From the day she was handed over by her builders in Vancouver the Fort Buckingham had been at the beck and call of HM Government. Mass-produced to a standard design, she was one of the many replacement vessels then coming out of shipyards in the Americas to help fill the gaping holes left in British shipping by Dönitz’s U-boats. As was required at the time, she was a box-shaped no-nonsense cargo carrier, adaptable to any trade and economical on fuel. It was said of these ships that if they succeeded in carrying just one cargo across the Atlantic to beleaguered Britain, then they had served their purpose. Crudely put, they were disposable.
Owned by the omnipotent Ministry of War Transport, the Fort Buckingham was under the management of the Middlesbrough ship owners Joseph Constantine & Sons, fifty-eight years in the business and struggling to keep afloat in the face of heavy losses among its original fleet of eighteen vessels.
In command of the Fort Buckingham was 59-year-old Captain Murdo MacLeod DSC, a veteran of the Russian convoys, who had with him a crew of sixty-seven, comprising eleven British officers and fifty-five Indian ratings. Armed with a 4-inch anti-submarine gun, a 12-pounder, a 40mm Bofors, six 20mm Oerlikons and F.A.M and P.A.C. rockets, the Fort Buckingham also carried twenty-one DEMS gunners.
The Fort Buckingham sailed from Vancouver on her maiden voyage on 13 March l943, entering the Atlantic via the Panama Canal and sailing north to New York, where she loaded a cargo for Liverpool and fulfilled her primary role by carrying it safely across the North Atlantic, arriving in the Mersey on 9 May. With this cargo discharged, she then found herself thrown into the thick of the war, moving up to Glasgow to load military stores for the Middle East. She sailed from the Clyde on 18 June with Convoy KMS 18B, full to her hatch-tops and above with tanks, guns, vehicles and ammunition.
KMS 18B, sailing in support of Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily, was a slow convoy of eighteen merchantmen under heavy escort. Word of the convoy’s sailing had reached Berlin, and soon after passing through the Straits of Gibraltar the ships were ambushed by a waiting pack of U-boats. A week-long running fight ensued, during which the convoy lost six ships. Those remaining discharged their cargoes at various North African ports, completing in Malta. The Fort Buckingham was one of the lucky survivors, and still being under MoWT control, she was ordered to proceed to Bombay via the Suez Canal, calling at Aden to replenish bunkers. She reached Bombay on 3 November and after lying at anchor for a month, on 2 December, much to the delight of her owners, was released from Government control, free to return to normal commercial voyaging.
India was then in the grip of the benign North-East Monsoon, the annual season of blue skies, warm sun and light winds, so the Fort Buckingham’s crew, not least her Lascar seamen, voiced no complaints when their ship lay idle for another six weeks while her managers in Middlesbrough looked around for a suitable cargo. Finally, Captain MacLeod received orders to proceed to Buenos Aires in ballast, calling at Durban for bunkers. The assumption was that this would mean a cargo for the United Kingdom. The ship was going home at last.
The Fort Buckingham left Bombay on 17 January l944, embarking on a voyage of 8,400 miles involving between five and six weeks at sea. With both Germany and Japan on the defensive, it was clear that the war had almost run its course, and her route via the Cape of Good Hope was considered to be relatively safe. Beyond that, in the South Atlantic, was clear water. No convoys would be involved. The Fort Buckingham would sail alone and hopefully unmolested.
Early in June 1943, Admiral Dönitz had formed the Monsun Group with a view to operating against the busy Allied shipping lanes in the North Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea. The group consisted of eleven Type IX long-range U-boats, one of which was a supply boat. They set out from Biscay carrying equipment for the construction of a U-boat base at the Japanese-held port of Penang at the northern end of the Straits of Malacca, but the enterprise was dogged by ill fortune from the start. Four of their number were sunk by Allied aircraft on their way south to the Cape, and some were diverted to supply other boats in the Atlantic running short of fuel. After a voyage of nearly three months, the remnants of Monsun, just five boats, finally reached the Indian Ocean. One of these was the Type IXC/40 U-188, commanded by 27-year-old Kapitänleutnant Siegfried Lüdden.
