Russian Convoy Horrors

I'm telling this story for my dad, who passed away in 1998.

I found this story so incredible I don’t know how true it is. My father joined the Royal Navy in 1936 as a young lad from Ireland who had never ever seen the sea let alone a ship.

One night he was deep in the engine room of a corvette on Convoy duty going to Murmansk.

He knew they were in action because of the incessant changes of speed and direction coming from the bridge. But deep in the bowls of the ship they had no idea what was going on.

The relief watch was long overdue so he sent one of the lads to find out what had happened to the relief. After about an hour he had still not returned. My father decided to find out what had happened himself. When he got up on deck he realised what had happened.

The corvette was maneuvering frantically to rescue drowning Russian seamen from the freezing ocean while the U-Boat pack had a feeding frenzy. There where ships being blown up all over the place. The problem was that the normally disciplined crew of the corvette and the Russian sailors all thought it was the last night of their life.

As the Russians were rescued from the water, in their relief to thank Jack Tar for their rescue gave them almighty swigs from the bottles of vodka they were carrying for a happier death. The English seamen had never drunk vodka before and drank it like lemonade pop. Hence all the crew below the bridge were absolutely drunk!

I don’t know what happened after that, but he obviously survived and managed to tell many more sea yarns after that.

Is this just a yarn? I don’t think so, because he told the story so often. Has anyone else got a farther of grand dad out there …. Perhaps even a Russian one?

There were many more stories that he told another I would like to find out about is when they had to pump out diesel from a sunken barge in Norway so that they could limp a battleship home. Does anyone know the details on that one?

Ferrying fighter aircraft to Malta and the horror of a cocked up take off by a young pilot never flying off a carrier before. Who else was there?

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.