CHAPTER XV—BUILD-UP FOR ALAMEIN 109

CHAPTER XVI—FOUNDATION FOR OPERATION OVERLORD 116

CHAPTER XVII—MEDITERRANEAN CONVOY 119

CHAPTER XVIII—MY FIRST TARBOOSH 127

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 134

FOREWORD

by

ADMIRAL OF THE FLEET,

THE VISCOUNT CUNNINGHAM OF HYNDHOPE,

K.T., G.C.B., O.M., D.S.O.

I AM very glad to contribute a short foreword to this book which gives us the tale of a Convoy Commodore in the late war.

The author after distinguished service in the First World War served with the Navy until the middle ‘thirties. He was one of that band of officers who came out of retirement to serve once again and, along with Senior Merchant Navy Captains holding Royal Naval Reserve Commissions, volunteered for the highly responsible duty of Convoy Commodore.

He was employed as such for just over three years and in this book he tells us of his experiences and of his profound admiration for the men of the Merchant Navy.

Something has already been written about the large troop convoys and those highly hazardous operations, the convoys to Russia and Malta, each of which had to be fought through to its destination. But this book is to be welcomed because it tells of the small freighters which sailed forwards and backwards with little let-up in their allotted task of bringing to these islands the supplies vital to our survival and to the prosecution of the war.

It is not difficult to imagine the heavy responsibilities weighing on the Commodores and the strain involved in conducting 40 or 50 ships at a speed of six or seven knots on a voyage of perhaps 20 days’ or more duration. All this often in heavy Atlantic weather threatening a dangerous dispersal of the convoy which was constantly in danger of attack by enemy submarines or surface ships.

This book will, I hope, serve to remind its readers of what the country owes to the men of the Merchant Navy. No words can suffice to pay a worthy tribute to the courage, tenacity and determination with which they went about their task of keeping the country supplied. Many were torpedoed four or five times yet always returned to sea; that 35,000 of them were lost in the late war is the measure of their sacrifice.

It should also be borne in mind that if, unhappily, this country is once more involved in war our survival will again depend to a great extent on our merchant seamen.

Weapons of great power, which now threaten us, will increase their difficulties and dangers but will not do away with the vital necessity for their voyages.

CUNNINGHAM OF HYNDHOPE

DEDICATION

To the men who served under the Red Duster this book is dedicated.

AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I wish to thank my son Kenelm without whose help the work of this book could not have been accomplished.

THE BACKGROUND

By ADMIRAL SIR PERCY NOBLE, G.B.E., K.C.B., C.V.O.

Commander-in-Chief, Western Approaches, 1941-42

TWICE within a quarter of a century a ruthless enemy means in his power, sinking our merchant vessels without warning and with no thought of survivors.

Each time he has nearly, very nearly, succeeded in cutting off our supplies and bringing our trade to a standstill. Had he succeeded, Great Britain could no longer have continued the war and her people would have starved.

In the 1914–18 war the convoy system was adopted by the Admiralty at a critical period and defeated the German U-boat attacks on our merchant shipping.

At the start of the 1939–45 war the number of escorting ships and aircraft was dangerously inadequate for the defence of our convoys.

The Battle of the Atlantic raged for five years and eight months with bitter intensity. The German U-boat commanders were determined and skilful foes. First one side gained the advantage with some new weapon, then the other. Radar for detecting submarines on the surface and Asdics for detecting them submerged were our inventions. The enemy used new torpedoes with magnetic and acoustic devices and finally fitted his submarines with the Schnorkel, a device which enabled them to remain submerged breathing through a small tube above the surface.

From the end of 1941 till early 1943 the situation was critical and as Sir Winston Churchill has put it—Our Atlantic lifeline was stretched to its fullest limit. The German U-boat commanders developed a technique of attacking convoys on the surface at night and when the coming of Radar provided our Navy with Eyes in the Dark, the enemy’s counter was an endeavour to cause utter confusion by attacking each convoy with a pack of U-boats. It was not uncommon for convoys of some 40 or 50 ships to be attacked by packs of 10 to 20 U-boats for several nights in succession. This dangerous and fierce storm of attack cost us many good ships, valuable cargoes and the lives of many brave men. It took time to get used to, time to beat and time to recover from the blow. In the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich is a model of a convoy being attacked at night. It has been generously presented to the museum by the Royal Mail and Ellerman lines whose ships took such a prominent part in the battles; it is well worth a visit.

In the very early days of the war the brunt of the battle fell on the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy and the Royal Air Force, but they were soon joined by seamen and airmen from many lands, first from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Newfoundland; then from the countries overrun by the Nazis in Europe and finally from the United States.

This long struggle was ultimately won by the courage and endurance of our sailors and airmen and the dogged spirit of the peoples who supported their mighty effort.

