HANDS TO STATIONS FOR LEAVING HARBOUR

HANDS TO STATIONS FOR LEAVING HARBOUR
By Bas Bradley

This is an article that Bas wrote originally for a major newspaper of his thoughts. Enjoy and thanks again for your wonderful contribution Bas!!!!

In the middle of winter, during the WW2, one of the most hated sounds was the Bos’ns Pipe, at 0500 with a shrill whistle that almost went through you, followed by a husky voice of the bos’ns mate, yelling at the top of his lungs, hands to stations for leaving harbour, special sea duty men close up. This terrible noise was repeated all through the ship amid curses that can not be repeated here. For the un-initiated 0500 is five o’clock in the morning and as you have probably guessed we are Navy Types aboard a Royal Canadian Ship, in this case a Frigate. We had received our wakey-wakey call (wake-up call) at 0430, which didn’t leave much time to lash up our hammocks and grab a quick coffee and get ready for the day’s business.

When we arrive on the upper deck we notice two things, first the extreme cold of this January morning (thank heavens the wind hasn’t got up yet) and secondly the harbour tugs have arrived to free us from other ships moored side by side, we are second from the outside. The tug is already moving the outboard ship (a corvette) so we are about ready to slip and go astern into the stream on this very cold and dark morning. The sooner we get going the sooner we will get our breakfast. At the tender age of nineteen we always seem to be hungry and could eat anything if the sea wasn’t acting up.

Why you may ask at five in the morning? A 40-ship convoy will sail from Halifax, bound for good old Blighty this morning. The idea is to get these ships out of harbour and on their way before dawn breaks. As we go astern into the harbour we notice other Navy ships getting under way. Soon the merchant ships of the convoy will be making their way out of the magnificent Bedford Basin, which is directly behind the harbour itself. It has been said that this basin could hold the entire Royal Navy and still have room left over. We go down the harbour and out through the gates and our group will scout a few square nautical miles to make sure there is no U-boats lurking about. Our group at the moment is support group, not to be confused with the close escort group that will follow us out of harbour and attempt to get the convoy safely to a meeting point off Cape Race, Newfoundland. This close escort group is known as the Triange Run Group and got its name because it is responsible for convoys from New York, Boston and Halifax. This group is generally made up of 5 or 6 Corvettes and a Destroyer and is based in Halifax. At a meeting place somewhere off Cape Race they will hand over the convoy to another group known as the Mid Ocean Group who will attempt to get them all the way across the big pond to good old blighty. This gang is made up of 6 Frigates and sometimes a corvette or two at this late stage of the War. This group is based in good old Newfy John. Yes you guessed it, St. John’s Newfoundland.

St John’s is one of those places you never forget. When you are standing out to sea, all you see is rock. There doesn’t seem to be an entrance into the harbour until you get right in close. Once inside the weather could be awfully cold, but you are among the warmest people in the world. These great souls would go overboard to make your stay ashore as pleasant as possible under very trying wartime conditions. They didn’t have much, but what they did have they would gladly share it with you. They later became Canada’s tenth Province and any Canadian Sailor will tell you what a great acquisition that was.
But wait a minute we still have not got the convoy safely into the ports in Great Britain yet and that is where another group will come out and assist the ships of the convoy into their destination. This last gang work for Admiral Max Horton, the boss man of what is known as Weston Approaches and is made up of both British and Canadian Ships. The Canadians for the most part were based in Londonderry Ireland and this bunch was made up of destroyers, frigates and corvettes. Now let us return to the convoy that left Halifax and is now in Western Approaches area. This support group will assist the convoy into the Irish Sea by one of two routs, the North Channel and St George’s Channel depending on whether there final destination is Liverpool, Glasgow. Belfast, Cardiff, Milford Haven, etc.
In these few paragraphs we have taken over 40 ships from Halifax to Britain by three different Naval Groups, simple isn’t it, at least we made it sound that way. In between start to finish a lot of things have happened to NOT make this a simple trip. The enemy knew when this convoy was sailing, make no mistakes about that. We didn’t do much to conceal the fact. This convoy may be plagued by bad weather, harassed by U-Boats and generally subjected to break down collision and all the other little niceties that make getting the convoy across the big pond a very interesting proposition. Much has been written about these problems, so I won’t repeat the problems unable to eat because of sea sickness, the stark terror of the U-Boat attack on the ships of the convoy and the resulting deaths that are a certainly in the cold waters of the North Atlantic.

Permit me instead to tell you of some of the pleasant times on the trip across. You will be riding herd on the ships of many nations. There will be British, American, Greek, Dutch, Norwegian, French, Canadian and others. Some of the ships will be old coal burners forty years old but still youthful in appearance depending on their last paint job, others will be newer and faster and more and more Liberty Ships, Henry Kaiser’s great speed building product. These Liberty’s were usually ten thousand tonners. They didn’t have the classic lines of the older ships in the convoy, but for the most part they were bigger and faster. When something is put together faster, we tend to think of them as an inferior product. These speed products did have problems at first. They were the first ships to be totally welded in there hull plates and a few of them would have their seems break open in gale force winds. The problems were quickly overcome and they were fine from then on. They contributed a lot to the war effort and it was nice seeing them in convoy taking up the slack that the older ships couldn’t.

