7. DANGEROUS AREAS: THE WORK OF THE FLEET SWEEPERS
Besides the trawlers, a number of other vessels are employed on the routine sweeping of the War Channel: the motor minesweepers, which have a displacement of about 200 tons, used mainly to sweep ground mines in shallow waters of river estuaries and port approaches; the whalers, many of which burn oil fuel, a matter of importance when a small crew is required to steam the ship on a long passage; and the drifters, which in peace-time fish for herring with drift nets, their size making them handy ships for sweeping in confined areas.
These vessels are not usually employed in clearing extensive minefields laid outside narrow waters, a duty which is the function of the fleet minesweepers.
In the earlier days of the war the auxiliary paddle-sweepers were used for clearances. In fair weather a well-trained flotilla would carry out this work satisfactorily, but the paddlers’ radius of action was limited, the risk of damage to their paddle wheels made them particularly vulnerable, and when mined they were difficult to keep afloat, so that as more fleet sweepers came into commission they were relegated to other, but no less useful, duties.
The fleet sweepers do not belong to the Royal Naval Patrol Service, but are R.N. or “General Service” ships, and are classed as “major war-vessels.” The oldest type is the Albury class, laid down towards the end of the last war, and named after inland towns in Great Britain—Pangbourne, Derby, Ross. They have a displacement of 710 tons, a speed of 16 knots, and are the only coal-burners left in the Royal Navy: hence their nickname of “Smoky Joes.”
Next come the Halcyons, named after minesweepers of 1914, somewhat larger and faster then Alburys, while the new Algerine class is the largest and fastest of all. Between the two are the modern Bangors, called after British ports, which have been encouraged to adopt the ships of their own name, send them comforts and books, and raise money on their behalf in Warship Weeks.
The larger and faster of these minesweepers operate with the Fleet. Their speed enables them to sweep ahead of the capital ships when necessary, and their size fits them to carry an increased offensive armament of guns and depth-charges, so that when not minesweeping they can undertake escort and anti-submarine duties, particularly when the Fleet is covering the passage of an important convoy.
One of them recently rammed and destroyed a German submarine in Arctic waters, and when H.M.S. Edinburgh was torpedoed three of the Halcyons put up a spirited fight against superior forces. The Flag Officer in command had given orders that they should retire at full speed under a smoke screen if attacked by surface-craft. These orders never reached them. When the Edinburgh was hit, instead of turning away they turned towards the enemy destroyers, “going in like three young terriers,” as the Admiral said, and firing whenever visibility permitted. Then, while one made a smoke screen, the other two went alongside the sinking cruiser and took off the whole ship’s company. The Admiral was among the last to leave. As he stepped on to the sweeper’s quarterdeck her Commanding Officer saluted.
“Everything correct, sir. Your flag is hoisted.”
The Admiral looked upwards. Flying at the masthead was the Cross of St. George, with two red balls in the upper and lower cantons. Its ragged edge suggested that it was a Senior Officer’s pendant from which the tails had been cut, and the red balls looked as though they had been hastily daubed on with red paint. But there was no mistaking it for anything but a Read-Admiral’s flag.
It was a gesture which no German could hope to understand: but one that Nelson himself would have appreciated.
The smaller fleet sweepers do not normally accompany the Fleet to sea or perform escort work, but nevertheless must have a speed which enables them to tow their sweeping outfit through the water faster than the trawlers, and sufficient fuel endurance to remain at sea during protracted clearance operations. They must be good seaboats, handy with a low silhouette, equipped to hunt and sink submarines, with ample close-range weapons against aircraft, since when sweeping their restricted freedom to manoeuvre makes them an attractive target for the dive-bomber.
The Bangors fulfil all these conditions. They run as smoothly as a sewing-machine, and although lively movers in rough weather, they go with the sea rather than argue it and their buoyancy saves them from shipping green water. They cost about £150,000 each, have a displacement of about 700 tons, and their main armament is a three-inch gun forward and a pom-pom aft.