From the beginning of the battle, as our escorts and aircraft were gradually augmented and as our training to overcome the obstacle started to be felt, we began slowly but surely to get results. By 1941 we had enough escorts to form them into Escort Groups which always worked together and therefore knew each other and had studied the problems. A Tactical School was introduced where the commanders of Escort Groups could study all these matters on a huge scale map depicting attacks and finding the best method of finding and sinking the enemy.

Finally the advent of long range aircraft and small aircraft carriers gave us the advantage at long last. As the tide in our favour rose in 1943, victory became certain; in 1944 victory came and U-boats were seldom encountered in the broad oceans.

The author of this book served as Commodore of Convoys through the most dangerous and difficult years of the Battle—as Commodore in command of a convoy his flagship was torpedoed and sank in a few minutes—he was sucked down deep with the ship, sustaining pressure in his ears which incapacitated him for service for a short time; like so many others, he returned in due course to resume his duties.

Those who had the privilege to attend a convoy conference, during those difficult years, where some 40 to 50 Masters of ships assembled to get their instructions, could not but have thought, How many will return?

The men of the Merchant Navy never failed their country and their service should be a constant reminder to us all of the dangers through which our country passed in the war years and proved them yet again, the bulwark upon which the safety, honour and welfare of our nation chiefly depends.

In the Battle of the Atlantic:

781 German U-boats were sunk

85 Italian U-boats were sunk

2,775 Allied ships were sunk by U-boats

(An average of 40 ships a month)

574 Ships were lost in convoy

75,000 sailed escorted in convoy

CHAPTER I—STRANGE UNIFORM

THE air-raid siren sounded. The pale young man in the blue suit glanced wistfully out at the misty

London sky. Then, remembering where he was, jerked his head quickly back and once more faced the three middle-aged men seated behind the plain deal table. The Wing Commander in the centre nodded towards each of the Flight Lieutenants, one on either side of him. We nodded back. Looking hard at the young man, whose hands I noticed were trembling, he said:

Right, Clark, I’ll put you out of your misery. We think you ought to make a pilot. Adding as an afterthought, with a thin smile, Best of luck. Carry on and report to the Sergeant in the next room.

Stammering his thanks, the would-be fighter pilot nearly tripped up as he turned-about and made for the door. It closed as the last dismal notes of the siren trailed away leaving a dull ominous feeling in our stomachs. The war had begun.

Rising from his chair, the Wing Commander went to the window of the bleak and lofty room—once a Victorian industrialist’s dining-room, now the interviewing room of the Royal Airforce Aircrew Recruiting Centre in Gordon Square.

Well, gentlemen, he said, staring out at the mass of barrage balloons wallowing mournfully above the rooftops, the bombs haven’t started dropping yet. We must get back to business. There are another 20 of these lads to see today.

As he came back, sat down and rang the bell for the next recruit to be sent in, he said to me: I take it this will be your last day with us, Creighton.

I said this was so and told him I was at 24 hours’ notice to return to the Navy, but would finish out the day at Gordon Square and report to the Admiralty first thing in the morning. The other Flight-Lieutenant, a retired Indian Army Colonel, tweaked his moustache and muttered crossly something about chaps like myself going off to serve on active service at sea, while he was doomed to a desk job for the duration of the war all because, as he put it: Those damned fellows at the War House won’t forget a slight whiff of gas I had in the last affair.

However, there was no time to think about the Colonel’s problems or my own for the rest of that day. We worked on far into the night interviewing the stream of young men. Tall, fat, short, shy or cocky, they all had one thing in common; they wanted to fly for their country. Some were straight from school, others like the pale Clark had at last found an opening for their spirit of adventure from humdrum, underpaid, office jobs. The hands of the clock passed midnight and we were still at it, accepting or regretfully having to turn down these cockney lads. At last I slipped exhausted into bed, at my lodgings nearby; strange to say, I fell asleep relieved that the war had come.

For more than six years I had sensed its coming. As the Captain of the battleship Royal Sovereign in the Mediterranean, I had been to Italy and heard the strutting Fascists prating about Mare Nostrum. I had listened to the roars of approbation from the crowds while Mussolini threw himself about in hysterical frenzy as he screeched from the balcony of the Palazzo Venezzia.

At Malta our naval gunnery pundits gravely shook their heads over the range of our guns and the speed of our ships. They said the Mediterranean Fleet was no match for the fast and heavily-armed Italian vessels. Personally I believed like so many others that the most vital factor when it came to winning battles was the quality of the men. It was left to A. B. Cunningham (later Admiral of the Fleet Lord Cunningham of Hyndhope) to settle the matter by thrashing the Italians every time his ships and planes made contact with them.

In the thirties, however, although I had a high opinion of our sailors and felt they were second to none when it came to a scrap, I did not have much use for the youth of Britain as a whole. Like middle-aged people down the ages I went about saying that the younger generation were not what they had been in my day. I thought them lazy and rather spineless. How wrong I was.