There would be tankers of course but for the most part it would be freighters loaded with arms, ammunition and food and dry goods. Lots of times you would notice the deck cargo of jeeps, tanks and planes. When you looked at the jeeps it would remind you of the old Model A Ford you used to show off in back home and some of the passengers that rode with you and to think you gave it all up for this lunacy. On calmer days you would look at the tanks and jeeps and say to yourself, thank goodness I joined the navy instead of the army or the air force, but that all changed on rough days when you where feeling sea sick. Then you would think why didn’t I join the other two services. Being an army type or a flyboy can’t be all that bad and besides their uniforms would be a lot easier to put on than these dam jumpers. Seeing the new long range Liberators and the giant Sunderland’s that would arrive to give air coverage was another pleasant sight to see. They were giving air cover all the way over now and you didn’t feel quite as lonely at mid ocean anymore. You knew you were getting closer to land when the land birds started to arrive to see if they could scrounge a meal. After a long trip there is nothing more pleasant than to hear the seagulls crying.

After dropping the convoy off at their destinations it was time to enter Londonderry for a well-deserved rest, maybe a run ashore and a chance to take care of your chores, like mail, laundry, etc. But before we get into Derry we have a stretch of ten miles or so up the beautiful Foyle River. Even a nineteen-year-old lad will enjoy the smell of the earth again and admire the beauty of land that is old Ireland. The Irish were also great hosts and we wondered why these lovely people have been killing one another for the past 300 years over religion. A short way up river we will stop at a place called Movile (if memory serves) and secure beside a tanker and fill up with fuel. The Royal and Canadian Navies always topped up on entering harbour just in case we had to leave in a hurry. After picking up a pilot at Movile upon re-fuelling we proceeded up river a few more miles, all the time drinking in the beauty of the land. Pretty soon we make our final turn and there she is, the harbour of Londonderry.

When in port we will probably visit some of the Pubs and maybe check out the old Corinthian dance hall. If the ship is in port for longer than four or five days, maybe a boiler clean or repair of some kind, some of us will visit family in London, Belfast, Glasgow, Edinburgh, etc. When it is time to sail again, we will once more hear that infernal racket of the bos’ns pipe and the voice of the bos’ns mate yelling, Hands to station for leaving harbour, special sea duty men close up. That same pipe was sweet music to our ears when a few days after VE Day when we were ordered home. As we left good old Derry for the last time the air raid sirens started to go off and the ships in harbour blew there whistles. Hey relax, they were just saying good-bye to our group for the last time, how nice of them for there kindness. When we went out of harbour and down past the Wrens building they were all waving to us as well. The Wrens handled all the signals between head quarters and the ships so I guess it was them that arranged for our noisy departure. It finally dawned on us that the war was over.

We hadn’t done to bad for ourselves, we had sunk a U-Boat (U-1302) in St George’s Channel but a month later we ourselves were bloodied by having 6 of our crew killed and 14 wounded while firing at another sub (U1024) in the Irish Sea. We even got into the history books for escorting SS Strathcona home from the Yalta Conference with all Winston Churchill’s Staff and papers. Churchill and the dying Roosevelt were not aboard as they had flown home. Of course we were not informed about the importance of our charge but we did wonder why we received air cover all the way to Portsmouth. We had waited at Gibraltar for the British heavy stuff to bring Strathcona down the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas and relieved them of their charge east of Gib. Strathcona and a fast oil tanker were our only charges on this fast uneventful trip to Portsmouth. We just happened to be in Gibraltar and lucked into the Stathcona deal after taking a fast convoy of 5 troop transports to the Med. They were going to Toulon France in support of the push in the south of that country. We had joined this Convoy in the Western Approaches along with Royal Navy heavy stuff and even an Aircraft Carrier to give air cover to Gib. These sure were heady days. What luxury to be in company with Royal Navy Heavy Stuff on fast convoy duty with air cover no less.

After leaving Londonderry for the last time and before heading home, we had a very pleasant task to perform. We had been ordered to Greenock Scotland to pick up and take home to Canada, prisoners of war that had been held by the Germans. Each ship took on 100 of these men and although this really crowded us, we could care less as these guys had been though so much and were so cheerful about it. They had been Canadian Commando’s and some were missing limbs and we felt humble in being the ones taking them home.
The weather was great for our final crossing, which is rare in the North Atlantic. On our first night out I suddenly realized that we had all our running lights on, something I had not seen before since joining this ship when she was brand new. It was a great feeling as we entered Halifax Harbour on a sunny day with all our passengers out on the upper deck. As we went up harbour no one paid any attention to us, which didn’t surprise us, after all we had been here a few times before and we knew that Haligonians had a hard time tolerating us and we certainly felt the same way about them. Well we were home and we were not going to have to tolerate one another much longer. When we secured to the jetty our precious passengers left us. A lot of them kissed the ground and before getting into the transports the army had laid on for them they turned and saluted us and were gone not to be forgotten by us to this day. The harbour was getting loaded with ships including my brother’s HMCS Huron. A short time later I went aboard his ship for a visit but he had left for home a couple of days before on leave.

We had a great leave and a lot of good times and when we returned it wasn’t long before the Pacific War ended as well and we would be going home for good. What a great experience we’ve had and we will never forget it. We will go back to sleeping in a real bed again instead of a hammock and while in that bed we won’t be sleeping directly above the four inch magazine and don’t expect to hear that infernal cry, HANDS TO STATION FOR LEAVING HARBOUR, SPECIAL SEA DUTY MEN CLOSE UP.