The bridge is covered and the helmsman has a steel protection round the wheel. The Commanding Officer’s quarters are immediately below the bridge, the Ward Room aft, with the officers’ cabin-flat below. There are eight messes, but when the ship is sweeping only the special minesweeping mess-decks aft are used, the others being closed and made watertight.
The Bangors carry a total complement of about 80, including five or six officers. The First Lieutenant is responsible to the Commanding Officer for all the minesweeping gear on board. There is one Gunnery Officer to each flotilla; one, or sometimes two Surgeons, with a sick-berth attendant in the Senior Officer’s and Doctor’s ships.
The principal Chief Petty Officer is the Bo’sun’s Mate (known as the Buffer), who, under the First Lieutenant, supervises the hands engaged in sweeping operations. The Coxswain is the senior helmsman and the ship’s housekeeper. The Chief Stoker is in charge of the engine-room ratings under the Commissioned Engineer and supervises the big winch on the quarterdeck when the ship is sweeping. About fifty per cent of the ship’s company are “Active Service,” or R.N. ratings, the remainder “Hostilities Only.” There are about 36 deck hands, the others being signalmen, engine-room and technical ratings, cooks and stewards. When the sweeps are out every man not on watch is at his action station or on look-out, except the engine-room ratings and the two cooks.
Like the trawler hands, the men in the fleet sweepers are well cared for. Each ship has her own NAAFI canteen, and clothing may be bought (without coupons) at the Base “Slop Shop.”
During sweeping operations the Bangors usually anchor for the night, and, as in the trawlers, one watch goes on leave when boiler-cleaning comes round, so that each man has five or six days’ leave about every six months, and three weeks’ during the annual refit. When in port the ratings have shore liberty; entertainments are arranged and there are plenty of opportunities for sport. On board the favourite recreations are ludo, darts and tombola, the only form of lottery recognised in the Navy. Each ship has a library, kept by the sick-berth attendant or a Petty Officer.
Since a flotilla is seldom at sea for more than four days at a time there is always plenty of fresh food on board. Each mess appoints its own caterer. The Coxswain issues meat, potatoes and fresh vegetables daily; tea, sugar and tinned milk twice a week. As in all naval ships, every man is entitled to a tot of rum daily at 11.30, or an allowance of threepence in lieu.
Two men from each mess are detailed every day to prepare the food, which they deliver to the cook in the galley. When the ship is sweeping, the men feed as opportunity offers, but an electric heater ensures a hot meal at any hour.
The officers have much the same food as the men, cooked in the same galley. Their Ward Room is small but comfortable, usually equipped with a dart-board and a wireless set, which is seldom silent. A fleet sweeper does not mark her score of mines on the funnel, but it is often to be seen in neat black letters on the white paint of the Ward Room bulkhead.
Sometimes the Ward Room rations are supplemented by a parcel, particularly when there is a Sub-Lieutenant from one of the Dominions on board. They are good parcels, put together by people of imagination, and the senders would be gratified if they could be there to see the reception they receive.
There is much friendliness between the officers of the flotilla. When in harbour the ships lie abreast in pairs, so that the Ward Room of the one nearest the quay forms a natural port of call. Nearly everyone has a hobby to which he can devote any spare time he may have on board. Making ship-models is popular, and some enthusiasts have revived the old craft of inserting them in bottles, as fine a test of patience as any devised by man. In one ship the First Lieutenant, who left the Stock Exchange for the sea, has imbued the members of his Ward Room with a passionate but academic interest in the movements of stocks and shares, and one Senior Officer amuses himself with the compilation of “Famous Last Words” as applied to minesweepers, from which may be quoted “No mines there, we swept there yesterday”—”They won’t bother us, we’re too small”—”He won’t have any bombs, he’s going home”—and “It’s only the engine-room fans.”
There are eight ships in a flotilla of fleet sweepers, under the Senior Officer, who may be either a Commander R.N. or R.N.R., and a Commander as Second Senior Officer. Each flotilla works directly under the orders of the Commander-in-Chief of the Command in which it is required t operate. Its main function is to clear an area which has been declared dangerous.
