The great white bird had been following them for days, skimming the tops of the long South Atlantic rollers with only the occasional lazy flap of its outstretched wings to keep it aloft. There were some on board the Kirkpool who said it was the curse of the Ancient Mariner; those who had been here before smiled knowingly and pointed to the galley boy emptying the slop bucket over the side. Like all God’s creatures, the albatross followed the food.
While all attention was focused on the planing albatross, no one noticed the other stalker. Far out on the starboard quarter, hull-down on the horizon, the German commerce raider Thor was also following in the wake of the unsuspecting merchantman.
The 4,842-ton British tramp Kirkpool, one of Sir Robert Ropner’s out of West Hartlepool, was on the second leg of what was promising to be a very long voyage. It had begun nearly three months earlier in late January 1942, when the Kirkpool sailed from the River Tyne in ballast. She was bound around the Cape for Lourenço Marques in Portuguese East Africa, chartered to bring home a cargo of iron ore. For 32-year-old Captain Albert Kennington and his crew the voyage would make a pleasant change from their usual routine, which involved crossing the U-boat-infested North Atlantic to the Americas.
Sailing from the Tyne on a miserable January morning, the Kirkpool rounded the north of Scotland and joined the queue of ships anchored in the sheltered harbour of Oban to await orders. Her stay in the port was not enjoyable, for the winter of 1941/1942 in Scotland was one of the worst on record, with freezing temperatures and heavy snowfalls. It was therefore with no regrets that on 12 February 1942 the Kirkpool weighed anchor and left Oban astern. Some eight hours later, off a mist-shrouded coast of Ireland, she made a rendezvous with Convoy OS 19, which had left Liverpool twenty-four hours earlier.
When fully assembled, OS 19 consisted of thirty-six merchantmen, most of whom were bound around the Cape to the Far or Middle East. The presence of the convoy’s escorts, the armed boarding vessels HMS Hilary and HMS Marsdale, was far from reassuring. These two ex-passenger ships, each armed with a brace of 6-inch guns, put on a brave face as they fussed around the vulnerable merchantmen, but as neither was capable of speeds in excess of 14 knots, they were unlikely to be of much help in the face of an attack by a U-boat pack – or for that matter, a German commerce raider. In either event, it would be very much every ship to her own defence. To this end, the Kirkpool carried a 4-inch gun on her poop and several machine-guns on the bridge, with three depth charges mounted on a rack aft. However, the wisdom of launching the latter from a ship with a top speed of around 10 knots was questionable.
As might be expected at the time of the year, the weather in the North Atlantic ranged from indifferent to downright hostile, and the 3,000-mile passage to Freetown dragged out into a third week. Finally, on 3 March, when abreast of the West African port, the Kirkpool was free to break away and continue unescorted to the Cape. No one was more relieved than Captain Kennington, who like all merchant ships’ captains found sailing in convoy irksome and unnecessary. Furthermore, the sky was now blue, the sun was pleasantly warm and the likelihood of meeting the enemy was receding in to the distance
All went well for much of the passage southward. Then, a few days north of Cape Town, the war suddenly caught up with the Kirkpool again. Late in the afternoon, the lookout at the masthead, idly scanning the empty horizon, was brought wide awake by a periscope breaking the surface on the bow. The periscope was followed by a conning tower streaming water as a submarine emerged like some monster from the deep.
Captain Kennington, called to the bridge, ordered the 4-inch to be manned, but by the time the gunners had loaded and trained the gun, the U-boat had dived, leaving only a patch of disturbed water behind her. Kennington decided that this was the ideal time to put his three depth charges to good use, and rang for more speed. Not being equipped with Asdic, he used his echo sounder to try to seek out the submerged submarine, but being primarily designed to record only the depth of the sea bottom, the instrument was of no assistance. The Kirkpool’s depth charges remained in their rack.
Darkness was already setting in, and to confuse the U-boat, Kennington turned under full helm and steamed north for a couple of hours, before resuming course again. Either his ruse worked, or the unidentified U-boat commander had been as surprised by his chance meeting with the merchantman as Kennington was. The Kirkpool carried on unmolested, the question of whether the depth charges might blow her stern off still unanswered.
