1914 - War Declared
1915 - Dartmouth College
-----------------------------
1917 - Off to Sea

1939 - HMS Veteran
I commissioned the vintage destroyer Veteran from reserve at Chatham and a veteran she surely was, built shortly after World War 1. We applied at once to the Company of Veteran Motorists for honorary membership. The Company responded graciously by making the ship a Life Member. When, long after I left her, a Uboat’s torpedo sent the old girl to the bottom of the Atlantic, she was probably still wearing on the forward screen of her bridge, that King-size Veteran Driver's badge, bearing the motto: Care and Courtesy.

While the storm gathered, my raw crew and their raw skipper were going through that harsh, vicious changeover from peace to war; adapting ourselves, as so many of our ancestors had done, to the current technique of defending our vital merchant navy which, except for the advent of air power, was back to where the last war had ended. There were, of course, new Boffins producing new ideas. The magic of radar, for example, was entering our lives, complete with teething troubles. Seamen who had never seen the sea were trained to operate it. The buzz got round that crossing the beam with the instrument switched on, would make them impotent. Came rough weather, less superstitious operators, frequently, put paid to their precious instruments by being sick into them. Emergency signals went forth telling Medical Research to drop the pill they were working on to keep Wrens out of trouble, and get cracking on one to stop radar operators being seasick. And so on. A different war with different problems, but the same old tussle with human imperfections. But the conditions, demands and humbling effect of the sea are forever and ever. Nothing changes them.

When Veteran had completed her hurried trials, we joined Western Approaches in which I was to remain for the next four years. Western Approaches was just another label for our Atlantic seaboard. It was clear from the start that naval history was about to repeat itself with the same old challenge to our merchant shipping. In fact, Winston Churchill was about to say that the Atlantic was the only battlefield on which we could lose the war. It was, once again, to the west we looked for survival remembering that, already, once this century, we had nearly looked in vain.

In the hundred years of peace which preceded World War I, the most deadly weapon ever launched against our assembled merchant shipping passed from fiction to the drawing board and into service. All navies showed interest in the submarine but, none least of all ours (the greatest of them all) thought seriously about combating it. And so the Uboat caught us cold. Arthur Marder leaves me with a picture of gloom at the Admiralty in the spring of 1917, with our First Sea Lord mooning about muttering of shipping losses beyond hope or remedy. In the quarter ending 30th June, in 352 encounters with Uboats, only eleven unconvincing sinkings of them were reported. Although the defensive offensive merits of the convoy had been, automatically, adapted to protect our merchantmen from all comers through the previous six centuries, it wouldn't work against Uboats. When the situation became critical, it took some bright, forceful brains from beneath, and the Prime Minister himself from above, to bring the Navy to its senses by convincing it that convoying was the soundest employment for escort ships and that for the Uboats, escorted ships in convoy were more difficult to attack. At that stage, a Planning Section of the Operations Division was formed at the Admiralty, under the direction of the late captain of HMS Colossus, Dudley Pound. Marder endows Pound, generously, with the qualities of an efficient human computer, but does not consider him an ideal choice for this job because he was "too much a master of detail" and a "supreme centraliser who did not know how to employ assistants". Nevertheless, there he was at the Navy's hub, to see for himself how the introduction of ocean convoys checked our appalling shipping losses and began to turn the tide. Yet, this same man, a quarter of a century later as First Sea Lord, was to snatch away from an Arctic convoy, the very protection he advocated in 1917 and, thereby, send twenty one merchant ships out of thirty four to the bottom of the Barents Sea.

When Veteran arrived at Plymouth, her new base, the Navy had about the same tonnage of merchant shipping to protect as at the outset of World War 1  and the same dearth of escorts to do the job. But this time we had an antisubmarine weapon the Asdic. How about starting convoy? In spite of our exorbitantly expensive lesson from World War I, would there be controversy and delay again? According to the current ethics of war at sea, we were fortunate. A matter of hours after declaration of war, a young Uboat skipper sank the Athenia, with American passengers on board, thereby showing the enemy's unrestricted intentions. As Winston Churchill puts it, "Our weakness in escort vessels had, however, forced the Admiralty to devise a policy of evasive routing on the oceans unless and until the enemy had adopted unrestricted Uboat warfare ... but the sinking of the Athenia upset these plans and we adopted convoy in the North Atlantic forthwith". Rather than upset these plans, I would have preferred "mercifully blasted these plans sky high". Equally, I don't know exactly when the North Atlantic first bore an escorted British convoy, but it was far too long after the sinking of the Athenia.

For Veteran, throughout that memorably ferocious first winter which we spent burrowing into Western Approaches and the English Channel, the sea was teaching us in its cruel way to be a crew or else ... From the war effort side, it was time wasted. We all had jitters. Ashore, instead of CinC Western Approaches' staff snatching the convoy hat off the hook, dusting it down and donning it, they dithered. Churchill, while reminding us that there have never been enough escorts at any time in any war, says the Admiralty was forced to devise a policy of evasive routing. History had already shown what evasive routing had cost us in World War I and was about to confirm its extravagance compared to convoy. As shored Control dithered, it also jittered by sending us crashing about, not only to dead "kills" and stale scents, but also to periscopes sighted by anyone between aircrews and old ladies on piers. And, sure enough, we fell for it.

