MN DAY:

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Today is Merchant Navy Day 2013. Every year we acknowledge (quite rightly) the sacrifices made by our armed forces in various conflicts. The MN is of course not an armed service and for many years was never even considered when it came to memorials. Thankfully this is changing and this will be the 14th Merchant Navy Day. Spare a little thought for the, mostly men, who sailed in convoys to the Artic, to Murmansk, the Atlantic and every other ocean in the world through weather and storms you can only dream of to bring food and sustenance to the UK during wars and in peace time. These ships were not armed (in the majority of cases) and were totally at the mercy of any Axis subs or warships. Passenger ships were also attacked for some strange reason. As the poem below says, we have no graves to visit to honour these people, but those of us who followed in their footsteps on the ships of today know the sacrifices that were made.

No cross marks the place where now we lie
What happened is known but to us
You asked, and we gave our lives to protect
Our land from the enemy curse
No Flanders Field where poppies blow;
No Gleaming Crosses, row on row;
No Unnamed Tomb for all to see
And pause -- and wonder who we might be
The Sailors’ Valhalla is where we lie
On the ocean bed, watching ships pass by
Sailing in safety now thru’ the waves
Often right over our sea-locked graves
We ask you just to remember us

LINK

[Administrator]

Merchant Navy Day

On the 3rd September 1939, the day WWII was declared by Britain against Germany, the first British casualty of the war occurred with the sinking of the British Donaldson Line passenger liner Athenia sunk by U-30 with the loss of 112 passengers and crew. On the 7th May 1945, the day Germany surrendered the last casualty of the War in Europe occurred with the sinking of the British Merchant ship Avondale Park with the loss of two crew members. In the near six years of war in between , some 2,500 British ship flying the Red Ensign were lost to U-boats, mines, E-boats, aircraft, commerce raiders, pocket battleships, those who died in captivity as well as those lost from the forces of nature in supplying the world with food and raw materials. 32,000 British Merchant Seamen gave their lives to this cause. These men although civilians volunteered repeatedly to run the gauntlet in the never ending need to supply a nation in its darkest days. Men who once their ship was sunk from beneath them, if lucky enough to survive had their pay stopped before the ship reached the ocean floor. People at home looked upon these same men at times with distaste, simply because they wore no official uniform, which would identify them with any of the armed services. The men of the Merchant Navy suffered more than most in war, even if lucky enough to survive a sinking. The freezing winter waters of the North Atlantic & Arctic Ocean on the North Russian Convoy’s could kill a man in under a minute, men dying of thirst in the searing heat and shark infested waters of the Pacific & Indian Ocean. Remember the screams of men dying in the infernos from the burning oil tankers. September 3rd is to remember the men machine gunned to death from the SS Anglo Saxon, and to the two survivors Wilbert Widdicombe & Robert Tapscott who spent seventy days in an open boat before reaching land, which would see Tapscott dead within three months as his next ship SS Siamese Prince was lost with all hands. September 3rd remember the Merchant Seamen captured and brought aboard a Japanese submarine only to be beheaded as others were thrown into the sea still alive tied together with the headless corpses of shipmates. September 3rd remember the two hundred and eighty British Merchant Seamen machine gunned to death by the Japanese from the ships SS Daisy Moller, British Chivalry, Sutlej, Ascol, Nancey Moller, & Nellore. September 3rd is to remember the likes of the 2nd Steward, Poom Lim the only survivor from the Benlomond who survived one hundred and thirty three days on a life raft. September 3rd remember the two survivors from the Fort Longueuil who spent four and a half months adrift in an open boat, only to be captured and imprisoned by the Japanese. Remember fourteen-year-old Welsh boy Kenneth James Lewis, the youngest Merchant Seaman to be killed from the SS Fiscus, a double tragedy as his fifteen year old brother Raymond Leslie Lewis perished with him. September 3rd remember the Liverpool seamen Billy Swinchin, the only survivor from the SS Etrib who survived seventy-seven days on a raft only to picked up by a U-boat and imprisoned in Germany. Even when captured Merchant Seamen were not treated under the rules of war laid down by the Geneva Convention. They were civilians and were supposed to be repatriated; instead, they were imprisoned in the Sandbostel Concentration Camp in Germany until they were forced to build their own camp, which they christened Milag Nord. September 3rd remember the men from the steamers, tramps, CAM ships, MAC ships, DEMS, reefers, rescue tugs, cargo ships, coasters, rescue ships, whalers, & oilers . Without the Merchant Navy Britain would have starved, there would have been no “Operation Torch”, the invasion of North Africa. There would have been no D-Day landings at Normandy without the one thousand two hundred and sixty Merchant ships that took part. This country is indebted to all these men. September 3rd remember those few veterans still living like Stockton born Robert Casey who survived the sinking of the SS Wentworth in Convoy ONS-5, five of his shipmates did not. Even today, the Merchant Navy goes largely unrecognized. Where war goes, the British Merchant Navy follows. Two World Wars, Palestine 1945-1948, Korea 1950-1953, Suez 1956, Cyprus 1955-1959, Borneo 1962-1966, Falklands 1982, Gulf 1990-1991. September 3rd remember them! Remember them all, the men of the forgotten fourth service.

Billy McGee Merchant Navy & Royal Fleet Auxiliary 1980-1992

"On all the oceans white caps flow, you do not see crosses row on row, but those who sleep beneath the sea, rest in peace for your country is free."