Cape Town was reached on 16 March, the Kirkpool anchoring in Table Bay, where to everyone’s surprise a change of orders was received. The ore cargo in Lourenço Marques had been cancelled, and she was instructed to proceed to Durban and load a full cargo of coal for Montevideo. The news was not well received on board, for it meant that the relatively short voyage they had all been looking forward to, returning home for the summer, was no longer an option. Also, the prospect of loading coal, with all the filth it involved, was hardly welcome news. However, it was agreed that a run to South America, land of the non-stop fiesta, might be well worth the inconvenience.
Arriving in Durban on 24 March, the Kirkpool berthed under the coal hoists at the Bluff, which were suitably isolated from the main port, and there endured the indignity of having coal by the wagonload tipped into her holds from a great height. For much of the following week she was hidden from view by a cloud of black dust, which lay thick on her decks and penetrated every nook and cranny of the tightly sealed accommodation. Even the food served in the saloon and messrooms tasted gritty.
It was with no regrets that, on 31 March, the Kirkpool finally left Durban, sagging under the weight of some 10,000 tons of South African coal. Covered in a thick layer of black dust, she was a ship without pride. Even her ensign at the stern hung limp and ashamed, but once clear of the breakwaters, powerful jets of water soon washed away her shame. By the time the sun went down, the Kirkpool’s paintwork was once again pristine, and her accommodation, thrown open to the cleansing breeze, was habitable. Captain Kennington set his course close to the land to take advantage of the west-flowing Agulhas Current, and the heavily laden ship was soon reaching speeds she had not seen since her trials fourteen years earlier. It was autumn in these southern waters, and the blue skies and gentle breeze complemented the Kirkpool’s mood of emancipation as she sped west to the Cape and into the South Atlantic. Many years later, Able Seaman Alfred Round wrote:
Some were worried as these waters were notorious for German surface raiders. But the days passed and our fears were unfounded, and no one could have wished for a more beautiful style of life. The hours passed and everything went like clockwork, as shipboard life usually does. We performed our watches and other duties, ate, slept and played cards. During the day we splashed around in our homemade swim pool, whilst tanned bodies lay spread-eagled on the hatch tops soaking up the sun and flying fish flew off and away from the bows. Indeed, this voyage was nothing less than a millionaire’s cruise and we joked with each other, ‘To think that we were being paid for it!’ Here we were six thousand miles from England a little speck on the bluest ocean, and it looked as though we would make it safely as we were already half way across sailing in calm seas, and we sat with our mugs and talked about the River Plate which was now only a thousand miles away.
While Round and his shipmates yarned on the hatch tops, they were completely unaware that their friendly albatross was not their only follower. From a discreet distance, the Kirkpool was being observed through binoculars by Kapitän zur See Günther Gumprich from the bridge of the German auxiliary cruiser Thor.
The 3,862-ton Thor had started life in the Hamburg shipyard of Deutsche Werft as the cargo/passenger liner Santa Cruz of the Oldenburg Portuguese Line, built to trade between European ports and Spain and Portugal, with occasional calls at Madeira and the Canaries. She was still in her fitting-out berth when war broke out in the autumn of l939 and was summarily requisitioned by the German Navy, then converted for service as a commerce raider. Armed with six 5.9-inch guns, a variety of smaller calibre guns, four torpedo tubes and an Arado Ar 196 seaplane, she was manned by a naval crew of 349. The spotter plane was hidden in a hangar on deck, and all the guns were concealed behind shutters that could be raised at the touch of a switch. To all outwards appearances the Thor was an innocent merchantman sailing under whatever neutral flag and colours Gumprich might choose. Her real role was to wreak havoc amongst Allied shipping, preying primarily on merchant ships sailing alone, and at this she was an immediate success. Under the command of Kapitän zur See Otto Kähler, on her first war patrol, which lasted eleven months, she disposed of twelve Allied merchantmen totalling 96,547 tons gross. She also challenged and sank the British armed merchant cruiser Voltaire.
