by Commander Edward Young
Our next submarine captain-turned-author actually got his start in publishing before he even set foot on a submarine. Commander Edward Young (1913–2003) was selected by Allen Lane of Penguin Books to create their instantly recognizable avian symbol (he found his model at the London Zoo), as well as design the stylish covers for their paperback line in the late 1930s. When World War II broke out, he joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve, where he was instantly commissioned as a sublieutenant owing to his previous sailing experience. During the rest of the war he saw service near Iceland, Malta, Sri Lanka, and off the Australian coast, earning the command of a submarine along the way—the first reservist to achieve this posting—and being awarded two Distinguished Service Crosses and the Distinguished Service Order. After his retirement, in 1945, he returned to publishing and wrote his gripping memoir, One of Our Submarines, which Penguin honored by making it their thousandth book in print, and it is still in print to this day.
Owing to their versatile nature, submarines were used in a variety of tasks during World War II, including attacking enemy cargo ships of all sizes. Instead of wasting torpedoes on the smaller vessels, the sub would find them, surface, and shell them to pieces with its deck guns. This sort of action is often overlooked in favor of the breathless underwater convoy hunts, but Commander Young details it with style to spare, and his pride in performing what some might think a less dangerous—but just as critical—mission during war time is just as evident.
Our next billet was a submarine captain’s dream—almost virgin territory (no submarine had visited it for nearly a year), and a roving commission to look for trouble along a 300-mile coastline studded with hundreds of islands. The area assigned to us was the Mergui Archipelago and the western seaboard of the narrow isthmus which joins the Malay Peninsular to Burma and Siam. It was suspected that, in pursuance of their policy of using small, shallow-draught coastal craft in place of larger deep-water ships, the Japs were working some of the many channels hidden behind the islands, and that the port of Mergui itself might be the departure point for seaborne traffic taking military supplies to Rangoon.
As we expected to use the gun far more than the torpedo tubes, it was decided to increase our outfit of ammunition. By converting a little-used trimming tank and various stowage spaces we finally managed to pack in twice as many rounds of three-inch shells as usual. We also organised a Boarding Party with a view to inspecting, and if necessary blowing up, junks and other small cargo-carrying craft. An edict had recently gone forth that all submarines in the Far East were to carry an additional officer for watch-keeping duties, and we were lucky in having appointed to us a young sub-lieutenant RN called Dicky Fisher, who was not only an extremely likeable fellow and a great asset to the wardroom, but also burning to distinguish himself in some personal fracas with the enemy. I immediately appointed him Boarding Officer and told him to decide for himself how many men and what equipment he needed. He entered into his commission with enthusiasm and intelligence, selected five men, fitted the party up with grappling-hooks, revolvers, demolition charges, and collected from God knows where a most fearsome assortment of knives and daggers for self-defence in case of treachery. When fully kitted up for the first dress rehearsal they looked as bloodthirsty a crowd of pirates as ever slit throats on the Spanish Main.
We left Trincomalee on the evening of July 15th, and after an uneventful passage entered the patrol area in the early hours of the morning of the 20th. I had chosen to make a landfall in the vicinity of Tavoy, since all the islands here are so steep-to that the navigational approach would be easy. We set course to arrive just to the north of Kabosa Island, and a good radar fix was obtained off this and the neighbouring islands before any land was sighted.
Patrol conditions during the first few days were trying and depressing. A monotonous swell from the southwest made depth-keeping difficult, and we had heavy and almost continuous rain—as was to be expected in the wettest month of the monsoon period on one of the wettest coasts of the Bay of Bengal. By day the heavily wooded islands were half hidden by the curtain of falling water, and at night on the bridge we were miserable under the tropical downpour which penetrated everywhere and rendered binoculars useless. When it was not raining, the heat turned the universal damp into a shrouding mist. Visibility was always poor; there was no moon; and at night we had to rely entirely on radar for fixing our position.