U-188 escaped the attentions of the enemy on the outward passage, but when rounding the Cape of Good Hope ran into a violent storm in which she sustained severe damage on deck. This did not seriously affect the boat’s performance, so Lüdden decided to continue the voyage. However, on arrival at her operational area in late September, he found the hot, humid climate caused the exhaust temperatures of his diesels to soar. This resulted in excessively high lubricating oil consumption, a major problem given there was little or no opportunity to replenish supplies. In addition, the heat haze that often hung over the horizon badly affected visibility, and when he did find suitable targets, the high air and water temperatures caused his torpedoes to run erratically. Perhaps more significantly, Lüdden found that the heat and humidity were sapping the morale of his crew. Weather conditions in the North Atlantic may have been difficult and unpleasant at times, but the Indian Ocean, for all its fabled charms, was turning out to be a difficult hunting ground.
U-188’s success rate was certainly disappointing. Two weeks had passed since her arrival, and she had succeeded in sinking just one Allied merchantman and damaging another. On 8 October Lüdden received orders to proceed to Penang, where U-188’s long overdue weather damage repairs would be carried out. After that, she was to take on cargo for the return voyage to Germany.
By mid-January l943, with her ports securely blockaded by the Royal Navy, Germany was running out of a number of vital materials she was unable to produce at home. Tungsten, rubber, copper, quinine and essential oils were all in short supply. By September the situation had become so critical that the High Command appealed to Dönitz for help. Dönitz offered to use his long-range U-boats to ease the situation. U-188 was one of the chosen, and when she had completed her repairs in Penang she sailed to Singapore. There she loaded 100 tons of tin, eleven tons of rubber, 1,000lb of quinine, four chests of opium and 1,500 sacks of wolfram packed in rubber. She left Singapore on 9 January 1944 with orders to first attack shipping in the Gulf of Aden, before returning to Germany with her cargo. C-in-C U-boats was demanding his pound of flesh.
Eleven days later, U-188 passed through the Nine Degree Channel, which separates the Laccadive and Maldive archipelagos, and was on the surface steering a course for the Gulf of Aden. The sun had just risen with spectacular abruptness, turning the drab grey of the dying night into an enchanted Arabian morning. The sky was a rich blue, unmarred by the merest hint of cloud, and not even a puff of wind disturbed the glassy calm of the sea.
As the horizon hardened, a lookout in U-188’s conning tower sighted a tiny cloud of smoke bearing right ahead. Lüdden, called to the bridge, scanned the horizon through his powerful Zeiss binoculars and within minutes was rewarded by the topmasts of a southbound ship coming into view. He called for full speed, and the U-boat surged forward like a hound scenting the fox.
At about 1000, with the upperworks of a distant ship, the Fort Buckingham, clearly visible, Lüdden took U-188 down to periscope depth and waited for the opportunity to strike. As the distance between the two vessels shortened, it became clear that the merchantman was unescorted and flying light in ballast. She also appeared to be very heavily armed. Keeping a close eye on her guns, then unmanned, Lüdden approached with caution. At about 2,800yds he fired a spread of three torpedoes. The distance was great, and not surprisingly all three torpedoes wandered off course, completely missing their target.
Aboard the Fort Buckingham, although Captain MacLeod had doubled his lookouts, no one had the slightest inkling that they were under attack. Three days out from Bombay, nothing had been seen of the enemy, no radio warnings had been received and the ship’s routine continued as normal. The wooden decks had been scrubbed down, breakfast served, and now, under the influence of the warm sun, a lazy day was promised. Apart from the extra lookouts and a certain tension in the air, it was almost as if peace had broken out.
Still completely unaware of any danger threatening, the Fort Buckingham had crossed ahead of U-188 and was now stern-on to her. Frustrated at the failure of his torpedoes, Siegfried Lüdden gave chase, but as his maximum underwater speed was only 7½ knots he was unable to close the gap. In desperation, he surfaced and switched to his diesel motors, but after a while these again began to experience high exhaust temperatures and it became necessary to reduce speed. By nightfall, U-188 was still two miles astern of her quarry, and her diesels were running too hot for comfort.