The successful clearance of a minefield is a result of careful planning, meticulous training and rigid discipline. Lessons learnt in the last war must be studied, later technical developments efficiently applied. With perhaps as many as a dozen ships working together, it demands navigation and seamanship of a high order. A faultless clearance does not appear spectacular, but is a result of the skill and leadership of the Senior Officer, combined with the team-work of every officer and rating in the flotilla.
Such an operation may be described to show the work which the Bangor sweepers are called upon to do. One morning, when the flotilla is in port, signals begin coming in to the Base showing that there is trouble in the War Channel. Two merchant ships in a south-bound convoy have been sunk, and one of the escorts damaged. It becomes clear that E-boats have laid a minefield during the night. The trawlers are on the spot and have swept the area for ground mines with negative results. As yet it is impossible to define the limits of the minefield, and the Commander-in-Chief directs the flotilla of fleet sweepers to make a hundred per cent clearance. Meanwhile the convoys which are in transit or about to sail are held back.
The Senior Officer of the flotilla, having been given his orders and told the approximate position of the dangerous area, is left to make his own dispositions. He summons his commanding officers to a conference in his cabin or in the Ward Room of his ship. With a chart spread before him on the table and a pair of dividers in his hand he tells them what has to be done and how he proposes to do it. The operation is regarded as “tricky,” and every precaution is taken against risking the ships unnecessarily. Each captain is given his orders, certain ships being detailed to act as dan-layers, others to follow the sweepers for mine-disposal.
The commanding officers return to their ships and in their turn call their officers together. The First Lieutenant is told the general plan so that he may know what sweeps to have ready. The Navigator is shown the position of the area to be cleared. The Commissioned Engineer is warned to have steam at the time appointed for sailing.
Before the flotilla puts to sea, the First Lieutenant gives orders for the watertight doors on the mess decks to be closed. This tells the ratings that they are going into a dangerous area. There is a hum of expectancy and everyone is on his toes.
As each ship leaves port she “embarks” a balloon. The flotilla is a brave sight as it steams out from the coast on its mission, keeping accurate line and station. The Senior Officer has arranged the hour of sailing so that the flotilla may begin sweeping with the benefit of the extra depth at high water. When it reaches the area, the limits of which have been marked with dan-buoys, the sea is still covered with wreckage from the ships that have been lately sunk—rafts, waterlogged lifeboats, spars, hatch-covers, packing-cases, and tables floating with their legs upturned to the sky.
If the Senior Officer were making a search, he might take his ships over the area in line abreast with both port and starboard sweeps out, but since he has to sweep water which has already been declared dangerous he adopts an echelon formation, whereby only the leading ship—his own—is in unswept water during the initial lap. One of the danners—a millionaire’s yacht in peace-time—follows the outside ships to buoy the limits of the area swept. These dans are steel canisters attached to long flagged poles, with strings of elliptical pellets to show the direction of the tide. A third vessel will weigh the dans when they are no longer required.
The flotilla approaches the dangerous water in formation. There is a signal hoist from the senior ship. In each sweeper a quartermaster pipes the order “Hands to sweeping stations.” The First Lieutenant takes charge of the quarterdeck, the Buffer superintending the sweeping party, the Chief Stoker the winch.
The dangerous area is some eight miles in length and six in breadth. When the sweepers have completed the first lap—one length—they haul in their port sweeps, turn on to the second lap, the senior ship following the line of dans, put out their starboard sweeps, and begin again.
On the first two laps the sweeps draw blank; the Senior Officer has been cautiously edging on to the dangerous water. But the first mine is cut soon after the ships have just started on the third lap. It floats up to the surface, shiny black with protruding horns, half above, half below the water. A signal goes up, “Mine to starboard.” All hands off duty come up to watch.