The bad visibility foiled my first attempt to inspect the sheltered anchorage on the inside of Tavoy Island known as Port Owen, but on the 23rd I determined to try again. Diving before dawn a few miles out, we crept round the northern tip of the island and turned south towards our objective. The visibility was still down to about three miles, but I hoped it might clear later in the day.
At a quarter past nine the officer-of-the-watch suddenly saw a dim shape on the port bow emerging from the mist of rain. Examining it through the periscope, I could not at first make out what it was, but soon realised it was a small north-bound coaster of about 200 tons, heavily camouflaged with branches of trees and other foliage. I had never before met this form of disguise, an ingenious attempt to make the vessel hard to see when close in against the land.
I turned hard-a-port to bring the submarine on to a parallel course with the enemy, and gave the order,
“Stand by gun action.”
This was the signal for a tremendous bustle and clatter as the gun’s crew opened the lower hatches of the conning-tower and the gun-tower (situated over the wardroom) and clambered up the ladders to wait for the order to open up. Next to the wardroom, in the passage-way by the galley, the ammunition supply party were lifting the hatch-cover off the magazine under the deck and passing out the three-inch shells to be stacked on the wardroom table. Within a minute Blake was able to report, “Gun’s crew ready.”
I waited to let the coaster pass me, intending to surface on his port quarter.
“Target is a small coaster,” I said. “Bearing Green 40. Range 800 yards. Open fire on surfacing. Point of aim the wheelhouse.”
And then the coaster had drawn past our beam and the moment had come.
“Surface. Gun action!”
Number One at once gave the order to blow all main ballast. In accordance with the gun-action drill, the planesmen at first tried to hold the submarine down, but when the blowing tanks began forcing her up they reversed the planes and let her shoot to the surface like a cork. At fifteen feet, when the top of the gun-tower was still under water, Number One blew a whistle, the hatches slammed open, a little shower of water fell down the gun-tower, and then the men were climbing the ladders at the double. I had to wait until Blake and the gun’s crew were clear of the conning-tower, so I kept my eyes at the periscope, watched the target still chugging along in the rain, quite unconcerned, and saw our bow rising out of the sea in a surge of whitened water. A moment later I was climbing the tower.
I got to the bridge just as the gun cracked away the first round. It was a direct hit, and made a shambles of the wheelhouse. There was no sign of opposition from the enemy, but although we pumped round after round into him, most of them along his water-line, he maintained his course and speed for some minutes with apparently no one at the helm. One shell produced a burst of flame from the deck-cargo of oil-drums. At last, after we had fired twenty-eight rounds, he came to a dead stop, so we ceased fire and closed slowly in towards him. There was still no sign of life, and I began to wonder if we had killed the entire crew, but as we approached figures began to emerge hesitantly from the after cabin and jump into the water. Some were Japanese, some Malays. Although the coaster had settled slightly by the stern he looked like taking some time to sink but as I was maneuvering Storm alongside to board him and blow him up with a demolition charge, the shattered vessel sank slowly aft and dived vertically stern first. As he did so, numerous oil-drums and odd bits of wood floated off the deck.
I decided to take only two prisoners. It was too early in the patrol to encumber ourselves with many passengers; the other survivors had plenty of debris to cling to, and land was less than half a mile away. We cruised slowly among the bobbing heads trying to select our prisoners. I was anxious to have one Jap if possible, but the first three we tried to pick up—all unusually large men for their race—swam away at our approach and could not be reached. However, one small Jap consented to be rescued, so he was hauled out of the water and taken below. We also picked up a Malay, whom we found to be wounded in the thigh; he was assisted down the conning-tower and handed over to the Coxswain.
