As dusk falls I think a lot of home. I always do on a Sunday. That little Welsh village in North Pembrokeshire. The evening service is now about to begin in the chapel of which my father is Pastor. I close my eyes and dream that I am there in the old family pew with my dear mother and sisters. The singing is wonderful, rendered as only a Welsh choir can… I fall asleep only to wake in a little while to find myself still in an open boat adrift somewhere out on the vast Atlantic Ocean.
Jonathan Islwyn Davies, First Radio Officer, late of the Newcastle tramp Peterton, and his twenty-one fellow survivors crammed into a 24ft lifeboat had already endured thirty-one days afloat on the great ocean. Thirty-one days at the mercy of the boiling sun and lifeless air of the Doldrums, ever searching for a landfall that seemingly would never come. Now, with food and water running low and exhaustion beginning to take its toll, all they had left were dreams of home.
The voyage had begun on the last day of August 1942 in the port of Hull on England’s north-east coast when the Peterton, down to her summer marks with a full cargo of best Durham coal, had set sail for Buenos Aires.
She was not a ship to turn heads. Built in 1919 for R. Chapman& Son, also known as the Carlton& Cambay Steamship Company, she was the archetypal British tramp steamer. Weighing in at just over 5,000 tons gross, she had a conveniently box-shaped hull and a tall ‘Woodbine’ funnel that provided natural draught for her three Scotch boilers. Her 3-cylinder, triple-expansion engine, driving a single screw, gave her – in theory, at least – a service speed of 9½ knots. Commanded by 33-year-old Captain Thomas Marrie, she carried a total complement of forty-three and was armed with the usual vintage 4-inch and a brace of machine guns.
After a trouble-free passage around the north of Scotland, the Peterton joined up with the Gibraltar-bound convoy OG 89 off the Firth of Clyde. When complete, this convoy consisted of twenty-one merchantmen, all British-flag, most of them small short-sea traders carrying coal or coke to Spanish and Portuguese ports. The Peterton, being bound for the South Atlantic, was the odd ship out. Escorting OG 89 were the sloop HMS Fowey and four Flower-class corvettes.
The convoy first steamed due west into the open Atlantic until clear of the U-boats’ hunting grounds, before turning south to pass 300 miles west of Cape Finisterre. This irksome diversion paid dividends, for although the U-boats were sinking up to 100 ships a month in the North Atlantic at the time, OG 89 cleared the danger area unmolested.
When 250 miles due west of Lisbon the Peterton said her goodbyes and slipped away from the other ships to begin her long, lonely trek to South America. Captain Marrie had been advised that the only U-boat activity reported to the south was off the coast of Liberia, in the Gulf of Guinea. Accordingly, he set course to pass midway between Madeira and the Azores, confident that his passage would continue uninterrupted.
The ‘U-boat activity’ reported was the work of one man, the much-decorated Kapitänleutnant Heinrich Bleichrodt, who commanded the Type IXB long-range boat U-109. After just two years in command, Bleichrodt had already joined the growing list of Admiral Dönitz’s ‘aces’ by sending 140,000 tons of Allied shipping to the bottom. He had taken U-109 out of Lorient on her sixth war patrol some seven weeks earlier and while hunting in the Gulf of Guinea had added another three ships to his score, culminating with the destruction of Blue Star Line’s 11,449-ton Tuscan Star.
The Tuscan Star, sunk with two torpedoes on the night of 6 September, provided a most satisfactory conclusion to U-109’s sixth war patrol. Loaded with 7,300 tons of frozen beef and 5,000 tons of general, she was a prime target, and her loss was a serious blow to the British cause. Bleichrodt later regretted the lives lost – forty-eight of the Tuscan Star’s crew and three passengers had been killed by his torpedoes – but war was war. Now, with the U-boat’s fuel and provisions at a low ebb, he considered he was justified in requesting permission to bring the patrol to an end. Lorient agreed, so soon after the Tuscan Star had sunk beneath the waves and her survivors had been interrogated, Bleichtrodt set course for Biscay, aiming to pass outside the Cape Verde Islands and then north between Madeira and the Azores. In doing so, he unwittingly put U-109 on a collision course with the southbound Peterton.