Reluctantly, with his hopes of being able to overhaul the ship in the dark fading, Lüdden decided to abandon the chase. Then, as he was about to give up, the Fort Buckingham suddenly made a bold alteration of course to port, this being common practice in British merchantmen, designed to throw off any U-boat which may have been stalking them during the day. In this case, the move proved fatal for the Fort Buckingham for it put her beam-on to U-188, presenting a target that would be difficult to miss.
Lüdden had not yet reloaded his bow tubes, but he was able to reverse course quickly and fire a spread of two from his stern tubes. After a run of 177 seconds, both torpedoes went home in the Fort Buckingham’s No. 4 hold, immediately abaft her engine room. The sea poured in through the huge gash made in the ship’s side.
Seventeen-year-old Apprentice Norman Gibson, after a punishing day’s work testing the hold bilges in preparation for the Fort Buckingham’s next cargo, was sound asleep in his tiny cabin on the port side of the boat deck. In later years he wrote:
I was shaken awake by an almighty explosion. As the noise subsided I could hear the tremendous rush of water filling up No. 4 hold, where I had been working on the previous day. All lights were extinguished so I fumbled around my cabin and found a torch. Putting on battledress, shoes and lifejacket, I made my way to the starboard boat deck, my allotted boat station.
On arrival I met the 3rd Engineer, a man named Coverdale. Between us we cleared the lifeboat falls ready for lowering the boat. The 3rd Mate – Willoughby – was shouting across from the bridge in an attempt to prevent lifeboats being lowered until our Captain had decided on the best course of action. At that point we were not sinking and were able to defend ourselves. Coverdale then went back to his cabin to get a lifejacket – he was never seen again. Various members of the crew now began to collect on the boat deck.
I briefly returned to my cabin and on my return I found that the Lascar seamen had filled the lifeboat, causing it to tilt. The davit guy rope had become jammed under the rudder pintle. The solution was to cut the guy rope free, and as I had a knife I set off with haste to the main deck to do this. When I arrived, I found the main deck under water – how could a ship sink so quickly in the space of three to four minutes!
Taffy Jones, a cool-headed gunner, and I ran to the bows in order to let down a raft. On the way the bows began to rise up and when we reached the bridge the deck was so steep we could not go on. We climbed onto the bulwark and prepared to jump. As the ship slipped below the waves we made our leap into the water. She went down vertically with tremendous rending noises. To our surprise we were soon back on the surface, just in time to see the bow, with its 12 pounder gun disappearing a few feet away from us. It was all over in less than six minutes. Fortunately, apart from the two of us, some other crew members had been swept clear.
What went through my mind? – how warm the water was! Although I had not been sucked down with the ship I was swimming 500 miles away from the land with no lifeboat. Nevertheless I was alive, survived the explosion and was not alone – I felt a feeling of euphoria – and Taffy seemed to know just what to do all the time.
Having seen a light from a raft some way off, we set about reaching it. We swam via a floating door which offered rest, and I picked up a food container on the way which was later to be a valuable supplement to our rations. Taffy and I climbed onto the raft together, and were joined by two Lascar seamen. We extinguished the light in case we were seen and shot at by the submarine, which we assumed to be Japanese. During the night, other seamen were spotted and some swapping of survivors took place to even up the numbers between the rafts. At first light we counted five rafts in all, with a total of 51 survivors. There were 11 men on my raft. Only one officer had survived, all the others including the Captain having been lost
We doubted that a radio message had been sent before the sinking.
Gradually the sun rose, the sea was blue and coloured fish surrounded us. It all seemed unreal – a beautiful and peaceful world but no sign of search aircraft! However, we had plenty to do and busied ourselves making the rafts shipshape. Two rafts drifted away that day and we had no further contact with them. The remaining three were tied together and protective awnings were made from canvas. We even had a mast and a semblance of a sail, coloured red. We hoped it would attract attention.