I now decided on the spur of the moment to put into action a plan I had been toying with the previous day—to enter Port Owen brazenly on the surface. There was no large-scale Admiralty chart of the place, but at the last minute before I sailed George Perrin, the Staff Officer in Maidstone, had given me a plan prepared by the India Survey and Topography Division which charted the anchorage in great detail. Although this showed that the water inside was too shallow to allow us to dive in the event of serious opposition, I felt there was an excellent chance of getting away with it if we could achieve a tactical surprise.
It seemed to me that everything was now favourable for such an attempt. The rain, which was still falling heavily and which had thwarted my periscope inspection of the anchorage, would conceal our approach long enough to give us the advantage of surprise. Moreover, we had just tasted blood; the gun’s crew were in buoyant spirits at their quick success; we were already on the surface and in a mood to stay there. It seemed unlikely that the noise of the action could have been heard as far away as the anchorage. I decided to go ahead.
It was ten o’clock when we left the scene of our sinking, proceeding southward, we found ourselves half an hour later at the northern entrance and able to see right across the harbour.
Three vessels were lying at anchor, close inshore. One of them was clearly the empty hulk of a large junk, but the other two were much more difficult to identify, being painted light grey and closer to the land. Blake and I began to have a nasty suspicion that they were submarine-chasers, and for a moment I lost my nerve, so much so that I ordered “Hard-a-starboard” to bring our nose pointing back towards the deeper water. However, on second thoughts we decided they were some kind of river gunboat or patrol vessel, and that having come so far and revealed our presence we must go ahead with the desperate enterprise. I therefore ordered gun action stations and kept the starboard helm on until we had come full circle back to our original course. The gun’s crew had been fallen out after the previous action, but now came tumbling out of the hatches to take up their stations once more.
As we approached we observed great activity aboard the enemy ships and realised they were desperately trying to lift their anchors. One of them did in fact succeed in getting under way and turned towards us just before we opened fire at a range of 1,200 yards. This vessel was engaged first, hit and stopped with the third round, and after that every round was a hit. The enemy replied with machine-guns firing the alarming Japanese “clap-clap-clap” explosive bullets, which had at first so confused our troops in the retreat to Singapore, and with these bangs going off all round like Chinese crackers it was impossible to tell whether the firing was coming from the ships or the shore. Our shots were making a pretty good mess of the first patrol vessel, and presently the crew—all Japanese—began to leap overboard. As soon as we saw this we shifted aim to the second vessel, and after a bit of punishment her crew also took to the water. Further rounds were then fired at the first target and several water-line hits observed. Finally, as we swept past at a range of 400 yards, the second vessel was also punctured along the water-line.
At this point the breech-worker, Telegraphist Greenway, suddenly spun round as though kicked by a horse, and there was a cry of “Greenway’s hit, sir!” from the gun’s crew. I immediately sent him below, the second casualty for the Coxswain to look after within the hour. Fortunately, the action was in any case nearly over.
All this time I had been contending with the navigation of this constricted piece of water. I had no time to take bearings and put fixes on the chart, so there was nothing for it but to navigate by eye. As an extra precaution I ordered the echosounder to be started, with instructions that I was to be informed of the soundings every minute, or immediately they shortened to less than five fathoms. And what with the enemy machine-gun fire and watching the results of our own shots maneuvering the ship so as to bring the gun to bear with the best advantage, listening to the soundings coming up the voice-pipe, looking at the chart in the drenching rain to make sure we did not go aground, and passing my helm orders to the helmsman below, I was pretty busy.
Owing to the narrowness of the anchorage I considered it would be unwise to attempt to turn round and go back by the way we had come. When the gun could no longer be brought to bear, I broke off the action and set course to pass out through the southeastern exit. Before we could turn to port to make our get-away we had to go fairly close in to the shore on our starboard hand, and there under the trees by a large wooden hut we saw a group of Malays, women and children included, who waved gaily to us as we swept past them. Passing through the narrows towards more open water, we looked back at the anchorage in time to see the sinking of the second target; the other, which had received at least as much damage, was settling low in the water and would obviously be sinking very shortly.