Thor’s success continued when, commanded by Günther Gumprich, she set out on her second patrol in November 1941. On her way south she was twice stopped by British cruisers, but each time Gumprich succeeded in passing his ship off as a harmless cargo carrier. On 23 March she found and sank her first victim, the Greek-flag Pagasitikos of 3,490 tons gross. A week later, when 500 miles south of St Helena, Gumprich used his Arado to intercept the British ship Wellpark, which he then sank. Twenty-four hours later, the Arado found another British ship, the 4,565-ton Willesden. Thor opened fire with her 5.9s as soon as she came in sight of the Willesden, setting fire to drums of oil she carried on deck. Some of her crew abandoned ship right away, others stayed and attempted to fight back with their 4-inch, but the gun duel was one-sided. Thor pumped 128 shells into the Willesden, then finished her off with a torpedo. On 3 April the 5,630-ton Norwegian Aust was sunk in a similar manner in the same area. Of these three ships, none had been able to broadcast the QQQQ message indicating they were under attack by an enemy merchant raider, and Gumprich decided it would be safe to continue his mission in these profitable waters. So it was, a week later, that he came across the Kirkpool.
The weather had been deteriorating all night as a South Atlantic depression tracked from west to east across the area, and by the time Thor first sighted the Kirkpool it seemed that Alfred Round’s ‘millionaire’s cruise’ was coming to an abrupt end. He wrote:
On 10 April the weather changed. It got rougher, followed by a very black night with neither moon nor stars to be seen. There was now a stiff southerly and steadily rising seas that seemed to mark the end of our fantastic run of good weather. The inside of the wheelhouse where I was on the helm was dark and quiet, except for the usual creaks and groans of a riveted ship labouring against the Atlantic swell.
As the day wore on, it got worse, the wind keening in the rigging and the long Atlantic rollers assuming mountainous proportions, their crests beginning to break in the crosswind, filling the air with flying spray and spume. The Kirkpool, then passing about 240 miles north of the lonely island of Tristan da Cunha, was straining every rivet as she pitched and rolled with an agonising corkscrew movement, and in order to avoid damage to his ship Captain Kennington was forced to reduce speed. When the sun reached its zenith behind the heavy overcast, the Kirkpool was barely making steerage way. And to add to the sheer misery of it all, as the relatively warm air of the depression passed over the colder water it condensed out to form a blanket of fog. Very soon, the Kirkpool was steaming blind.
The weather, the low cloud and the fog should have been the Kirkpool’s saviours, hiding her from the searching eyes on the Thor’s bridge and allowing her to escape, but the German raider had an ace up her sleeve: she was equipped with an early form of radar. Primitive though it might have been, with a 6-inch cathode ray tube giving no more than vertical blips to indicate a target, the radar enabled Gumprich to keep track of his intended victim as he closed in.
It was dark by the time Thor came within easy range of the Kirkpool, but by now the fog had lifted, allowing Gumprich to see his victim clearly. At 2007 he fired a single torpedo at the British ship as she wallowed in the heaving swell. Given the weather conditions, it was perhaps not surprising that the torpedo missed its mark. However, the Kirkpool being now in plain sight, Gumprich was able to bring his guns to bear. The first salvo from the 5.9s also missed, but three shells of the second salvo scored direct hits on the Kirkpool’s bridge, creating bloody carnage. On fire, and with her steering knocked out, the doomed ship veered off course and quite inadvertently lurched towards her attacker. Gumprich, assuming that the Kirkpool was attempting to ram his ship, opened fire with every gun he could bring to bear. Shell after shell rained down on the helpless tramp, smashing, burning and killing. Unable to offer any resistance, Captain Kennington gave the order to abandon ship.
Alfred Round described the chaos:
The ship was now burning fiercely out of control and lighting up the surrounding sea. We could see the carnage and the deck strewn with wounded and dying shipmates. Powerful searchlights shone from nowhere and swept over the ship. I got caught in their glare and stood momentarily paralysed. They struck more fear into me than anything else, knowing that these eyes of the enemy exposed us to yet more destruction. They were suddenly switched to the lifeboats which some crew were working frantically to launch. Another salvo burst, demolishing the stokehold ventilators and part of the funnel, but the most sickening sight was to see the blasting away of the lifeboats and the brave men who, in the face of such withering fire, had been trying to launch them.
