My Adventure on the S. S. El-Aleto

My name is Keith Watkins in 1943 I was 17 yrs old, I had been in the merchant navy for about 18 months. My previous voyage was to Argentina on the 'Veerhaven', which was very different to the trip I was about to make to the North Atlantic.

I joined the oil —tanker at Newport Docks on the 27th April 1943, she was the S.S. El-Aleto, carrying twelve thousand tons of fuel oil.

We sailed a few days later, our destination —no one knew where except the Captain.

All information about ship movements and destinations was kept secret because of the possibility of Germen spies passing information to submarines.

We, and three other ships went around the coast then headed North to Scotland, keeping close to the coastline so we could have some protection from the Royal Air Force. We did get a few raids from the German bombers but the Air Force did a great job in driving them off before any ship was hit.

We finally arrived at Scapa Flow and joined a convoy of thirty ships already assembled there. The Captains of all the ships were ordered aboard a Royal Navy Destroyer to receive orders, probably about positions of ships in the convoy.

We left Scapa Flow the next day and formed four lines, our naval escort was two Destroyers and two Corvettes. These were very fast ships and steamed around the convoy, getting ships into line and in the correct order allocated, they reminded me of sheep dogs rounding up sheep.

We sailed North for a few days without any trouble, the Air Force were still patrolling around us. We still hadn’t been told where we were going, but it was obvious from our course that we were going to Canada or America.

I couldn’t understand why, we as an oil tanker were taking fuel oil to Canada or America because all our oil at that time was imported from America or the Middle East.

A few days later, all was revealed, From the hold we had to drag out on deck very long lengths of 10 inch reinforced hose-pipe, which were used to refuel the Destroyers and Corvettes escorting us, their fuel capacity wasn’t sufficient to allow them to go to America and back home.

We were now too far from land for the Air Force to give us any cover, every day became more dangerous, we, the Deck Crew changed our “Watch” duties from four hours on and eight hours off duty, to four hours on and four hours off, day and night.

This was very tiring as in four hours off you had to eat sleep etc. on watch my duties were two hours steering the ship, one hour on look-out and one hour on standby, this changed every watch to two hours lookout and two standby. On standby we had to keep the galley fire going, make tea or coffee for the Officer etc. and call the next watch?

A Corvette came along side to take fuel, the sea was rough (usually is in the North Sea). A line was then fired from our ship to the Corvette, first time lucky. They pulled the light rope to them, we then attached a thicker rope, which in turn was fastened to the fuel pipe, this was then hauled aboard — the pipe coupled up.

We started our pump and refueling commenced. All this whilst the two ships were about fifty feet apart, pitching, tossing and rolling around. Often we were thirty feet above the Corvette, then thirty feet below them. The whole operation took about three hours, this happened in my ‘off watch’ period and I was glad when it was all over.

We had just managed to grab a cup of tea and it was time to go back on watch, when the watch finished, we were then ready for sleep. I had been asleep for less than an hour when ‘action stations’ call went, together with ‘all hands on deck’ — a sub-marine had been sighted.

We spent the next three hours staring at the sea, total darkness, unable to do anything, the escort could be heard racing around, dropping depth charges but the sub-marine managed to sink two ship. The sequence of events, refueling, ‘action stations’ plus normal watch keeping was repeated many times before we reached the shores of Canada, all the crew were exhausted by the time we got to New York.

After four days in port, where our oil tanks were refilled, we set sail again for the repeat journey home. Eleven ships were sunk on the way to New York; fifteen were lost on the way home.

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