These two successes had been achieved at a combined cost of only twenty-nine rounds of ammunition, not bad going in view of the opposition. It had all been very exhilarating, in spite of the torrential rain and the navigational worries, but I was troubled about Greenway; it turned out, however, that the bullet had passed straight through the fleshy part of his right shoulder and left a clean wound with no complications; he was shortly able to resume his telegraphist duties, and when we reached harbour at the end of the patrol, the wound, thanks to the Coxswain’s attention, was almost healed.
Not content with our two gun actions in the day, we went off to look for more trouble, and found it:
1118 Set course southward on the surface towards King Island Sound. This involved crossing a six-mile patch of water too shallow for diving, but the risk was considered worth while since it was intended to investigate the anchorage in King Island Sound, at the entrance to the Mergui River, before dark.
1334 Dived 9½ miles due north of King Island Sound and proceeded to close.
1615 Obtained a good view of the Sound and sighted it clear of shipping. A small fishing vessel was seen crossing the entrance.
1636 Sighted two landing craft proceeding down river from Mergui. One was observed to be armed with two light machine-guns, the other with one. Maneuvered for attack.
1700 Surfaced when both targets were in line and engaged the nearest one with gunfire at a range of approximately 1800 yards. This vessel turned stern on and showed no fight after we had obtained two near-misses, but the other, the one armed with two machine-guns, turned towards and began firing. We had fired ten rounds at our first target, and were about to shift aim to meet this new menace, when the three-inch gun ceased fire, with the extractor apparently jammed open. The two Vickers guns opened fire successfully, but to my dismay the Oerlikon gunner could not get his weapon to fire. The three-inch failure was later discovered to be due to the new breech-worker (put in at the last moment to replace Green-way) holding down the breech-mechanism lever instead of releasing it, thus preventing the new shell from going home. The failure of the Oerlikon remains a mystery, as it was tried on the following day with the same magazine, and in subsequent gun actions never gave the slightest trouble.
1704 Not wishing to see my gun’s crew mown down by the enemy fire, which was getting pretty hot by this time, I dived. Proceeded northwards at high speed for thirty seconds as deep as was safe (sixty feet). Half a minute after diving, much to my surprise, a depth-charge was dropped, followed by a second one five minutes later, the closest Storm has had yet. A few lights were put out, and one cockroach fell stunned on to the chart-table, but otherwise there was no damage. Our Japanese prisoner was very alarmed, and asked permission to visit the heads.
1711 In view of the navigational dangers, came to periscope depth shortly after the second depth-charge, to find one of the landing-craft ahead of me and the other astern. Decided, therefore, to escape through Iron Passage, the tide being on the ebb, and altered course westward accordingly. Neither of the enemy vessels seemed to be in asdic contact with me, and both eventually moved close in to the eastern shore of Iron Island, presumably hoping to be hidden against the land and tempt me into surfacing early.
1734 Iron Passage was successfully negotiated. The chart is correct in reporting “strong eddies”! The tide swept us through at a tremendous rate, and at one point the submarine was sucked down from periscope depth to sixty feet in a few seconds.
1830 Surfaced when clear of Ant Island and set course to pass round the north of Kabosa Island.
I now had a strong feeling that we had caused enough disturbance in the vicinity for the time being. In any case, the enemy would probably suspend the sailings of small craft for a few days and send out chasers to look for us. It would be advisable to spend a little time in the southern half of our huge area. That night, therefore, we shaped a course southward to pass outside the Mergui Archipelago until daylight, after which I intended to turn in among the islands and explore the inner channels as far as the Pakchan River, if possible on the surface.
