9. “UNTIL IT BE THOROUGHLY FINISHED”
The British and French armies had cause to be grateful to the minesweepers at Dunkirk and St. Nazaire; and there have been times when the trawlers have been able to pay the Royal Air Force a trifle on account of their debt for fighter protection, since their prompt action has saved the lives of many friendly pilots—or “Kates” as the Navy calls them—in the Channel or the North Sea.
One trawler picked up a pilot off the East Coast without interfering with her sweep, and when a Spitfire was forced down near H.M.T. Staunch, Leading Wireman A.L. Elliott, with two other ratings, dived into the sea, swam to a Carley float which had been slipped, and rescued the pilot, who had been badly shaken in the crash.
There are also naval ratings who owe their lives to the sweepers. After the destroyer Wren had been sunk by enemy aircraft, a trawler sent her boat away to pick up survivors. The boat’s crew saw an exhausted man struggling in the oil fuel which lay thickly on the sea where the destroyer had gone down. Second Engineman B.E. Bemment, R.N.R., who had rushed up from below and jumped into the boat as it was putting off, saw that they could not reach the spot in time. Without a lifebelt he dived overboard, swam to the drowning man, and at the risk of being blinded and choked by the oil-covered sea kept him afloat until the boat reached them.
When a hospital ship had been crippled off Tobruk by 18 dive-bombers, a minesweeper saved the entire ship’s company, including her cat, and then escorted her while she was being towed to Alexandria.
Another sweeper, a South African whaler, went to the rescue of a petrol-carrying steamer which had been torpedoed off Tobruk. The blazing petrol tins which floated out from an enormous hole in the ship’s hull had set the sea on fire all round her, the flames shooting 300 feet into the air. The whaler approached to within 300 yards, picked up 31 men from a boat and two rafts, and then cruised for an hour in search of seven missing members of the crew.
The sweepers are as ready to save ships as men. H.M.T. River Clyde (Lieutenant-Commander J.A. McArthur, R.N.) saw a merchant vessel hit three times by enemy aircraft. The after hold was flooded and she was down by the stern, but Lieutenant-Commander McArthur believed that if the after bulkhead held she might at least be beached. He towed her for seven and a half hours through the night until he was able to hand her over to a tug in coastal waters.
Many deeds of gallantry have been performed in saving the sweepers themselves. While carrying out a clearance off the East Coast, H.M.S. Selkirk, one of the Albury class, found a mine in her sweep. She was steaming at speed in an attempt to cut the mooring when the sinker of the mine broke surface. In the hope of recovering it, a signal was sent to the Base.
Within twenty minutes of receiving the signal, Commander W.R. Bull, D.S.M., R.N., the Port Minesweeping Officer, had collected a tug (the Sunbeam II) and was under way. On reaching the Selkirk he found that a shackle on the mine had caught in one of the cutters. He had the sweep hove in so as to place the mine about five fathoms astern of the ship. A boat was lowered and, assisted by Able Seamen E.J. Quick and J.W. Clark, Commander Bull proceeded to salvage the sinker, mine and mooring. Although the sea was calm, there was a strong tide running and enough lop to make the operation extremely hazardous. One of the seamen had to hold the horns of the mine away from the boat, while the other dealt with the recovery wire. Both sinker and mooring wire were secured without mishap, and the tug towed the mine back to harbour for disposal. This was the first German live moored mine to be recovered complete with its sinker. For his courage and resource Commander Bull was awarded the D.S.C., and his two assistants received the D.S.M.
The work of the sweepers is not confined to British waters. They have had to clear minefields laid by the Italians in many parts of the Mediterranean; the approaches to Valetta harbour have been swept regularly in spite of the constant raids on Malta. As in the last war, surface minelayers have at times been active in distant waters, and mines have been swept off the coasts of Africa, Australia and New Zealand. The Indian Ocean has not remained uncontaminated, and there the sweepers of the Royal Indian Navy have been at work. During the Japanese attack on Malaya, mines were laid in the South China Sea, and sweepers, many of them manned by men of the Malayan R.N.V.R., worked gallantly until the end.
Minesweeping in Arctic waters became increasingly important with the sending of convoys to Russian ports. This work was allotted to fleet sweepers of the Halcyon class. The first sheet ice they encountered was in October, 1941, and was three inches thick. At first they nosed their way through it with infinite care, until a Norwegian officer serving in one of the ships said that these conditions were nothing compared with what they might expect later. Then they took to driving through the ice contemptuously at full speed. Soon it became thicker and more widespread until, as the Senior Officer put it, “bogey” for the 24-mile course along the tortuous approaches to Archangel rose to 48 hours. There were times when the ratings had to dig holes in the ice before they could weigh the anchors. It was disconcerting to have to sound the sirens to remove people, and even horses, from the ship’s course, and strange to pass a market in full swing on the ice a few yards away.