It seems most probable that Lüdden’s torpedoes brought down the Fort Buckingham’s main wireless aerial, and it was later established that all three of her radio officers had gone down with the ship, so it is extremely unlikely that an SOS was sent. Adrift on tiny wooden rafts in the middle of a vast and empty ocean, with very little in the way of propulsion and even less in the way of navigational equipment, the future of Norman Gibson and his fellow survivors was, to say the least, very uncertain. However, miracles do happen at sea, and now one came their way.
On 29 January, nine days after the survivors had been cast adrift, the 4,992-ton British motor vessel Moorby, southbound for Australia, came across one of the missing rafts carrying five of the Fort Buckingham’s DEMS gunners and two Lascar seamen. All seven men were picked up, but the weather had by now deteriorated, the visibility was poor and the Master of the Moorby was not inclined to dawdle in the area searching for other rafts. He also decided not to break radio silence to report the rescue, and in this was fully justified; Admiralty orders were to maintain radio silence at all times, unless under attack. The Moorby carried on to Australia, and another two weeks passed before she landed her survivors.
Meanwhile, the other rafts drifted aimlessly and unseen. Norman Gibson described the hopelessness of their situation:
The days that followed were ones of utter desolation and deprivation. The north-east monsoon was blowing almost continuously and we were never really comfortable – the sea often awash over the raft. We collected some rain water in the sail but it was barely enough to wash out the salt deposited there. Our plight was pretty desperate and there was little we could do to help ourselves. Our sail was inadequate for sailing towards the coast of Africa or the Seychelles and we had no charts, compass or sextant. Our raft measured approximately 10 feet by 6 feet with insufficient space on it for all of us to lie down at the same time.
It now became clear that no distress signal had been sent and as we were not due in Durban for a fortnight, it seemed likely that we would not be missed for some time.
Three days later, Gibson’s raft was alone on an empty sea, the other rafts having drifted out of sight. As the sun went down on their eleventh day adrift, morale on the raft was at rock bottom, all hope of rescue being seen as a pipe dream. Then, in the last of the short twilight, a puff of smoke was seen on the horizon. A ship! Hope soared again. Distress rockets were fired, and their impending deliverance was celebrated with a double ration of water.
The celebrations were premature. All attempts to attract the attention of the distant ship were in vain. When darkness fell, any hope there may have been of rescue was abandoned, but unknown to Gibson and the others, the smoke they had seen was from the Norwegian ship Kongsdal, which had sighted one of the two missing rafts and had stopped to pick up the survivors. She then broke radio silence to report the rescue, which resulted in the following signal being sent out by Colombo:
1st February 1944. Survivors reported to have been picked up by the ss KONGSDAL 400 miles west of Kelai. Stated their ship was the FORT BUCKINGHAM torpedoed 20th January and four liferafts still missing. Three aircraft are to go to Kelai to carry out search for these rafts and, if found, supplies are to be dropped.
The three Catalina flying boats, J-205 and T-205 of 205 Squadron RAF and F-413 of 413 Squadron RCAF, based at Koggala on the south coast of Ceylon (Sri Lanka), were allocated for the search, and within a few hours of receipt of the Norwegian ship’s message they were ready for take-off. They were to fly to the RAF base at Kelai in the Maldive Islands, where they would refuel before searching for the Fort Buckingham’s missing life-rafts.
The operation began disastrously, when one of the Catalinas, J-205, crashed into the sea on take-off and her depth charges exploded, killing all her crew. The remaining two aircraft took off without incident, landing at Kelai five hours later. Refuelling at this island base was a primitive and time-consuming exercise, involving aviation fuel in 40-gallon drums being floated out to the waiting planes and pumped aboard by hand.
Catalina F-413 was first to take off, leaving Kelai at midnight. Flying due west for 450 miles, she commenced a search, which by the time her fuel was running low had revealed nothing. She was then recalled, landing back at Kelai before dark. She was refuelled overnight, but when she was ready to continue the search next morning her radio was found to be defective and she was withdrawn from service.