A cut mine is a free target for all, and a difficult one in a rough sea; when hit it will either explode or will sink as the water washes through the holes drilled by the bullets. The rifles of a destructor ship astern open fire, but the captain treats the mine with respect. He does not close to under 200 yards, and every man on deck wears his steel helmet. Suddenly there is a thud against the ship’s side. A snowy mound of water rises from the surface of the sea, shaking the ship’s gear. The mound swells into a mountain, then breaks into great columns of water and flying spray, high above the mastheads of the ships, as the crash of the explosion comes. If the ship is in luck she will have time to gather a haul of fish.
Mines soon begin to go up at frequent intervals, until the sea resembles what the Senior Officer calls “a veritable sago pudding of mines,” but there is no damage. One sweep hauls in a waterlogged lifeboat. On the fourth lap the look-out of one ship reports that the float is no longer “watching”; it has suddenly disappeared. There may be a mine caught in the sweep, or only a piece of wreck. The First Lieutenant orders the winchman to haul in. The wire comes in bright and burnished, proof that it has been running along the bottom.
“Clear the quarterdeck!” commands the First Lieutenant.
The sweeping hands retire (but not far), leaving the First Lieutenant and the Buffer at the stern, peering intently for a sign of any object caught in the sweep or the otter as the winch hauls slowly in. Most of the ship’s company line the starboard guard-rail, watching.
“It’s wonderful what them wires’ll tell you,” says one, with his eyes on the sweep. “They’ll generally start singing if there’s a mine there. But you can’t be sure till you’ve hove in.”
Next moment the float reappears, bobbing and plunging through the water like a hooked shark, the staff of the green flag cutting a veil of spray on either side. It is drawn closer and closer to the ship’s quarter, but it is impossible to see the wire itself; the danger is that the mine—if mine there be—will be hauled out of the water under the counter before anyone can see that it is there.
When the float is about 30 yards from the stern it leaps out of the water and the otter rises for a moment above the surface, clear of whatever obstruction that caused it to sink. The ratings return to the quarterdeck to get the sweeping-gear in. By the time the fourth lap has been swept dusk is falling. Half the area has been cleared. The flotilla anchors inshore for security and continues operations at daybreak next morning, sweeping till dark with satisfactory results. The last lap is covered, the dans weighed. The Senior Officer’s signal “In Sweeps” is hailed with relief, for it has been a long day for every man in the flotilla.
The Senior Officer makes a laconic signal to the Base: “Area Cleared.” The Bangors steam back to port at full speed in line ahead, taking flurries of spray over their bows. As they go, they see far away on the horizon two great convoys—one from the northward, the other from the south—approaching the water they have lately cleared. Not an hour has been wasted in speeding the trade on its way once it is safe to pass.
When the flotilla reaches port the Senior Officer receives a signal from the Flag Officer in command of the Base:
“In these days of rationing, I congratulate you and your ships on the number of eggs found during the last two days. You are entitled to crow.”
“Many thanks,” he replies, “fortunately we were not broody.”
[Caption] IT IS A TRICKY SWEEP. The enemy has laid a minefield overnight. Chart and rule before him. dividers in hand, the Senior Officer (centre) plans the clearance with the commanding officers of his flotilla.
[Caption] BETWEEN SWEEPS. The crew of a minesweeper relax on one of the mess decks of H.M.S. Rothesay. Fleet sweepers carry about eighty men.
[Caption] BOWS ALMOST BLOWN OFF by a mine, and her deck plating buckled back like tin over her bridge, a British fleet sweeper limps for home. This is one of the risks the sweepers face daily.
[Caption] SWEEP IN PROGRESS. When an area known to be mined is swept, the sweepers adopt an echelon formation, so that only the leading ship, that of the Senior Officer, enters unswept water. The others follow, each leaving a safety overlap, so that the ship herself is in water already swept by the ship ahead. Last of all comes the “danner,” laying buoys to mark the area. When one length has been completed, the flotilla turns and repeats the sweep in the opposite direction, the process continuing until the whole area has been cleared.
[Caption] MARKING THE SWEPT CHANNEL. Behind the last of the sweepers comes a special vessel, the “danner.” She lays dan-buoys, seen here on deck, along the limits of the safe area.
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