It was not till the Munich Crisis that these views began to alter. I had been retired from the Navy in 1934 and had bought a Georgian house at the little fishing village of Emsworth near Portsmouth.

My time was taken-up with gardening, sailing, sitting twice a week on the magistrates’ bench and in working as a local and county councillor. It was all very peaceful but no compensation for the life of a naval officer and I hankered for something more active to do. Besides this, I needed money to help educate my son and daughter.

Then one day I was asked by the Air Ministry to become an honorary flight-lieutenant R.A.F.V.R. and go up to Edinburgh to help recruit aircrew for the expanding Royal Air Force. I arrived there rather self-conscious in the strange uniform with its buttoned-up tunic side pockets which stopped me from stuffing my hands into them as I had been used to doing in my naval uniform jackets.

I suppose the R.A.F. felt that a naval officer who had been accustomed to dealing with men all his life was quite a suitable person, despite his lack of knowledge of the R.A.F., to help winkle out whether or not a man was fit to shoulder the responsibility of throwing a £10,000 aircraft round the sky. At all events, I began, together with a regular squadron leader and a retired R.A.F. officer, to interview the Scottish lads who flocked, brim full of enthusiasm, into our office—their one aim in life—to get into the air as quickly as possible.

Whether they spoke with the slow burr of the Highlands or in the staccato accents of the city, it was evident in every case that they were not lacking in guts, just as later I was to find among the Cockneys who came in their droves to the Gordon Square recruiting centre.

While in Edinburgh, I slipped-up over one of the very things our aircrew recruits were having to learn—the custom of calling your senior officers Sir. I had been telephoned by the young Adjutant of a nearby R.A.F. station. During our talk, he gently put it to me that I should call him Sir. For the rest of our conversation I naturally did so. Next day I had to go to his station to see some recruits and afterwards I was taken to the mess for a drink. My host at once introduced me to the Adjutant with:

This is Rear Admiral Creighton who has joined our recruiting staff.

The poor man, thinking of our telephone encounter, was most upset so I hastened to assure him that he had been quite right and apologised for being so out of practice.

Soon after this I had a vicious attack of the sciatica, which had dogged me for over thirty years since falling down a ship’s ladder in a gale. This attack almost completely crippled me and I lay doubled-up in the dingy hotel bedroom. Every day I dragged myself off to a different specialist.

Each had a pet remedy he was aching to try out. One even planted me in a barrel like Diogenes and gleefully squirted high-powered jets of water at my thinly-clad bones through holes spaced round it. Only when my screams for mercy became particularly intense would he let me out.

Not surprisingly, even this savage treatment had no effect so I arranged to be sent to the naval hospital at Haslar, Gosport. Two weeks pummelling, massage and lamp treatment had me fit to stand upright again, and the Air Ministry at once appointed me to Gordon Square near Euston Station where I stayed interviewing recruits till war began.

To my great joy I was discharged from Haslar with a clean bill of health and fit for sea-service. One thing I had dreaded was that war should break out while I was still crocked and I might be doomed to a shore job in some stuffy office. All my life had been spent at sea; it was there I was happiest and there I felt I could best serve my country.

When I had been offered the post of recruiting officer with the R.A.F. in the summer of 1938, the Admiralty had insisted that I be released for service with the Navy the moment war broke out; so I was sent an appointment—to take effect on the outbreak—as Commodore of Ocean Convoys.

The convoy system is not some brand new, bright and shining idea thought up in the twentieth century to defeat unrestricted U-boat warfare: it is hundreds of years old. Convoys have been sailing from our islands in times of trouble since before the reign of Elizabeth I; ever since we gained and began to trade with the overseas possessions which formed the nucleus of our Empire. The system has been used by other nations far back into antiquity.

Basically, the problems of sailing ships in convoys did not change with the coming of steam. The speed of a convoy was still governed by that of the slowest ship; delays were still caused due to waiting for ships to assemble; and the congestion at the port of destination naturally became worse with the arrival of the large numbers of merchant ships—much bigger than their sail-driven predecessors—all wanting to discharge their cargoes at the same time.

But in fact the only major difference was that an adverse wind could not prevent a convoy from putting to sea.

The cardinal advantage of convoy is that it prevents the lone freighter being molested as she leaves the wide open spaces of the ocean and approaches port. The lumbering East Indiaman of two centuries ago, groaning with richly embroidered silks, spices, timber and other wealth from the East, had to converge on a narrow patch of sea as she came near her homeland after a voyage of thousands of miles. It was in the narrow seas that the fast pirate vessel or the rakish privateers that operated in the French wars hung about waiting for their victims.

Heavily laden, the great bulk of the East Indiaman was difficult to manoeuvre and she would have difficulty in getting her few small cannon to bear; meanwhile her swift adversary would dance round peppering her sails and