Unaware that a search for them was in progress, Norman Gibson and his crew had exhausted their stock of food and were down to their last drops of water after fourteen days adrift on the raft. They now faced a lingering death by thirst and starvation, but on the initiative of DEMS gunner Richard (Taffy) Hughes-Jones they succeeded in catching a small shark. Gibson wrote:
The fish flesh was pure white, but far too tough and unpleasant to eat raw. Among the raft’s emergency equipment were storm matches. With dry wood chipped from the raft we lit a fire. An old water container was filled with sea water and shark steaks. After ten minutes the fish was cooked and ready to eat. We did our best to swallow it, but with limited enthusiasm, as our real and desperate need was for water. We had long ago lost any yearning for food.
The only Catalina remaining operational, T-205 piloted by Squadron Leader Melville Jackson, resumed the search at dawn on 3 February, sweeping the same area as F-413. In the late afternoon Melville’s perseverance was rewarded when the missing rafts were sighted. Norman Gibson takes up the story again:
Yet another day dawned bright with very little wind, but there was a considerable swell. We were all weak and listless – suddenly one of us claimed that he heard aero engines – sure enough, we all looked and spotted a distant aircraft – but had she seen us? It was 4.30 in the afternoon and we all tried to signal the aircraft using empty ration tins to reflect the sun – we even shouted! We were reassured as the aircraft appeared to be losing height – and then it happened, a Catalina – W8406 – flew past at what seemed like only 50 feet. We saw a crew member in the port blister waving, and an Aldis lamp was flashed, but we were all too elated to read what it said. We discovered later that this aircraft on sighting us had sent the following signal to its base:
MTB1 WQM – 15 DR 7° 26ʹ North 66° 16ʹ East. Circling two rafts with red sails approx. 3 miles apart. 10–15 people on each
We watched spellbound as the ‘Cat’ circled and took photographs and waved. Then we were awestruck – the aircraft flew away and we saw the detonation of six depth charges. Surely there was not a U-boat lurking nearby? Apparently not, as the aircraft lowered its floats and a landing was attempted. However, because of the swell the landing had to be abandoned – her engines were opened up, height was gained and she flew straight at us, dropping a Thornaby Bag within an arm’s length of the raft. We lifted it aboard and found inside water bottles, a Very pistol and cartridges, cigarettes, chocolate, biscuits and barley sugar. The Catalina continued to fly around us until 1900 hours and then flew away (back to her base at Kelai). That night we ate extravagantly.
Squadron Leader Jackson radioed news of the sighting to RAF Kelai, who then contacted the Norwegian tanker Ora, reported to be some 400 miles north of the life-rafts. The Ora, bound from Bandar Abbas to Melbourne with aviation fuel, altered course for the position given and on 5 February found all three rafts and took the survivors on board. Next day, they were transferred to the destroyer HMS Redoubt, which landed them in Bombay on the 9th. Unfortunately, five of the Lascar seamen had been so affected by their ordeal that they died before reaching Bombay. This brought the numbers of those lost with the Fort Buckingham to forty-three. Captain Murdo MacLeod and all his officers, with the exception of Chief Engineer Edward Greenway, perished with their ship. To this grievous casualty list must be added the eight-man crew of Catalina J-205, who died when their aircraft crashed on take-off at Koggala.
After her chance encounter with the Fort Buckingham, U-188 went on to sink another six ships in the Arabian Sea before embarking on her long passage home. She landed her desperately needed cargo in Bordeaux on 19 June 1944, after a voyage lasting twelve months and two days. For what must be considered a remarkable achievement Siegfried Lüdden was awarded the Knight’s Cross and went on to serve on Admiral Dönitz’s staff at Lorient, Plön and Kiel. He lost his life in Kiel on 15 January 1945, when the accommodation ship Daressalam, aboard which he was living, was consumed by fire. This was an ignominious death for a brave man who, rightly or wrongly, had served his country well.