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Friday, 3rd September 2010

 
Tributes to the forgotten sailor

War loss...the twin-screw steamer Zealandia.
WELL back again, after a week overdosing on sea air and ships. And what ships - catamarans, hovercraft, warships - we visited Portsmouth among other places, so it was a bit like seeing old friends again, among them the Tyne-built Ark Royal, and also HMS Richmond, the last (until now) warship built by Swan Hunter's and recently returned from service in the Gulf. There was even a huge and sleek, black-hulled liner of the Holland-America Line, and - especially fascinating - a First World War Monitor, M33, lying in the Historic Dockyard, which is to undergo restoration. Talking of ships, there has been a lot of correspondence to catch up with, among it, a letter from a reader who does not give her name but who was interested in a recent mention of how the pay of war-time merchant seamen was stopped the minute their ships were sunk. I've also heard from a gentleman who has studied maritime law and who says this shouldn't have happened. We'll look at what he has to say later in the week. But our reader points us to the experience of her husband who was a radio officer on board the Ben Line cargo carrier, Benvrackie, when she was torpedoed and sunk in the spring of 1941, while in passage from the UK to South Africa. They were 900 miles from land and he and his 58 shipmates spent 14 days in a lifeboat intended to hold 30 people. It was the second time in 24 hours that the ship had been torpedoed. When they eventually arrived on the west coast of Africa, they were put into native quarters for six weeks, during which they all went down with dysentery. A French liner subsequently landed them at Liverpool, where six of them pooled their money, which amounted to 2s 6d (about 12p in today's coins). Fortunately, a sympathetic quayside cafe owner gave them breakfast. The men then made their way to their various employers. "My husband went to Marconi where he was asked for his pay book," says our reader. "He told them what had happened, and that his pay book was lost. He was told 'no pay book, no money'. They still have his money to this day. "They then made their way to Lewis's store in Liverpool to get rigged-out. "My husband was only dressed in a shirt, shorts and sandals. They thought they would be able to choose what they liked but, no, they were directed to a department especially for shipwrecked people. "As my husband was tall, he ended-up with a pair of trousers which didn't even reach his ankles and he had to travel all the way to Newcastle like that. "What a grateful country! "My husband joined the RAF after all that and served with them until the end of the war." Our reader's husband eventually died in 1976, from complications following diabetes which she believes was brought on by all the stress he suffered. "I haven't enclosed my name and address because I don't think it's worth raking it all up now," she says. "But I do feel very bitter about how our Merchant Navy men were treated, and when I think of what others were given. "He and the others didn't even receive anything from the Red Cross or any other organisation in all the time they were in West Africa." Today's picture, which is from the collection of the South Shields marine photographers Frank and Sons, is of another war loss. She's the Huddart Parker & Co twin-screw steamer Zealandia, of Edwardian construction, which in early 1942 was serving as a troop carrier when she was attacked and sunk by the Japanese at Darwin. View older pages
 
 

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