Thursday, 17 September 1942 dawned fine and warm, with a flat calm sea, a cloudless blue sky and the lightest of north-easterly breezes that barely stirred the tropical air. The Peterton was then 240 miles north-west of the Cape Verde Islands and making a steady 9 knots on a south-south-westerly course. Since leaving Convoy OG 89 eleven days earlier she had passed within sight of the odd northbound ship; otherwise, her only company had been a few inquisitive porpoises and the occasional wandering sea bird.
After a restless night in his airless box of a cabin, First Radio Officer Jonathan Davies was enjoying the comparative cool of the Peterton’s lower bridge deck before taking over the watch in the wireless room at 0800. Because of a shortage of radio officers, since sailing from Hull Davies had been keeping watch-and-watch, four hours on and four hours off, with Second Radio Officer Thomas White. It was a punishing routine. Davies had kept the midnight-to-four watch during the night and had slept little since. This happened every second night, and after nearly three weeks at sea he was beginning to feel the strain. Not that radio watch-keeping in wartime was arduous work; with strict radio silence being kept, the watch entailed nothing more strenuous than four hours sat in front of the receiver reading a good book. Incoming messages were few and far between, and for most of the time the ether was eerily quiet, the silence only occasionally broken by a plaintive cry for help from a ship torpedoed far to the north. It was a lonely existence, almost boring.
At precisely 0800 Davies relieved his junior in the wireless room and settled down with his book. He was relieved for breakfast at 0830 but was back on watch by 0900. With so little to occupy his mind for the next three hours, boredom soon began to set in, boredom that would have been very quickly dispelled had he been aware that his ship was being watched by a hidden enemy.
The thin spiral of smoke on the horizon heralding the approach of the Peterton had been spotted by a lookout in U-109’s conning tower at first light. Bleichrodt waited until the British ship was hull-up and recognizable as a southbound merchant ship, then he submerged to periscope depth to wait for her to come within range.
Jonathan Davies takes up the narrative:
At 9.30 terrific explosion amidships followed by another two within thirty seconds of each other; knew these to be three torpedoes, and the ship took a list to port immediately and began to sink. Sent out the necessary distress signals giving ship’s position, four times and then found the wireless room door jammed due to force of explosion and could not get out that way. Crawled through communicating window into living cabin, grabbed life jacket, and ran out on to lower bridge. Noticed there were no lifeboats on the davits, and realized that the ship had been abandoned. Hurried up to the navigating bridge to ascertain what direction the boats had taken. Saw lifeboat full of men pulling away astern, so ran down to main deck and along aft and got up on to the poop. Noticed port rails of ship now under water and likely to roll over any second, so jumped over the stern and swam out for the lifeboat. Suction from ship making progress difficult and eventually when not very far from reaching boat was exhausted, but two men swam out with a line and we were hauled aboard to safety. On looking round found ship had disappeared and only wreckage floating about. The port lifeboat had been blown to pieces by explosions and the starboard bridge boat was floating upside down. The port bridge boat luckily had floated off; this was retrieved and eleven men with the Chief Officer in charge were transferred into it. A raft was floating nearby so the fresh water tank and stores were taken off. We are twenty-three men in this lifeboat with the Captain in charge.
U-109 had now surfaced and could be seen heading towards the drifting boats. The survivors were aware of what was about to happen. For some time now, following an edict issued by Admiral Dönitz, U-boat commanders were under orders, whenever possible, to take prisoner the Captain and Chief Engineer of any ship sunk. Experienced senior officers, particularly those in command, were irreplaceable in the short term, and taking them out of Voices from the Past – Peterton 17.09.42 143 circulation would have a serious effect on the manning of Allied merchant shipping.
Both Captain Thomas Marrie and Chief Engineer Thomas Gorman were in the Peterton’s crowded lifeboat, and there was nowhere to hide. The usual procedure adopted in a case like this was for the senior men to remove all badges of rank, while other survivors claimed they had gone down with the ship. Short of conducting a long interrogation of the survivors, which they could ill afford to do, U-boat commanders often had little option but to leave empty-handed. However, although Gorman, an older man, agreed to the deception, Captain Marrie refused.
He said to the others, ‘I was captain of her when she was afloat, and I am still her captain. If you tell them that I went down with the ship and they find that I am in the boat, they might turn the guns on us, and that would be the end of us all, so for the safety of my crew I shall go aboard if asked for.’