The Kirkpool, on fire from end to end and sinking lower and lower in the water so that her main deck was soon awash, was a tragic sight as she lay stopped and at the mercy of the pounding waves. Her lifeboats had been reduced to smouldering matchwood and her life-rafts were on fire or jammed fast in their cradles, while seventeen of her crew lay dead or dying on her ravaged decks.
Round’s report continued:
During a lull in the action 17 survivors, some seriously wounded, took shelter in the forward well deck. The Chief Engineer took command as our Captain was missing, presumed dead. What a sorry sight we were, with one engineer wounded in his right kidney, his insides exposed, and his right arm shattered at the elbow. The Bosun, with head wounds, was now just regaining consciousness. An Indian clutched a broken arm, and nearby two young ratings lay dead. A radio officer had shrapnel in his lung and the galley boy was shell-shocked and out of his mind. I passed a first aid box to Sid Powell, the steward, who quietly set to work bandaging his mates. To cap it all, over a dozen crew were missing, either killed or drowned. Several Indian firemen were standing in a group and wailing and calling, ‘Allah! Allah!’ They were giving themselves up to their fate and mourning their own funeral.
The ship meanwhile was only just managing to keep her nose above the waves, but an occasional roller would come over, and so we all began to grab at anything that would float, hatch boards, a long ladder, anything. These we now lashed together with an ample supply of rope from No. 2 derrick. What a splendid team we made as we grasped this last chance of survival offered to us… Meanwhile our attacker was getting impatient at the time the ship took to sink, because they started to open fire once again, which was a signal for us to take to our crude rafts, and so along with the wounded we jumped in to the sea.
Robert Denmark, one of the Kirkpool’s DEMS gunners, wrote in later life:
All hell was let loose as salvo after salvo of very heavy gunfire rained down on us, smashing parts of the superstructure to pieces and causing fires to start everywhere. The gunfire continued for a long time without respite and at a very short range. It seemed that the raider was intent on sinking us by surface fire as the torpedoing was taking longer than expected to achieve its aim. Under such intense bombardment and heavily under-armed in comparison to our enemy, it was impossible to retaliate and survival became essential. Most escape rafts were either released or smashed in the action. The starboard lifeboat was blown from the davits with several Indian firemen attempting to escape by lowering it. The whole episode seemed a shambles, but mercifully the firing stopped… Several of us gathered in the after welldeck searching for something to evacuate safely on. Captain Kennington then arrived and advised us to abandon ship as she was sinking fast. Seeing we had no escape material, he suggested a cargo net with buoyant material attached on the forecastle head was possible escape material. Several hands went with him to release it and the remainder of us waited patiently with hope of its arrival. Heaven sent, the net duly came floating down the port side and we all jumped in union.
Myself a very moderate swimmer, I was very relieved to grasp the net which proved to be a life-saver to several of the crew. We drifted slowly away from the Kirkpool, now well alight and providing a firework display as small arms bullets began exploding. The illuminations kept us abreast of happenings with the Kirkpool.
Denmark added:
Most of us were scantily clad, myself only in a singlet and kapok lifejacket. Gathering thoughts of possible sharks in the area were not comforting. Possibly in the water for over an hour, time did not seem to register while clinging onto life. The weather conditions became darker and our thoughts of survival likewise.
Chief Engineer Burley, who saved his own life by clinging to a wooden hatch board, also remembered:
I felt so tired, real tired, and cramp was getting into my legs, and the thought came to me all I had to do was to let go and end it. It seemed so easy, but somehow, someone, somewhere seemed to always want attention, especially two wounded men… we were a sorry lot of fourteen of us on hatch boards, a rough sea, a burning ship astern of us, nothing else in sight, and possibly a thousand miles from anywhere on a black night.