There followed what were perhaps the most extraordinary two days of my submarine experience. From the time we turned in through Nearchus Passage to our emergence at the southern end of Forrest Strait, we moved everywhere on the surface, travelling freely among the innumerable islands, often in narrow waterways and always in full view of supposedly enemy-occupied territory. The absence of shipping in the inner channels of the archipelago, and the way we were able to proceed on the surface at will, even through Forrest Strait, were astonishing. We saw not a single aircraft. “It would even seem possible,” I wrote in my patrol report, “for a large force of warships to approach the islands between Mergui and Pakchan unobserved, and to remain within their shelter unmolested perhaps for days on end. The islands appear to be largely uninhabited and contain numerous anchorages surrounded by steep-to hills.”
Between some of the outer islands of the archipelago the seabed is in places only sparsely charted, so that on some courses we took a risk, like the old circumnavigators, of running onto uncharted rocks. In daylight, therefore, we always had a man posted on the periscope standards to keep a lookout for breakers, and by night we played for safety. Wherever possible, courses were set along lines of known soundings.
Moving still farther south, we spent two days patrolling dived off the Pakchan River in the hope of sighting small vessels carrying tin from the local mines, but without result. On July 28th we carried out a periscope reconnaissance of Hastings Harbour, an extensive anchorage formed by three islands which provided, by the looks of the chart, excellent shelter from both the southwest and the northeast monsoons, but although we had a good view into the anchorage through both eastern and northern entrances, no ships were seen, and we had to content ourselves with making panoramic sketches of both entrances through the periscope. That evening, having drawn blank for five days, I made up my mind to return to the Mergui area, and sent a signal to Trincomalee telling them of my intention to do so unless they had anything better to offer.
We had been steaming north for about four hours when we received their reply offering me the Puket area, farther south and outside my original patrol area, as an alternative if I wished. I immediately turned south, and informed them that I was doing so. Fourteen hours later yet another signal ordered us back to the northward again. It seemed they had new intelligence of some unspecified target arriving at the entrance to the Heinze Basin, to the north of Tavoy and again outside my area. All that night and the next day we travelled north, keeping just outside the islands, and at dawn on July 31st we were in position off the Heinze Basin. Here I soon came to the conclusion that it was not a good spot to wait for a target; in the prevailing bad visibility we could see the coastline only in patches, the shoaling water at the river-mouth making it impossible for us to patrol close in, and it would have been easy for a target to enter or leave the harbour unobserved by us. I accordingly began moving south, soon after midday, to patrol off the end of the Tavoy peninsula, where we could take up a better strategic position. The afternoon produced nothing, but we patrolled the same spot during the night, no more than two miles off shore, and on the following morning, August 1st, reaped our reward.
The alarm sounded at 0442. I shot out of my bunk and up to the bridge to find Number One and the for’ard look-out, Petty Officer Blight, peering to seaward through their binoculars. It was still dark, but the rain had stopped. Blight had seen a small light flicker for an instant in the darkness, and now Number One said he thought he could make out a black shape on the same bearing. A few moments later I could see it myself, a south-bound modern coaster with funnel aft.
I spoke into the voice-pipe. “Control-room… Gun action! Tell the men to move as silently as possible. Anything from radar yet? Tell the operator we have a target bearing Green 40, range about 1,500 yards.”
The gun-hatch opened quietly just below the front of the bridge, and the men climbed out on to the gun-platform in their sandalled feet, moving about the deck on tiptoe like a gang of conspirators; some came up the conning-tower and swung themselves quietly over the side of the bridge. Blake stood on the little raised step and in a low voice passed his orders down to the men round the gun.
There was still no report from radar. How I cursed the temperamental nature of this wonderful new invention! The set had so far given good results during the patrol and been a great assistance to the navigation, but now, on the first occasion when we badly needed an accurate range for a night gun action, it could not find the target which we knew was there. I had in fact underestimated the size, and so the range, of the coaster, and consequently many rounds were wasted before we got our first hit.