Radio Officer Jonathan Davies, who had begun keeping a log on scraps of paper, wrote:
By now the submarine is close to us and the Commander gives orders to come alongside. He wants to know the name of our ship and asks for the Captain and Chief Engineer. Our Captain makes himself known and adds that the Chief has gone down with the ship. This is believed and orders are given for him to come aboard. An officer takes him on to the conning tower where the Commander shakes hands, and some conversation follows between them. Our Captain then informs us that he has been taken prisoner, and has tried to get us some extra fresh water; unfortunately there are no tins available to hold it. He wishes us the best of luck, gives the correct course for the nearest land, which is the Cape Verde Islands. We wave our farewells to him as he is taken from view inside – as fine and brave a man as ever sailed the seven seas.
When the U-boat had disappeared out of sight, the lifeboat and jolly boat came together and a head count was made. It then became clear that eight men, three engineer officers and four engine room ratings, along with Second Radio Officer Thomas White, were missing. It was known that the missing engine room personnel were below when the torpedoes struck, and it was assumed they had died in the explosions. Radio Officer White was last seen standing on the poop deck of the Peterton as she went down. Those in the boats had called to him to jump, but he refused and so lost his life.
The Peterton had been sunk some 250 miles north-west of the Cape Verde Islands, not a great distance to sail, even in a ship’s lifeboat, given favourable winds and currents. Unfortunately, wind and current were anything but favourable: the wind was light and variable, barely enough to fill a sail, and the prevailing current was flowing in the wrong direction. Against such odds, the voyage promised to be long and arduous.
In the absence of Captain Marrie, Second Officer George Howes was in charge of the lifeboat, while Chief Officer Francis Fairweather was in the jolly boat. The two officers discussed their situation at length and decided there was no alternative but to set course for the Cape Verdes, hoping to be picked up by a passing ship on the way. There was an emergency radio in the lifeboat, already being set up by Jonathan Davies, who would send out periodic distress signals. Furthermore, both boats were well stocked with food and water, and although they were crowded, with twenty-three in the lifeboat and eleven in the jolly boat, a prolonged voyage, up to thirty days perhaps, was possible. Optimistically, Davies wrote in his log, ‘We shall not be in the boat for long, and even if we are not picked up, should make the Cape Verde Islands in about six days.’
It was decided that the boats would lie to sea anchors for the night in case help was already on the way. This proved to be a forlorn hope, for when first light came on the 18th, the horizon was disappointingly empty. However, as the sun rose, so the wind rose with it, and soon a fresh north-easterly was blowing. After the inactivity of the night the survivors were quick to hoist their sails and set course to the east with confidence Their destination, the Cape Verde Islands, lying 300 miles off the African mainland, are an archipelago of fourteen islands with peaks of up to 4,500ft, theoretically visible at over 70 miles. This was a target they surely could not fail to hit, even taking into account their unreliable magnetic compasses and the vagaries of wind and current.
Such optimism proved to be sadly misplaced. Jonathan Davies’ prediction of six days stretched into six weeks, and then beyond, and throughout this long ordeal, using a stump of pencil and any scraps of paper he could lay his hands on, he kept a day-to-day journal of the progress of the lifeboat and its occupants. On the journal’s opening page Davies wrote, ‘Everybody is quite happy and contented.’ And this was after a breakfast which consisted of biscuits spread with Pemmican, surely the vilest tasting meat extract ever conceived by man.
The two boats kept within sight of each other throughout the day, coming together at night to discuss progress. The heavy wooden craft were difficult to steer in the prevailing wind, so it was decided to tack to the north-east during the night, altering on to south-east at daylight. In this way they hoped to make a mean course to the east. As soon as it was dark, when radio reception would be at its best, Davies rigged the wireless aerial and broadcast an SOS to all ships, giving the position of the boats. Except for the crackle of atmospherics, nothing was heard in reply; but as all ships would be keeping strict radio silence in accordance with Admiralty orders, the survivors consoled themselves with the thought that help must surely be on the way. Davies wrote in his log:
Now we spread out as best we can for the night, taking turns at the tiller and lookout. Four officers take over watches at the tiller, and the men one hour each at the lookout. This goes on night and day. I stretch out as best I can on my lifejacket and try to get a little sleep after first saying my prayers and asking God to keep me and my shipmates safe, and guide us soon to land. It is very hard and uncomfortable on the seat. It is getting very cold and all I have on is a pair of shorts and an open shirt. I wish I had some more clothes: I did have a patrol jacket but I gave it to the young apprentice.