When the weather allowed us to use our Asdics, submerged Uboat contacts reverberated everywhere continuously; the surface bristled with hallucinatory periscopes, imagined by me and everyone else who looked for them long enough. But rather than carp about this jittering period, let us remind ourselves that it was all part of the clanging "gear change" from peace to war, with every single one of us wearing a large "L" on his back, wondering, apprehensively, how we would fare when it came to "The Test".

As the jitter period ended, convoys started. First Channel and coastal convoys were formed, then the ocean framework took shape under the direction of Admiral Dunbar Naismith VC, then CinC,  Western Approaches. As the war progressed, Western Approaches became, and was to remain, the convoy hub, not only controlling ocean convoys at home and abroad delegating local control where necessary but devising, teaching and amending convoy procedure. Later, as the framework extended to include troop and Arctic convoys, although their operational control might come under other CommandersinChief, or even the Admiralty, they still wore the Western Approaches Club tie, so to speak.

The Merchant Navy
How about the Merchant Navy? As already inferred, the peacetime relationship between our Merchant and Royal Navies was poor. For years we had turned up our snobbish noses and maintained that the Merchant Navy was something to be seen and not heard. Apart from their officers and seamen doing periodical training in warships, and many of us travelling to and from foreign stations in their liners, there was lamentably little mixing. It was entirely our fault that they thought that we thought we were some superior form of sea life. If it could be said that any war does anyone any good, World War II soon tore down that ridiculous barrier between our two navies. The very first time I attended a convoy conference at Plymouth with skippers and first officers of all ships sailing present, I well remember the rather self-conscious, but unmistakable warmth of brotherhood forcing its way to the surface. We were qualified professional fighters, but what a rude shock for them to suddenly find their comfortable, defenceless ships built to ferry people and merchandise across the seven seas, becoming coveted targets for extermination. Here were uninhibited skippers, devoid of herding instinct who had spent their lives travelling happier and safer alone, listening to this cold unattractive logic, sensing the discomfort of convoy, little realising that basically because they were seamen, they would soon be handling their ships and keeping their station as well as any of us. But from the expressions on the faces around me that day, it was clear that each skipper was going to find it very difficult to convince himself that moving about the ocean in solid chunks of merchant shipping, as if on some gigantic parade ground, was actually safer.

During the first winter, dense fog descended on an early convoy, which Veteran was escorting up Channel. Here was a brand new, pre-radar experience for all of us. Convoy instructions supplied to all present, implored merchant ships in convoy, in fog, to maintain their course and speed. Out on the convoy's flank, we soon knew of one ship who didn't. We first sighted or was it heard?  one another a few seconds before we collided in a discord of juddering sparks. It was a glancing blow, and damage was miraculously slight. It was remarkable, too, that no other collisions occurred, for when the fog lifted, there was certainly no convoy and, luckily, no Uboats. Walking back from the fo'c'sle after examining our twisted stern, I noted our Veteran Driver's badge facing me from the bridge screen. I hadn't had much chance to be careful, but I vowed to be more courteous in future. It was the only collision I ever had at sea. I hope the skipper of that merchant ship can say the same. All of us who sailed into that early Channel fog, escorts and freighters, were learners.

By the time PQ17 sailed, we were experts. By the end of the war there could not have been more than a handful of surviving merchant skippers who hadn't had at least one swim. What a lot we all had to learn the hard and only  way. Every trip provided something new in convoy technique. For the escorted there was, I repeat, this disturbing feeling of having ships all round them all day and, worse still, all the blacked out night. It was one thing for experienced merchant skippers in a nice warm lecture room to know that, in convoy, if you held your course and speed you had nothing to worry about. On a dark night or in fog, imagination soon produced plenty. For the escorts, also starting from scratch, many among their crews had never even seen the sea. Everything, from the ship to the seasick bucket was new. By age and seniority, I found myself more often than not, SO Escort, which meant "father" to whatever miscellany of escorts could be snatched together for a waiting convoy. In the early days, if I knew any of the other captains sailing with me I was lucky. True, we were all on the same side, in the same war, using the same rule books, but what limp shadows we were then of the Escort Groups to come.

Then there was the domestic sheepdog angle to learn, forming the freighters up, often with other ships joining at sea. Next, the essential practising of large turns as soon as the complete convoy was formed. After that, the long haul with a scratched up escort battling weather to keep alert and in station, around its flock. As so often, the important part was the monotonous part. More often that not, from departure to destination, to the persistent background "pinging" of our Asdics and at the speed of our slowest ship, we just waddled and yawned along. Occasionally, there was sudden tension, an accelerating escort, a mighty upheaval from a pattern of depth charges, for we could never afford to take chances. All the same, it is perhaps just as well we didn't have to pay for those depth charges expended on false echoes. As Johnny Walker, the greatest escort commander of us all, once put it more subtly to his own group by signal, on realising the contact they had been pounding was a shoal of fish and not a shoal of Uboats after all: I AM AFRAID WE MUST LEAVE AND PUT IT DOWN TO A MYTHYOLOGICAL GEFUFFLE .