The first crack of our gun seemed a desecration of the silence. In the darkness Blake could not see where the shot fell; it was not on the target, so he could only assume it had dropped short and raise the range by 200 yards. Another difficulty was that the gunlayer could not yet see the target and was obliged to lay his open sight on the muzzy line where he imagined the horizon to be. Our second round also whined away into the night and fell without visible trace, and it was not until the sixth or seventh round that we saw the little orange flash and heard the muffled crumph which indicated our first hit. After that we continued to hit the enemy with nearly every round. He came slowly to a dead stop, and then just sat there taking our pounding in silence. It was like murder, but our job was to sink enemy supply ships. By this time the dawn was coming up, and in the early light we saw that he was a steel ship, fairly new, and larger than I had originally thought. I put him at about 350 tons. We continued to pump shells into him until, after the expenditure of fifty rounds, he sank at last, going down slowly by the stern.
We had no time to stop to see if there were any survivors, for the vessel had hardly disappeared under the water when we sighted another ship on the horizon to the northward coming towards us in the gradually increasing light. We at once dived and ran towards him at full speed. I wanted to reach him before he was put on his guard by sighting the debris of the first sinking.
He turned out to be a small wooden two-masted motor schooner of about 100 tons. When he was passing our position we surfaced and fired a round ahead of him, hoping he would stop and abandon ship. Instead, he increased speed and turned towards the shore with the obvious intention of trying to beach himself. I also speeded up, altered course to head him off, and resumed the attack. The crew soon jumped overboard, but the vessel kept on and did not slow down for some minutes. Closing to short range we poured into him a burst of Oerlikon fire which set the wooden hull ablaze from stem to stern, but although we riddled him with holes along the water-line with the three-inch gun we could not sink him. Finally I gave up the attempt and went alongside with the intention of placing a demolition charge for’ard. However, we could then see that he was thoroughly on fire below decks, and decided to leave him to burn himself out. He sank all right in the end, for when we came back to the same spot later in the day we could find no trace of him.
There were several heads dotting the water. I had previously decided that we would take one other prisoner, but no more; passenger space below was very limited. Again we found the Japanese were not anxious to be picked up, but we rescued an Indian who (unfortunately for the Coxswain) turned out to be suffering from two nasty wounds. As we began to withdraw from the scene our attention was attracted by a young Malay swimming a little apart from the others and waving and shouting in great excitement. I did not want to take on any more passengers, but I was impressed with the look of this lad and his obvious desire to be picked up, so in spite of Number One’s ill-concealed disapproval I maneuvered close to him and took him on board. The Coxswain was even more disapproving when this man too was found to be wounded in the thigh: he now had four patients to look after.
However, I was very glad we had picked up this boy, whose name was Endi. He was extremely friendly and cooperative, and claimed to have been at the Malay RNVR Training School in Singapore before the Japanese arrived. In spite of his wound he was full of spirit, and delighted to be a prisoner of the British, even declaring that he would now be able to join the British Navy. He had been one of the quartermasters in the little ship we had just attacked, the Kikaku Maru, bound from Rangoon to Mergui with a cargo of rice. The crew consisted of the Captain, the First Mate, the Chief Engineer—all Japanese—and five Malays, two Chinese, and one or two Indians. When we surfaced and opened fire, he said, all the Malays in the crew went to the wheelhouse and tried to persuade the Japanese officer to stop and abandon ship. The officer shot four of the Malays out of hand, and compelled Endi to remain at the wheel and obey his orders. A moment later one of our shells hit the wheelhouse and blew him and the Jap overboard in opposite directions. Endi spoke excellent English, and later volunteered much useful information.
Meanwhile I decided to shift patrol northwards, a few miles along the coast. This last action had taken place within a short distance of the shore, and it was possible that the Japs had a look-out post at this focal point on the coastal traffic route. We ran for an hour or so on the surface and then dived fairly close inshore, just to the south of Oyster Island.