As the Peterton had been torpedoed in tropical waters and had gone down in a matter of minutes, none of the survivors had been wearing much in the way of clothes. Most had just thin cotton shirts and shorts, and some who had been sleeping after a night watch were near naked. They all suffered in the fierce sunlight during the day and the bitter cold at night.
The first few days went well. The myth of early rescue or landfall prevailed, and everyone was in good spirits. Other than a magnetic compass of uncertain accuracy and a small scale chart, the boats had no other means of finding their way to land, in which case Second Officer George Howes’ navigation was largely a matter of guesswork. Chief Engineer Tom Gorman had devised a makeshift log from a length of sail twine and an empty Pemmican tin, which was a great help. With this he calculated that the lifeboat was making good about 2 knots. This put them roughly 180 miles from the Cape Verde Islands at noon on the 21st. The weather was holding fair, with a steady north-easterly breeze, and although the days were unbearably hot and the nights cold, and the diet of Pemmican, hard ship’s biscuits and Horlicks tablets was monotonous and unappetizing, morale was high in both boats.
And so they sailed on, the two boats keeping in sight of each other, sometimes neck and neck, each striving to take the lead and be the first to sight land. In the crowded lifeboat, although conditions were far from easy, the certain knowledge that the tall peaks of the Cape Verdes would soon be visible on the horizon made the discomfort easier to bear.
At sunset on the 21st, Jonathan Davies wrote in his log:
Just before dark the other boat is seen to be about half a mile away on our starboard beam, and seems to be making a more southerly course than we. She makes a pretty picture in the setting sun, with her red sails and yellow distress flag flying at her mast head. We sail on through another night.
First light on the 22nd brought a complete change of fortune. The jolly boat, a familiar and comforting sight ever since they had lost the Peterton, had disappeared completely from view, and with it had gone the friendly breeze that had urged them on their way. At sunrise the air was still, and they were alone on a lifeless sea. Davies’ daily log, which had until then had been so full of optimism, was suddenly devoid of hope:
The afternoon is as much as I can bear; the sun is blazing down on us from a cloudless sky. I can hardly get my breath, and am terribly thirsty. Oh, for a gallon of cool, clear water! I am not hungry although I have eaten practically nothing since the start – I can’t, my mouth is too dry. I have now five biscuits in my possession which I have not been able to eat. I try bathing my lips with sea water. It looks cool and inviting to drink, but I understand it would drive me mad if I drank it. In truth, I now quote the words from ‘The Ancient Mariner’ – ‘Water, water everywhere and not a drop [sic] to drink!’ What a pity that the sea is salty. I am glad when the sun goes down and I look forward eagerly to my ration of water.
Although the Peterton’s lifeboat was well stocked with food and water and it had been anticipated that the voyage to safety would be brief, Second Officer Howe had wisely instituted rationing from the beginning. Each man was given two biscuits spread with Pemmican and a small measure of water at daybreak, one biscuit and a similar amount of water at noon, and two biscuits with Pemmican washed down with water at night. It was a desperately inadequate and unappetizing diet, barely enough to ensure subsistence. However, it was the merciless heat of the sun beating down all day, coupled with the lack of proper sleep at night, that did the most to sap the spirit of the survivors. The boat was so crowded that it was impossible for a man to find shelter or stretch out on the bare boards. There were no blankets, and the thin tropical gear most of them wore did nothing to keep out the bitterly cold night air. Whereas in the beginning they had whiled away the dark hours with tales of life at home, of past voyages and ports visited, they had now lapsed into a silence broken only by the slap of the waves and the creaking of the boat’s timbers as it rolled in the long Atlantic swell.
Hope returned on the 24th when the breeze picked up enough to fill the drooping sails. The boat began to move again, albeit at no more than one knot, as measured by Chief Engineer Gorman’s patent log. The wind, gentle though it was, brought some relief from the burning sun, and life began to have some meaning again for the flagging survivors. In the late afternoon an excited cry from the lookout in the bow brought them fully alert. A ship was in sight.