Having subjected the Kirkpool to a prolonged and unnecessary shelling while it was quite obvious that her crew were abandoning ship, Günther Gumprich appeared to have a change of heart. Despite being aware that his victim had broadcast a call for help, he spent the next three hours cruising around looking for survivors. This late compassionate gesture resulted in thirty men who would otherwise have died being plucked from the icy waters. Among them were Captain Albert Kennington and Chief Engineer C. Burley. That these men were found and saved was largely due to an innovation in British merchant ships: small red lights attached to lifejackets that ignited on contact with the water. Furthermore, to the credit of Gumprich, his officers and men, when the survivors were taken on board the Thor they were well treated. DEMS gunner Robert Denmark put this on record:
The wounded were attended to straight away and the rest of us were made comfortable; the German officers and men plied us liberally with cognac and rye bread sausage sandwiches. I remember going to bed quite tipsy. A moderate interrogation took place mainly to get records for kith and kin notification… Now warm and nourished we settled into our temporary accommodation for the remainder of the night. Next day we were roused early and taken to our more permanent prison quarters. These were in the central position in the bowels of the ship below the waterline. Access and egress were by a companionway with a heavy steel sheet lockable lid. Exercise on deck was allowed one hour in the forenoon and one hour in the afternoon daily.
The Kirkpool survivors found they were sharing their prison accommodation with those rescued from the three other vessels sunk by the Thor, namely the British ships Wellpark and Willesden and the Norwegian-flag Aust. However austere and restricted their quarters might be, they were air-conditioned and provided with a number of flushing toilets.
During the first three days of their captivity Captain Kennington and his men enjoyed the freedom of the deck, which helped to speed their recovery from the ordeal they had suffered. On the fourth day there was a complete change of mood aboard the raider, and all prisoners were locked in their quarters below decks under armed guard. This regime prevailed for a number of days, presumably while the Thor was stalking another victim. This proved to be the British cargo/passenger vessel Nanking, which was stopped and captured on 10 May, resulting in another influx of prisoners, this time including some women and children.
The Thor now moved into the Indian Ocean, where her prisoners, some 200 in all, were transferred to the German blockade runner Dresden, then on her way to Japan. She reached Yokohama a month later, when all prisoners were handed over to the Japanese authorities. Captain Kennington and the twenty-nine others who survived the sinking of the Kirkpool were sent to a prisoner of war camp near Fukushima, called Kawasaki No. 1, some 125 miles north of Tokyo. The conditions they suffered there were appalling. Robert Denmark described them:
The two-storey structure we were housed in proved to be an unsanitary and bug-infested dwelling with cold water only external washing facilities and external primitive toilets. The toilets were narrow wooden huts with earthenware pots sunk into the ground, with a 12″ × 5″ hole cut in the floor. Within days of use the pots became a seething mass of maggots. Consequently, the inevitable happened – vast amounts of sickness and dysentery… Work schedules were prepared and, in Japan, to not work meant you would not eat despite how unwell you might be… a typical Japanese diet for prisoners of war: breakfast consisted of a small bowl of rice and some hot liquid called soup, containing very little solid food and some added misau, a curd material to cloud the absence of vegetables. This menu was repeated at midday on site and on our return to camp in the evening with no variation for the whole of our stay in Japan. Later, the rice became short and was substituted by Korean rice, which was reddish in colour, and coarse rolled barley. The midday meal, carried from camp to camp in wooden rice buckets, often turned sour, especially in the summer months, but this had to be eaten or we starved. Some meals often arrived with rat droppings cooked in it. Prisoners would extract the faeces and as little as possible of the discoloured area. Such a revolting situation was necessary for such hungry men performing such manual tasks. To be expected to live without bread, butter, meat, cheese and all other forms of the European diet was a total contravention of the Geneva Convention for prisoners of war, but our captors were a sadistic bunch of animals.
The Kirkpool survivors remained incarcerated in the hell hole of Kawasaki No. 1 until 10 September 1945, when they were finally released by an Anglo/American naval task force. For Captain Albert Kennington it was too late. He died of malnutrition on 14 March l944.