Nearly three hours later another coaster, of about 250 tons, was seen approaching from the north. I let him pass as usual, and surfaced for gun action astern of him. When I reached the bridge, machine-gun bullets were flying all round us and the enemy had turned in an attempt to ram. However, he soon changed his mind when our first shell demolished his bridge and a devastating fire from our Oerlikon and Vickers guns poured into him and set him ablaze. The crew, mostly Japanese, panicked and jumped overboard, and the vessel stopped, stricken and deserted. Soon the stern had slumped until the deck was awash, but then refused to sink any further despite all our efforts. Suddenly, while all this was going on, one of the look-outs called my attention to another vessel, coming towards us from the south. I immediately called off the action, dived, and proceeded towards this fresh target at high speed. This time I did not see how, if he was keeping a proper look-out, the new arrival could fail to sum up the situation ahead of him.
However, to my great relief, on looking astern five minutes later I found that our late target had finally sunk, leaving the usual mess of wreckage floating on the spot. The new target, a fine, new-looking coaster of about 300 tons, was still coming on, apparently unaware that anything was wrong. Once more I let him pass and then surfaced astern of him. Our first round went over him, the second splintered his bridge into a mass of wreckage. Figures were running for’ard to man the machine-gun mounted on the forecastle, but they never had a chance. Our third shell hit the deck in front of the bridge and set the ship on fire with an oily, billowing flame and high clouds of black smoke. This was the signal for the crew to abandon ship. We fired nine more rounds, until the whole ship was a writhing inferno. It was a most satisfactory result for the expenditure of only twelve shells, and as we Were now running short of ammunition (only twelve more shells remaining in our magazine), I decided to cease fire and let the flames do their work.
At this point Number One asked to speak to me on the voice-pipe. It seemed that Endi believed our target to be an ammunition ship and urged me not to approach too close to it. I took his advice and retired to a safer distance. The information was correct. Shortly afterwards the vessel began to produce a succession of muffled explosions, bursts of enormous flame, shooting debris, and great columns of black smoke. This was such a wonderful firework display that I gave permission for the whole of Storm’s crew to come up on the bridge, two at a time, to enjoy the spectacle, which continued for the best part of an hour while we cruised backwards and forwards on the surface in full view of the shore. When the target sank at last we turned away southwards once more, and sat down to a long delayed lunch.
When I turned in that night and tried to sleep, visions of blazing ships came floating towards me in endless succession. But the patrol was nearly over. We had received our recall signal the evening before, and the following afternoon, August 2nd, we left the billet for the homeward voyage.
We now had altogether four prisoners on board, all of whom presented certain problems. Three of them were wounded and needed constant attention, a duty which fell to the Coxswain and proved to be such a full-time job that we had to relieve him of his watch-keeping. Besides these prisoners he had Greenway to look after. Poor Selby loathed this work, the tending of the torn flesh inducing in him a physical revulsion, yet so well did he perform it that two of his patients were soon able to get up and move about, and by the time we reached Trincomalee all the wounds were healing nicely. The MO in Maidstone said he had done a professional job. The fourth prisoner was the Jap. Altogether, we had him on card for a fortnight. He was not wounded, but we could not allow him to wander about the submarine of his own free will. He lived and ate in the fore-ends, with an armed sentry guarding him day and night, which meant that the watches were always short of one man. However, he gave no trouble. From a photograph of himself found in his wallet, we discovered that he was a soldier, not a sailor as we had imagined; presumably he had been taking passage to Rangoon when captured. Other articles found in his wallet were Japanese occupation currency notes, and two Chinese postage stamps. Besides the wallet, we removed from his person a Swiss-made watch, a key, a string containing wooden strips with inscriptions, and a folded paper chart bearing mysterious circles and probably representing a charm or prayer diagram. Every morning he was made to scrub the decks throughout the boat, and he did this job without complaining and more thoroughly than my own sailors. He was a little inclined to curiosity, and in the control-room would cast his eyes around at what was going on; once I caught him glancing at the chart-table as he passed it, and angrily sent him packing with an unwonted torrent of abusive language. At first I was taken aback by his hissing at me every time he came near me, but eventually tumbled to the fact that this was the Japanese indrawn-breath mark of respect. He spoke, apparently, almost no English, but the seamen for’ard discovered that his home town was Kobe and that he seemed to think we operated from Calcutta. In view of the language difficulty I decided not to interrogate this prisoner, as my questions might prejudice the official interrogation later.
