Approach of the storm Chapter 20

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Approach of the storm Chapter 20
By
Thomas Arthur Russell

There was a sequel to the marine’s mission. On the surrender of the northern end of the island the French officers now wanted the belongings they had lost returned. I remember watching from the gun deck as they were brought aboard and then the marines were ordered to return all their cherished mementoes. This they did, laying the Frenchmen’s stuff out on the quarterdeck. In a way I felt sorry for them, as one or two wept as they picked the swords, sashes and kepis out. It must have been humiliating for them.

We gained possession of a German ship caught in the harbour of Diego Suarez. Its crew had tried to scuttle it. Now we had time to settle down a bit between watch keeping routine. We fished for some large tuna-like fish which used to appear when we tipped the gash down the gash chute, they apparently like the waste food.

We caught nothing although I believe a Chief Stoker did, using a proper rod and not the make shift tackle we used, some of the lads said they had seen a shark as well.

We also had to keep an eye on a kitten we had aboard ship, a large kite like bird used to come near every time the animal showed itself on the upper deck and a rumour had gone around that it had already had one off another ship. We occasionally had a film show on the upper deck, films used to be exchanged between ships.

The nights were warm and not unpleasant; when looking over the side after a promenade on the fo’castle, sometimes we notice that the sea would glow with phosphorous as a large fish swam near. The days passed, and although operations were still in progress on the island, to quell opposition from the Vichy French and complete the occupation, we were enjoying a respite. I even managed shore leave and although the French civilians treated us a bit aloofly, I enjoyed these odd visits ashore.

I remember seeing a lorry with a cage like structure on the back and a black man with what appeared to be a long hollow bamboo with a wire snare at the end. He was employed dog catching to keep down the number of strays and control rabies.

That old familiar smell of the tropics with its strangely sensuous smell of warm humidity and rotting plant life was there, much as our autumn smells, but holding a strange aromatic smell of flowers and fruit too. We had our “housey, housey” games aboard ship, besides the odd film. We did get mail when a ship arrived from Durban. Someone sent me a cake, which somewhere along the route had picked up and what appeared to be a small ant nest. That had to go over the side.

Now, unbeknown to us, the Japanese were planning a surprise for us. They had developed a small submarine capable of carrying two torpedoes, each could be carried on a normal size submarine, dropped off when in range of an enemy anchorage and being hard to detect, could possibly get within range of important targets and sink them at anchor.

We had heard tales of such submarines manned by a couple of men, but we felt very secure and safe in Diego Suarez. Our first intimation was on the evening of 28th May, 1942, when an unidentified plane - some said it looked like a seaplane - flew over the anchorage in the dusk and gave no reply to recognition signals, and flew off without a round being fired.

We immediately coupled up boilers and went to dawn action stations. We weighed anchor and moved our position, anticipating a dawn attack, possibly from the air. We needed room to manoeuvre as our best defence, however, nothing further developed, and reconnaissance revealed no enemy presence so where had this mysterious plane come from? We anchored again about half a mile from an oil tanker and I didn’t give the episode much more thought, but events were to prove that the complacency we had gone back to was soon to be shattered.

I remember coming off watch and deciding to write a letter. The mess deck was pretty quiet, some men sleeping, some talking in subdued tones. I had a small inkpot before me and had just penned a few lines when what seemed to me a stupid thing happened. The ink pot shot up in the air throwing ink all over me, then a great shattering noise between a thud and an immediate tinkling and rumbling noise, all the lights went out and the emergency police lights came on giving a dim light to the mess deck.

Figures jumped from hammocks, dragging on overalls or any clothing to hand. The harsh pungent smell of burnt out electrical installations and a first sickly smell of explosives caught in the throat, making some of us cough as it seeped along the passageways. Men were by now making their way up top, as some were trying to come down to snatch some valuables up or any money they had saved. Stupid in the circumstances, some were more bothered by these things than the fact that the first thing you found was your life belt, but I suppose men don’t always think clearly in the surprise of sudden danger.

I remember my immediate reaction was to grab my hatbox down from the metal rack about my head and to get the few photos of loved ones and the small amount of money I had, and with the lifebelt hanging by its tapes over my shoulder, made for the hatch.

By now the ship was taking a list to port and I reckoned we hadn’t much time if she kept going over like this, so imagine the consternation of men wanting to get to safety and others intent on getting down for a few paltry items.

Now I managed to gain the 6 (ek9) casemates and hurried as quickly as I could to my action station which was 'D pump' the last fire and Bilge pump for’d. My hope was that if the ship keeled over any further, I might be able to start this pump and pump water out or use it to get some sort of trim on the ship by flooding the corresponding side, by now I had the feeling it was a torpedo or mine but where from?

I came to the hatchway over the deck, below which the next deck down was a passageway, leading aft a small distance, then across the beam of the ship to the starboard side. The main hatchway had been lowered with the small oval man sized hatch in its middle still raised against its spring. Men were gathered round and as I lowered myself through the hatch finding the metal steps leading down with my feet, they asked what I was going to do and I informed them I was going to start the pump and try the compartments on the port side which that pump served, and try to establish my using the suction valve of which compartment had flooded, and use the pump accordingly.

I might as well have not bothered, for in the same gloom, I felt the water go over my knees, I carried on but it was hopeless, for the water was half way up the pump motor. To try switching it on could have been risky. I thought of the danger of electric shock through the water and it would not have worked anyway. I did give a quick check on all the valves just in case, by some reason or other, they might have sprung open letting in more water to add to what was already flooding the ship. Then I quickly waded back to the hatch, hearing a shrill boyish voice saying, “Shut that bloody hatch,” and the men answering, “Wait till Stokes gets back up, he’s gone to see if he can work his f****** pump".

