I wonder how popular this will be? Prompted – in part – by a book I’m presently reading and knowing that at least Jim (Lincoln 7) is also an enthusiast, I thought that an interesting and worthy subject for discussion might be boats. Sailing boats; power boats; ocean liners; ferries; Ro-Ro’s; and so on. My personal enthusiasm for things that float is tempered by two aspects; the amount of flying I like to do and the expense thereto and an injunction which comes from I know not where: “If it flies, floats or facks – rent it “.
Many of us will know that we ignore this sage advice at our peril. The book referred to is “Few Survived” by Edwin Gray. It is both illuminating and sad. It takes the reader back more than 100 years to the development of the submarine. It details the location of all the known accident sites and why they occurred. As you might expect, human error, one way or another is the principle cause.
Two incidents are worth mentioning. Both happened when I was a schoolboy and I well remember them. The first was the accidental sinking of the submaine Truculent in the Thames Estuary. In the same way as the Thetis in Liverpool Bay, some ten years previously, the Truculent sank in shallow water, with the aft end of the vessel clear of the water. She was swiftly located and such was the efficiency of the newly overhauled escape routines that every man jack aboard – in excess of 60 souls, made a successful escape only to perish, in the darkness, from hypothermia and then were lost to the swiftness of the local tide and currents. Some dozen or so crew survived.
The second sinking was the submarine Affray. With this sinking something quite inexplicable occurred. The Affray set off to the south of the Isle of Wight on a south westerly course which would have taken the sub to an area off Start Point to join a naval exercise. Nothing was ever heard from this vessel again. After predetermined times came and went when the boat should have signalled her presence, a search was implemented with ships and aircraft from many nations taking part – to no avail.
The search endured for many days. During this time, the Admiralty received many messages and letters from psychics and mediums, all of which purported to know the whereabouts of the sub. These were somehow plotted on a chart of the English Channel with a clear majority pointing to a specific area which lay outside the agreed route of the vessel. Ships with sonar were sent to the area with the officer commanding the search flotilla reporting that the volume of echo returning from the sea bed at that location was unbearably loud and persistent.
Further investigation revealed nothing on the sea bed which, in any event, was about seventy miles from where the Affray was eventually found. No explanation was ever offered as to why there was so much Asdic return at that particular spot. A more astonishing turn of events was described by Warren Armstrong in his book; Sea Phantoms. He relates that the wife of a naval engineer Commander had a friend, another engineer, who both knew very well and had entertained in their home on the Channel Islands. Both men had served in the same ship, a cruiser.
The wife related that on the night the Affray went missing, she was aware of a presence, she looked up and recognised her visitor. It was their friend dressed in a naval uniform of a type that she did not recognise but when describing it to her husband, her husband said that it was the uniform of a submariner.
The visitor spoke clearly and said: “Tell your husband we are at the north end of Hurd Deep, nearly seventy miles from the lighthouse at St. Catherines. It happened very suddenly and none of us expected it”.
The woman phoned her husband who said that he had no knowledge of their friend having transferred to the submarine service much less being on board the Affray and he pointed out that Hurd Deep was well outside the main search area. The husband went on to say that he had no intention of interfering with the search operation on the basis of a ghost story.
The Teddington Research Laboratory had recently invented a high resolution underwater television camera which was installed in a rescue vessel called the Reclaim. It was decided to search a new area to the north of the Channel Islands, in particular a wreck that had been located previously by Asdic. A diver was lowered in an observation chamber and he spotted the name Affray fixed to the boat. This was at the north end of the Deep just where the spectral visitor had described.
By: John Green - 18th March 2014 at 11:01
A couple of current items with a slightly nautical theme. CAUTION: if inclined to be slightly queasy, take sea sickness pills before reading.
The actress Prunella Scales and the actor, Timothy West are in a current TV production featuring their narrow boat journeying thru’ the British canal system. Evidently they are both canal enthusiasts having been connected for many years to the long enduring program of canal restoration.
They are both no longer in the flush of youth but, cope very well with the physical demands of life aboard a narrow boat. This is a very pleasant and gentle series which produces a view of England that few ever see. It is shown on a Monday evening at 9.0pm and is called ‘Great Canal Journeys’
The other series was produced and shown on TV a couple of years ago. It is now out and on DVD. I have both DVd’s and if any one would like to borrow them let me know.
It features Timothy Spall and his wife journeying around the British Isles by a sea going barge of some size. It is an excellent series with voice over by Spall, full of incident and interest and called ‘All At Sea’.
By: Lincoln 7 - 3rd March 2014 at 19:12
As regards Sail John, I have always fancied a Cornish Lugger myself, but even an old one costs an arm and a leg these days. Can’t say I like fiberglass boats, they sit ON the water rather than wood, which sits IN the water, if you get my drift, (Pardon the pun).
Jim.