The Malay whom we had picked up from the same ship became very friendly after recovering from his wound and his initial shock, and frequently volunteered for work in the engine-room. He lived aft in the stokers’ mess and proved himself an expert draughts player. But he did not really like submarine life; it was a terrible shock to him when he discovered we were still off Mergui a whole week after his capture, for we had travelled so many miles in the meantime that he thought we must be nearing base.
The Indian survivor from the second coaster of August 1st spoke practically no English, had two nasty wounds, and seemed to be rather unhappy. He appeared to think he was going to be shot. It was obviously useless to attempt an interrogation.
On the other hand, the Malay lad Endi was only too eager to answer questions. He told us that the coasters travelling from Mergui to Rangoon usually carried ammunition and filled up with rice for the return trip; there was a large ammunition dump just north of Pakchan, the ammunition being transported thence to Mergui by rail; it seemed there was a good deal of traffic on this railway. He said that in place of balloon barrages the Japanese had stretched wires between the peaks of hills in the vicinity of Mergui and Penang, that two American bombers had recently been brought down by this means and that the crews were now prisoners in the hands of the Japs. He also said the Japanese were laying traps in some of their junks in the Malacca Straits, the practice being to leave one man on board who would try to lob a hand-grenade down the conning tower as the submarine went alongside, while the remainder of the crew would pretend to abandon ship and leap overboard on the opposite side after fusing an explosive charge to scuttle the vessel and damage the submarine as well. When he was last in Singapore, about five months earlier, he had observed several Japanese warships: a battleship, three destroyers, three submarines, and some two-man submarines. He believed there were two torpedo-boats in Mergui. (We met one of these in our next patrol.) I was not sure how much of all this to believe. He was so anxious to please that he might have been inventing, or exaggerating, perhaps unconsciously, in order to produce information he thought we wanted to hear.
I felt inclined to take some of it with a pinch of salt; on the other hand, none of it seemed to be the sort of thing anyone would make up.
We reached Trincomalee on August 7th. Going alongside Maidstone, with our black Jolly Roger flying from the periscope standards and spangled with seven new stars to represent our gun actions, we received a great welcome. We had the distinction of being the first submarine to bring back a Japanese prisoner, and tremendous curiosity was aroused by the sight of our passengers being marched up the gangway ladder.
At the conclusion of my patrol report I was glad to be able to add the following general remarks:
1. The plentiful opportunities for gun action were seized on with avidity by the gun’s crew and were popular with the entire ship’s company. I wish to commend my Gunnery Control Officer, Lieutenant R. L. Blake, R.N., for his coolness and skill in conducting the shoots; also my Gunlayer, Acting Leading Seaman W. Taylor, for his accuracy, determination and spirit during the actions; and indeed the whole gun’s crew for their coolness under enemy fire, even when one of their number was wounded.
2. I also wish to commend my Coxswain, Acting Chief Petty Officer F. Selby, for his skilful and patient attention to the wounded, one of whom was an unpleasant sight when brought on board.
3. During the patrol a total of over 4,000 miles was registered. The fact that during this long mileage the Main Engines were kept running without any serious defect arising reflects, in my opinion, great credit on the Engine Room staff as a whole, and in particular on my Engineer Officer, Mr W. H. Ray, Warrant Engineer, and the Chief E.R.A., R. Brown.
The only dissatisfied man was Dicky Fisher, who had had no opportunity of bringing his boarding party into action.