I remember I shot up that hatchway and as I clambered out, I saw it was a ‘snotty’ trying to give orders to the men. “You can shut the b****** now the pump’s under water, so it’s no use,” I told him, whereupon I made my way up to the upper deck wondering if the ship had stopped listing.

I saw a remarkable sight, searchlights lit the darkness. The oil tanker had been hit and had sunk by the stern. Her siren was sounding an eerie noise over the scene, men were preparing to cut Carley rafts from their lashings, and a voice, I believe it was No. 1 the Jimmy, who was saying, “Steady lads, we are not abandoning. That’s as far as she’s going, the ship is now partly on the bottom.” His voice was steady and his words were true, the ship was now down by the bows, still listing to port but it didn’t seem as acute. If she hadn’t rested on the bottom and had carried on keeling over, my intention had been to walk down the starboard side into the water and swim, hoping that there were no sharks about, but it become obvious, as it was she had come to rest by the for’d end on the bottom.

The men on the tanker had established that it was indeed a tin fish that had struck us. I was told by a look out on the upper deck that they’d yelled, “Periscope in the water,” and one reported seeing a stream of Oerlikon traces directed at it from the tanker to pinpoint it, so it looked as if we had been lucky. From where I looked, it seemed a probability that two torpedoes could have been meant for the battleship and the tanker swinging by her anchor cable on the tide, could have swung into the angle of the first one.

The tanker sank; most of her crew being taken off safely. The Piquet boat from the Ramillies patrolled round the area trying to spot anything suspicious. She carried a couple of small depth charges on her stern. Other boats and anti-submarine vessels conducted an intensive sweep and I thought I heard the rumble of several far off charges.

How the attacker had penetrated our anti-sub defences without interference was unclear and whether it was Japanese or German at that time was uncertain. It was rather chaotic. Searchlights probed over the inky black water, wakes glowed through the darkness as boats went backwards and forwards, sometimes lit up starkly white in the powerful beams, voices shouted a blur of orders.

The Asdic on the anti-sub trawler had picked nothing up. One small entrance to the bay that we were in was still being systematically patrolled.

Daylight on the 31st May, and a search revealed it was a sub, a small one, a Japanese “fly” as they called their midget submarines. That’s why it had been so hard to detect, it could have been a large fish or small piece of nearly anything.

The two men crew were dead, apparently killed by the toxic gases generated by the batteries which had leaked, a result of the first torpedo being fired too near to the tanker and tossing their small craft around as it struck the ship. It looked as if the officer and the engineer in her had died as she surfaced, and then the sub had drifted ashore.

The result now was a big increase in security while our job was to ascertain damage. The only casualty I can remember was one man with a broken ankle who I believe got that by jumping and landing awkwardly out of his hammock, so all in all, the old Ramillies had been very lucky indeed.

We had been spared the fate of our sister H.M.S. Royal Oak and the Barham, which had been torpedoed in the Med., and had turned over, still under way as she went down and then had exploded with a colossal blast, taking 850 officers and men with her. I could only hope my luck would hold and I would see this war through to the end. The hole blown in the ship had ripped open several decks. The 12(ek9) armoured belt had been sprung outwards from its commencement, forward on the port side for several feet, the flour stores had been opened to the sea and now produced a terrible stench.

What remained of the fire main, pumping pipes and equipment, hung from the hole, which considerably interrupted the pumping out facilities of the ship, so our first obvious need was a number of emergency salvage pumps, most ships carried. Some were sent from other ships to supplement the one we had, then a destroyer was dispatched with a couple from Durban and a generator to power them.

It was heavy work swinging them inboard by our own winches and boom arms, and then dragging them along the deck to the damaged area by the sleds they were built onto. But soon they were rigged up and hoses were discharging a constant flow, at full bore, which never slackened. All we were doing with this pumping capability was circulating seawater round and round via the hole in the ship’s side, but if we could just hold the weight of water we had a chance.

Eventually the decision had to be taken, we had to try to get to the dry dock at Durban, so one fine morning we set out to limp back. Our speed had to be slow, maybe 5 or 6 knots. We must have been a source of anxiety to our destroyer escort, for we needed good weather.

The bulkheads near the damaged section had been shorn up and reinforced. A constant watch had to be kept on them, so we proceeded, bows half under water, for’d turret trained slightly off centre to try to counterbalance the slight list to port.

So it was that the old ship made her way back through seas, which were kind to her misfortune. The seas lapped up the fo’castle and if we had not been barred from the area except for the duty salvage watch, we could have paddled like kids on a beach.

We eventually made port in Durban and were manoeuvred into dry dock where the extent of the damage became fully revealed. As the waters off the dock were pumped out, a great hole was revealed like a giant cavern from which great pieces of twisted metal and pipes hung down. It was possible to see at least two decks, just as if you were looking at a cut away plan of the ships interior.

The armoured belt was sprung back from top to bottom of the ship for several feet. It was obvious that the damage controls efficiency had done much to save the ship, plus the fact we had come to rest on the seabed, otherwise out at sea the pressure would have increased more quickly and caused the collapse of bulkheads in the vicinity of the explosion.

It would have been fatal as a chain reaction would have set in with the bulkhead as the pressure increased with a possible explosion of boilers and then the magazines. We had been very lucky. Although we often joked about the old “Rami”, I think in our hearts we all respected her. We had sailed in her through the North Atlantic, we had sailed in the Med where we had put the Italian Fleet to flight at Spartiverto, and now she had taken this punch on the chin at Madagascar. We had sailed many thousands of miles through Arctic cold and Tropic heat, our steaming record was impressive and was pinned on the notice board.

Pr-BR

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