The Battle Fleets, naturally, took all the modern destroyers, leaving us the oldies, to which we added any craft which could stand up to Atlantic weather, from trawlers to luxurious yachts. On an early trip, I had with me HMS Philante, probably the most luxurious yacht of them all, which had been hastily fitted out for war. Her skipper told me that when he joined and found himself occupying the No 1 Stateroom, he noted a row of unlabelled mother-of-pearl press buttons alongside his bunk. He pressed one, there was a low humming sound and his First Lieutenant arrived in bed beside him, via some hidden chute.

Considering all our crews, officers and men, were raw material, mostly Reservists from all walks of life, some of whom had never even seen the sea, it was amazing how soon and how well they mucked in together and made a go and a team of it. Air, health and food were good, so was sleep and, best of all, leave when they could get it. Not so good were the cold and the wet clothes that never dried. The Atlantic may be all right to cross in dry warmth, but it could be a bastard to loll about in, shooing a 7knot convoy for ten days. Worst of all was the anxiety which dogged those crews, believing their nearest and dearest safe, until they suddenly heard that bombing of their home towns put everyone in the front line together.

We got very tired too. I remember once returning from sea to be told for the third time to be ready to sail again on completion of fuelling. I am lazy by nature, but this time I realised quite clearly that ”I would not be ready. Wondering if I would soon be facing a firing squad, I staggered off to Headquarters to tell the Admiral that to keep Veteran going would cost him a night in harbour for one destroyer. Without a harsh word we got it. I started my sleep in his car on my way back to the ship. On another occasion, when Veteran paused for an hour or two in Dover Harbour, I crawled to my bunk. When I woke I was told HM the King had been on board. With a yawn I asked if he had the Pope with him. But it was true. Then why the hell didn't the First Lieutenant wake me? He was asleep too.

When you get down to self-pity, war is like hospital; you soon find that the suffering round you is far worse than your own. An apposite moment to quote a memorable signal from my World War II collection. During tense operations in the Mediterranean off Crete, when our cruisers and destroyers which escaped being sunk, were battered and worn, the remains of a destroyer flotilla limped into Alexandria. No sooner had they fuelled than, like Veteran, they were ordered back to sea but unlike Veteran, to the Luftwaffe's dive-bombers. The Rear Admiral commanding the destroyers signalled Admiral Cunningham, the CommanderinChief, Mediterranean, pointing out that these wretched ships were scarcely seaworthy; one was leaking badly, another had one engine out of action, a third's steering gear was US. The CinC's reply, surely the toughest and hardest to send: THIS IS NO TIME FOR DESTROYERS TO BE BREAKING DOWN.

With the crescendo of conflict, the focus of Western Approaches ocean convoy control shifted north from Plymouth to Liverpool, and Veteran shifted with it. We arrived there. Paradoxically enough, to forget about escorting ocean convoys for a while. A glance at the map is enough to show the value of Holland, Denmark and Norway to Germany having elected to conquer the world. When Hitler annexed the first two, he didn't sit about coveting the third; in a classic, ruthless sweep he acquired it overnight on the 9th of April 1940. Norway is, virtually, a thousand mile platform between sea and mountain with a single linking coastal road. The invaders grabbed key roadside points, simultaneously, from Oslo to Narvik. The peace loving Norwegians had no hope.

The best Veteran could offer was bustled, uncoordinated counterattack which started with a bang, then wilted all the way up the coast and slunk back home two months later. Our opening bang was a very effective submarine assault, and a brilliant destroyer attack by destroyers of the Home Fleet. A key point in northern Norway was Narvik; seaport, northernmost harbour and railhead of Germany's vital iron ore supply. Five destroyers, led by Captain WarburtonLee, in Hardy, were detached from the fleet, and ordered to attack Narvik. I don't remember exactly where Veteran was at the time, but we must have been at sea, for I do remember reading the signals. In the early stages of her approach, Hardy intercepted some Norwegian patrol vessels who gave Captain WarburtonLee his first reliable information about Narvik which he then signalled back to the Admiralty;

NORWEGIANS REPORT GERMANS HOLDING NARVIK IN FORCE. SIX DESTROYERS AND ONE SUBMARINE. CHANNEL POSSIBLY MINED. INTEND ATTACKING AT DAWN HIGH WATER. Admiralty replied, questioning the authenticity of Norwegian reports:

NORWEGIAN COAST DEFENCE SHIPS EIDSVOLD AND NORGE MAY BE IN GERMAN HANDS. YOU ALONE CAN JUDGE WHETHER IN THESE CIRCUMSTANCES ATTACK SHOULD BE MADE. WE SHALL SUPPORT WHATEVER DECISION YOU TAKE.

The whole Navy waited tensely for Hardy's reply. When it came it gave the morale of all who read it, a wonderful boost:

AM GOING IN.