Davies described the reaction:
There is great excitement, we shall soon be having plenty of food and drink. She is getting nearer to us all the time and we can now see her derricks and ventilators quite plainly. She is an Allied merchant ship, because we can make out the guns on her stern. We burn smoke floats and flares, and wave yellow flags to attract attention… Only a shipwrecked sailor can understand our disappointment when she passed about a mile ahead and never saw us… However, it is tea-time now and we cheer up after our biscuit and water, and there is always tomorrow and another ship, and anyway we shall hit one of the islands within the next few days – we can’t miss them.
It beggars belief that those twenty-three men, after more than a week enduring the cramped conditions in the boat, the unrelenting sun, the cold at night and a starvation diet, could face disappointment so bravely. Yet they did, and it was this dogged determination not to give in to despair that would sustain them through the coming days.
In the early hours of the morning of the 25th they ran into a violent thunderstorm, with gale force winds and torrential rain. The boat became uncontrollable, and they were forced to lie to a sea anchor. But what at first had seemed like another setback proved to be a blessing. The rain was warm and they stripped naked to let it wash the caked salt from their wasted bodies. When the sun rose, they greeted it refreshed in mind and body. Their joy was unrestrained when, later in the morning, the mast of what appeared to be a small ship – a fishing vessel, perhaps – was seen on the horizon. The wind had fallen away again, so they shipped their oars and pulled towards the mast. It was early afternoon before they realized they were in for a disappointment. Jonathan Davies wrote in his log:
When we get nearer we find that it is an empty ship’s lifeboat, and as we come alongside we recognise it to be the Chief Officer’s boat. The sail has been neatly furled and there are two or three lifejackets left. We assume that they must have been picked up by the ship that had passed and which failed to see us last night.
The assumption was correct. The Peterton’s jolly boat and its eleven occupants had been rescued by the British ship Empire Whimbrel, which was almost certainly the ship they themselves had sighted. The Empire Whimbrel was on her way to Buenos Aires, where she landed Chief Officer Fairweather and his boat’s crew.
On the fourteenth day of their long ordeal, still with no land in sight, Jonathan Davies and his fellow survivors were obliged to accept that they had missed the Cape Verde Islands and had no alternative but to carry on until they reached the African mainland. Davies, now reduced to writing his log between the lines of an old letter from home, commented:
There is a small chart aboard, so this is consulted to ascertain the nearest point of land ahead. We find that it is Bathurst on the West Coast of Africa, and the distance is about 520 miles. We must, therefore, keep on the same course and make the mainland. It is a long way. Will we ever make it?
Another thirty-four days were to drag by before Radio Officer Jonathan Davies’ question was answered. The final entry in his log was made on 5 November, forty-nine days after the Peterton was sunk. It reads:
Very hot day, sun blazing down on us from a cloudless sky, and sea calm. Making no progress, and drifting south all the time. Lapsing into lengthy silences again, and everybody is lying down. Another lad has joined the ones that are ill today, and is delirious. Wally is bathing his forehead with cool salt water. When this is finished, he leans over the side to refill the tin, but suddenly drops it, and shouts – ‘Don’t move anybody, there’s a ship coming towards us.’ I think that he too is delirious, but on looking in the direction he is pointing, I find to my great joy that his words are true. It is actually a real ship, or am I seeing things?
It was not an hallucination. Steaming towards them with her bowwave frothing and black smoke rolling back from her funnel was the armed trawler HMS Canna, which had been sent out from Freetown to look for them. Within half an hour all twenty-two survivors, who with no food for six days had been very near to death, were enjoying their first real meal for seven long weeks. It was hot soup, and it tasted like the nectar of the gods.
On a sad concluding note, 15-year-old Apprentice Edward Briggs Hyde, after surviving the long ordeal, died in hospital in Freetown a few days after landing. He had been on his first trip to sea.
Jonathan Islwyn Davies returned to sea after a brief spell of survivor’s leave and remained a sea-going radio officer until he died aboard the Liberian-flag vessel Cavalier in November 1964. His early death, at the age of 52, was most probably hastened by the conditions he endured during the long voyage in the Peterton’s lifeboat in 1942.