Lincoln .7
By: John Green - 3rd March 2014 at 18:14
Electric starters ? Blimey ! Which genius thought of those? Jim, you’re forgetting that the period I’m describing is post Iron Age. Most of these early sailing boats were lit with paraffin lamps. Elec-tri-city whats that ? Altho’ we didn’t have this particular luxury, being what’s known as buckit n’ chuckit (sic) I once saw a small Chinese junk equipped with a very upmarket and slick piece of equipment in the shape of a wooden lavatory seat secured to the boat’s transom with a strong hinge and a strap.
Normally folded when not in use, the strap was released the lid lowered and the strap retensioned. You then climbed over the transom rail and sat on the lid and got cracking. A loo roll was placed conveniently in a small box on the outside of the rail.
A problem arose if the sea was a bit rough.
By: Lincoln 7 - 2nd March 2014 at 20:59
IIRC John The Turner single cylinder engine did have a decompresssion lever on it. Thats why you got a kickback, you didn’t use it did you?. Naughty boy. There is only one way to hold a starting handle, don’t ever hold it completely in a clenched fisted hand, or you could well end up with broken bones.Fortunately nowadays, we have electric starters.
Jim.
Lincoln .7
By: John Green - 2nd March 2014 at 18:25
What a difference 50 years makes – at least in one way. Talk about that 150hp Mercruiser reminded me that the first sailing boat I owned was called a ‘Yachting World Peoples Boat’. She was gaff rigged and about 24 feet, carvel built in timber.
The engine was the marvel of the age, an age, when generally small sailing boats didn’t have an engine. This one had a single cylinder Stuart Turner with a large flywheel, no starter, a starting handle and I’m sure, a decompression lever.
I think that trying to wind the flywheel plus using Easy Start is the reason why, to-day, I have chronic sciatica. What a performance ! I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve gone flying back across the tiny saloon when the engine has ‘kickbacked’ with a special venom reserved for those who really didn’t know what they were doing and shouldn’t have been doing it in the first place.
At the gearbox, this engine delivered, I think, about 7hp. Allowing for all the friction loads, alternator and shaft, what emerged at the prop was about a nominal 5hp. I could swim faster. Trying to sail this thing, a gaffer, had all the elements of farce, especially considering that I was very much a learner. Gaffers are difficult to rig either properly or speedily and the sight of me, on a swinging mooring try to sort out spars, rigging and sails brought, I’m sure much merriment to shoreside onlookers.
If any of you are considering the joys of sailing, think again and give gaffers a wide berth.
By: Lincoln 7 - 1st March 2014 at 11:42
On second thoughts Tony, was the boat made to go over the water, or under it, as a submersible?. :highly_amused:
Jim.
Lincoln .7
By: John Green - 1st March 2014 at 10:44
Re 25
I’m surprised that the boat had enough buoyancy to support the size and weight of the fuel tank that was surely needed to feed that engine !!
By: Lincoln 7 - 1st March 2014 at 10:06
We had a boat, it was around 1990, only a 20′ with a 150hp Mercruiser Z drive engine. A bloody money pit!
I am surprised that the Transom could stand all the H.P. Was the engine fitted with Trim control ?.
Jim.
Lincoln .7
By: charliehunt - 28th February 2014 at 16:14
Well that’s a great result and you will no doubt reminisce over many a bevy. I met up with a very old school friend from 60 odd years ago but whom I hadn’t seen for nearly 40 years and it was a marvellous few hours. And will be repeated when he travels South in the Summer.
By: trumper - 28th February 2014 at 16:06
Modern technology can be useful sometimes 🙂 well done.
By: John Green - 28th February 2014 at 14:05
Re 18
I thought I’d mention a fairly unique event that occurred yesterday, Thurs, which brought a wide smile to my normally bleak features. In my comment at #18, I mentioned one, Barry Lepley with whom I was at naval training school, subsequently serving on the same ship as comrades in mischief, until we went our separate ways.
I hadn’t seen sight nor sound of Barry for about sixty years. Took a chance and jumped on Google. The first website I landed on – which from the description seemed the most likely, was about his family long domiciled on Canvey. I traced a phone number which was his brother who passed me the correct one.
Barry is retired, still going strong and remembered me. I’ve now written to him and will go to his home in Rayleigh shortly. What are the chances of that after over half a century ? For me that is the amazing bit.
By: Creaking Door - 27th February 2014 at 17:15
I would have loved to have done that; incredible that Britain didn’t preserve a single captured U-Boat (nor Destroyer, Sloop, or Corvette) after the end of the war (and the greatest struggle during it)!
I had the great pleasure of walking through U-534 a number of years ago; somewhat ‘sanitised’ by the sea after fifty years on the sea-bed but an unforgettable experience anyway.
Your mother sounds like she was an interesting woman!
By: John Green - 27th February 2014 at 17:09
I don’t know when it was. Could have been any day time following the collision. My interest in subs was sparked by the capture and display of a German U-boat in the Port of London shortly after the end of WW2. It was open to the public and my mother took me to see it. She was a bit unusual to say the least !
