Ocean Odyssey

On 3 January 1944 my mother receives a postcard from my father, just as many thousands of other wives have from their husbands who are overseas. But there’s something very different about this communication. Firstly, the postcard was dated 4 June 1943 and had taken a long time to arrive. Secondly, on 30 April 1942 my mother had received a letter from Royal Naval Barracks Portsmouth informing her that her husband’s ship was overdue and presumed lost with all hands. By 7 July 1942 this was confirmed and my mum received a letter from King George and Queen Elizabeth offering their sympathy in mum’s great sorrow.

Clearly my dad was alive. What had happened to him makes for a very unusual story of wartime loss and eventual happiness. He first told his tale publicly in a Radio Norfolk interview a couple of decades ago. What follows is a synopsis of that recording.

Let me take you back to 1917 when a boy is born in Tottenham, North London. He often visits relatives in Caston and Great Ellingham, Norfolk, and grows to love the county, spending as much time there with his cousins as he can. Schooldays over, he moves to Norfolk on a permanent basis, finding whatever work he can — it is all rural jobs or forestry pit propping. One day his landlady’s niece has a wedding to which this now tall and handsome young man is invited. The bride’s sister is unattached but she sure is soon enough and that leads to another wedding between my mum and dad.

Bound for Middle East

The war comes along and dad is called up. His father had been a seaman in the Merchant Navy so dad goes for the Royal Navy. He went to HMS Collinwood for his basic training and then was sent to HMS Nelson, followed by three weeks Gunnery School. After this it was onto the DEMS (Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships). All merchant ships were equipped with guns manned by navy personnel. My dad ended up in Middlesbrough where he posted to SS Wellpark, a Scottish-owned ship. He was on the Atlantic run and made two successful trips, one to Norfolk, Virginia, and the other to Canada even though this was during the height of U-boat activity.

The third trip (early 1942) was again to America but this time to pick up cargo for the Middle East. The voyage took him to the South Atlantic to round the Cape, as the Mediterranean was too dangerous. Whilst on board they heard that Singapore had fallen (15 February). When they sailed from New York they’d been warned that German surface raiders were in the Atlantic but due to the shortage of ships they could not go in a convoy but had to risk it and go on their own.

‘Abandon Ship’

The journey was uneventful until they were three days out of Cape Town. Dad was on watch at the time and looking forward to some time off in South Africa when the alarm bell went off. The Chief Officer ordered the AA gun to be manned. Dad was more than perplexed at this as they were way out in mid-ocean. They had seen a smoke haze on the horizon but it was dismissed as a friendly ship. Suddenly dad saw an aircraft diving down out of the sky straight at him. He saw a splash and thought the ‘b****r’ had launched an aerial torpedo. He braced himself waiting for the bang but all he heard was a loud ‘ping’. The aircraft had dropped a hook and as it flew over the ship it lifted the hook and pulled away the aerials leaving the ship without any means of communication to the outside world.

The aircraft returned and this time dropped a bomb that caused some damage. The next thing was the arrival of the German raider equipped with 6-inch guns. The 4-inch guns on SS Wellpark were not much use against such an adversary. The German shells straddled the merchant ship whilst the replies from dad’s ship were falling short of their target. At this point the captain ordered ‘abandon ship’. The two remaining lifeboats were launched and all 50 crew were safely evacuated. They expected to be left to their fate but the German vessel came round and picked them all up. The next round it fired sunk dad’s ship. He always believed that the Germans could have sunk their ship with all hands lost, but they did not and he was treated very well all the time he was in German hands.

The German ship was the Thor. It had been made to look like a merchant ship but as it went into action the sides fell away to reveal the guns. It had two aeroplanes — the one that attacked dad had USA markings on it. Dad spent three weeks on board the German raider during which time it sank another four ships. When it went into action all the prisoners were locked in the hold below the water line so if anything had happened they had no chance of escape.

Across the Pacific

From the German raider he was transferred to the German prison ship Regensburg whilst still in the Atlantic. This ship took them round the Cape of Good Hope (not much Good Hope for those on board) across the Pacific to end up at Yokohama in Japan in August. They had to stay on a ship — the Ramses — as no prison camps had yet been built. It’s ironic that dad can boast that he had the ‘pleasure’ of watching a Red Cross ship sail full of departing British and German diplomats.

The PoW camp was in Kawasaki where dad remained for some considerable time. After about six weeks there was a further influx of prisoners. These were Middlesex Regiment and Royal Scots men plus some engineers and medics, all captured in Hong Kong. The prisoners found Japanese food unpalatable but after a short time every scrap was eaten. Work commenced on unloading railway trucks, hard and unrelenting toil for seven days a week.

Life in the PoW camp is a story in its own right, perhaps one day I will put that part of dad’s story into print. Suffice to say here that dad survived the harsh conditions and at the time of writing (March 2004) he is still alive and well. There is another story — that of my mother and how she coped in such dreadful circumstances before learning of my dad’s survival but unfortunately she is no longer here to tell me.

Bev Cooper
(Son of Jack Cooper)

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