Thus the sweepers are doing their full share in the struggle to deny the Axis Powers command of the sea and to foil the onslaught on sea-borne trade, and neither the Fleet nor the Merchant Navy could do without them.
Minesweeping demands not only courage of a high order, but also integrity and precise navigation to ensure the safety of the ships which follow. The work must often be done in the face of air attack, and the slightest error of judgement may expose a ship and sink all aboard her. The sweepers fight an enemy who, although unseen—except in the air—is always potentially present beneath the surface of the sea. For them there is none of the excitement of battle, yet, unless they are constantly alert, at any moment the foe may take them unawares. Their unspectacular task is no measure of the peculiar strain to which they are subjected. Since the war began more than one hundred of them have been lost, but others have filled the gaps, and month by month the Service is expanding in ships and men.
Of those men, none deserve the nation’s thoughts more than the engineers and the stokers who wok below. Theirs is the most perilous work of all, for if a sweeper is mined or hit by bombs they have the least chance of survival. Bursting pipes, scalding steam from damaged boilers, closed hatches, ladders wrenched from fastenings: these are risks they accept every time they put to sea, yet they never fail.
“He kept the machinery running while working up to his waist in water after his ship had been hit during a bombing attack.” Thus runs one official recommendation for an award to a trawler’s engineman. There have been many such.
When the engine-room of H.M.T. Edwardian began to make water fast after a near miss from a heavy bomb, First Engineman William Gray, alone and in complete darkness, stopped his main engine, although well aware that the aircraft might return, and then filled the hole with canvas, feeling his way over the flooring supports, since there were no engine-room plates left in position. After stopping the main flow of water he completed his work with a saw and a dan-staff, and so saved the ship.
Those on deck, confident of the steadfastness of their comrades below, can thus do their duty with cheerful hearts, and so earn words like these: “He was ready at all times, at whatever hour of the day or night, to engage the enemy.”
Over 25,000 men are now engaged in the Minesweeping Service. Every month new ships go from the yards to join those which have been sweeping since the war began. The fleet sweepers and the trawlers, paddlers, motor minesweepers, whalers and drifters have been engaged on continuous sweeps, almost entirely in the channels used by shipping. The value of that service has been incalculable, for every mine found and detonated may mean a ship saved, and every minefield cleared is a battle won.
Truly as Fluellen said in King Henry V, “it is not so good to come to the mines,” and to-day there are even less according to “the disciplines of war” than he envisaged. This does not deter the sweepers from tackling them wherever they may find them, in order that the Psalmist’s comfortable promise against workers of iniquity may be fulfilled and that they may “soon be cut down like grass.”
Unremitting vigilance in tempest and fair weather, tribulation and unceasing danger, are the sweepers’ portion, and their work must go on, day after day, week after week, so long as the sea holds mines. For them there can be no respite. Until peace comes, their task cannot know the culmination of success; and although they will have their part—a great one—in the final victory, even so their work will not be over, for then they must glean from the seas those mines which, still unswept, would remain a menace to peaceful merchantmen.
Drake before Cadiz is said to have prayed that his men should understand that it is not the beginning but the continuing of any great matter “until it be thoroughly finished” which yields the true glory. His Majesty’s Minesweepers have learnt that lesson, and it is one which they are not likely to forget.
[Caption] A QUIET JOB. At first it looks a casual scene. But note that the men in the dinghy waer steel helmets and life-belts, that their eyes are glued on the white object in the water. It is a tell-tale parachute. Below it is a live mine.
[Caption] THEIR LIVES IN THEIR HANDS
1. The men of the tug Sunbeam II methodically prepare to recover (in August, 1940) the first live German mine to be captured complete with mooring and sinker of this type. It is going to be a difficult operation.
2. Mine and sinker are both entangled in the sweep of the minesweeper Selkirk, from which these pictures were taken. The tug is securing the far end of the Selkirk’s sweep-wire by hoisting the float inboard.
3. Next, the otter is hauled aboard. Note the strong tide breaking past the mine, now suspended with its sinker on the wire running between the two ships. The head-plate of the mine can be seen.
4. A wire is passed from the Sunbeam around the mine mooring and back to the tug. The crew try to pull both mine and sinker clear, but the sinker is too heavy. Pulling only brings the tug dangerously close to the mine.
5. A new method is tried. A boat is launched, and while one man holds the horns of the live mine away from the bows, another unfastens the sinker chain from the mine and fastens it to a direct wire from the tug.
6. This is successful. The sinker is being hauled up the tug’s starboard bow. Next the recovery wire was attached to the mine itself. It was towed safely back to Harwich, and the sinker taken ashore to be examined.
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