Fascinating conglomeration of bells, levers and whistles with a torrent of guages added to the mix. Very intimidating interior with narrow walkways and all equipment in your face. Easy to imagine them dying in such circumstances but how they lived and fought ? Beyond me.
By: Creaking Door - 27th February 2014 at 16:43
Witnesses confirm that the sub went down by the bow which would indicate serious flooding. Which makes it extremely likely that the stern would be elevated, that, coupled with a reduction in water level due to an ebb tide and an uneven seabed………..Bingo! up pops the stern!
Can’t see it myself; not with control room and engine room flooded too. Anyway you were talking about seeing a photograph of this; to me that still screams ‘Thetis’! Could it have been later, during salvage?
I remember reading an account from one of the few survivors that escaped from the submarine on the sea bed. His recollection was of bobbing-up onto an empty surface and being progressively swept out to sea. If I remember correctly he could see lights along the shore as he was swept out and my overriding recollection is of him describing how incredibly alive he felt at the time; terribly ironic considering the fate of so many of his shipmates.
By: John Green - 27th February 2014 at 11:55
Re 11
The Strath’ was, I thought, a rather beautiful and elegant ocean liner of, I believe, about 25,000 tons displacement. She was one of three Strath’ boats – Strathaird, Strathallan were the other two – engaged on the run to Australia which lasted about four weeks and carrying what were known as £10 Poms. Men, women and families intent on leaving a seriously deprived Britain for a new life at a subsidised cost of ten pounds each.
Britain during 1952/53 was a rather mournful place. Fogs and smogs of a density you can’t magine were frequent in the winter. Bomb damage was all around. Industrial stikes were the norm and power cuts freely available whether or not you wanted them. People still bore the look of wartime exhaustion and rationing was still in place for many items.
The sights and images of the Britain of this period were what we would now describe as Dickensian. Although I hadn’t a clue what I was getting into, with the prospect of a considerable change to my personal life, nothing was going to stop me heading for the blue yonder away, at least for a period, from the squalor of a country trying to claw its way back to some notion of decent living.
My associate in mischief, at least the only one that sticks in my memory was Barry Lepley from then, Canvey Island. Our joint descent into the underworld began at our first stop iin Marseille. We were little more than children, walking along the dock road to the city center when, it being a more than warm day with that for us, rarity, a flawless blue sky we spotted a cafe – as we thought, and stopped to buy a drink.
We hadn’t been there three minutes when two elderly ladies, someone unkind might call them old crones, they were probably all of about thirty years old, came over to our table and in broken English accompanied by gestures that right at that moment we didn’t understand but quickly cottoned on to, asked us very politely: “If we wanted jig jig”. I looked at Barry mystified. We swiftly realised that we had wondered into a dockside bordello which our Mums had, in circumspect language, tried to warn us about. Virgo intacta, we were out of there in no time.
By: John Green - 27th February 2014 at 11:24
Re 15
Like your door, my memory could be creaking. A trip to the PRO might do the trick or a website visit to a national newspaper archive ?
What is much more likely, in spite of the fact that Truculent sank by the bow after sustaining collision damage to her starboard side, is that the seabed was uneven at the point of contact and that the sub slid into some kind of a declivity on the ocean floor.
It might be possible to access an Estuary survey of around that time.
I did not write that the stern of the vessel was above the water AT DAWN – how would I know? I’ve never seen that mentioned. Witnesses confirm that the sub went down by the bow which would indicate serious flooding. Which makes it extremely likely that the stern would be elevated, that, coupled with a reduction in water level due to an ebb tide and an uneven seabed………..Bingo! up pops the stern!
By: paul178 - 27th February 2014 at 01:01
Talking of “T” class boats HMS Thetis was lost with all hands in 1939. She was them salvaged repaired and renamed HMS Thunderbolt and lost again with all hands in 1943. This makes Thetis one of the few military vessels that have been lost twice with her crew in their service history.
By: Creaking Door - 26th February 2014 at 22:21
If memory serves the escapes were made in two groups by ’twill-trunk’ so flooding the compartments (engine room and control room) was essential; with the fore-ends already flooded from the collision I do not see how the stern of HMS Truculent could have been above the water at dawn.
If the news media of the fifties was anything like the news media of today then the disaster would have no doubt produced comparisons with the HMS Thetis disaster and, in the absence of any of HMS Truculent, photographs of HMS Thetis too…
…maybe that is what you remember seeing. Just a thought. 🙂
By: John Green - 26th February 2014 at 21:00
I am familiar with the Thetis debacle – and the photo though, I didn’t see it at the time, being no doubt, busy sucking on my Ma’s breast !
For Truculent to be seen and photographed would have meant daytime photos that much is obvious. Re-read my first paragraph at 8.
By: Creaking Door - 26th February 2014 at 20:04
…the photo I remember seeing at the time which showed what looked like about ten, maybe twenty feet of the stern.
Sounds like a photograph of HMS Thetis to me; HMS Truculent was in collision at night (as I am sure you know) and I am sure was completely submerged by dawn.
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February 25, 2014 at 6:29 pm