Post by Administrator on Jun 22, 2016 2:31:13 GMT
How Bristol's pleasure steamers played vital role in First World War
ON THE evening of February 15, 1919, the paddle steamer Albion locked in at Cumberland Basin. It was a Saturday evening and as the word spread, a few dozen onlookers gathered to see the battered ship, still armed, still painted the regulation grey of the Royal Navy.
Perhaps the small crowd raised a ragged cheer. Albion, her sister ships and their Bristolian crews were war heroes, and now the first of them was back. It was another small sign that peace had truly returned.
Some of the onlookers would surely have chatted about the good times they had had on the ships, and would have looked forward to the summer outings to come.
The first of the P & A Campbell White Funnel pleasure steamers – "the swans of the Avon", one local writer called them – had returned home.
In all of the annals of Bristol in the Great War, the full story of the Campbell paddle steamers remains fairly obscure.
It's the same with Bristol's merchant seamen generally; merchant seamen didn't tend to write their memoirs.
Yet in the case of the White Funnel fleet, the ships and their crews, who were almost all Bristol men, did vital war service.
One was a transport at Gallipoli and some of the others had encounters with enemy submarines, but for the most part they were used as minesweepers.
This was not just thankless work, it was dangerous. In statistical terms, you stood a better chance of survival in the First World War as a soldier in the trenches than you did working on minesweepers.
It was to the immense credit of the Bristol steamers that only two out of 13 were lost.
The casualty figures were impressive, too. Though some men were lost, there do not appear to have been any casualties from the Bristolians among them.
These relatively small losses says a lot for their professionalism and experience, and the quality of their mostly Clyde-built ships.
Before the war Campbell's steamers had been a popular feature of Bristol's summer.
People would dress in their Sunday best for an outing down the Avon and into the Channel on weekends and Bank Holidays, heading off for a day out in Lynmouth, Clovelly, Minehead or Ilfracombe.
Because of all these happy memories, it came as a shock when the ships were requisitioned by the Admiralty to become minesweepers. By the middle of the war the Navy had taken all 13 of them.
The Navy brass knew what they were doing. Paddle steamers operating as pleasure boats were highly manoeuvrable but, more importantly, because they operated in coastal waters they had shallow draughts.
Enemy mines were usually laid to hit lower hulls; a pleasure boat stood a fighting chance of being able to sail right over one unscathed.
The same applied with submarine torpedoes. "They always went nicely under our bottom, thank you," said an officer of the Devonia after the war.
The first to leave were Devonia and Brighton Queen, headed for Devonport in September 1914.
Most of the others were taken, one by one, to G.K. Stothert's dockyard at Hotwells, and fitted out for war; painted grey and armed for duty with machine guns and 12-pounders.
One by one, they were taken down the Avon by men from Bristol, Pill, Shirehampton and Avonmouth now acting under Admiralty orders, to take station around Britain's coast.
Devonia, Brighton Queen, Cambria, Westward Ho!, Glen Avon and Lady Ismay remained together as a flotilla through the war, based at Grimsby, and later on the Tyne.
An account of one of their adventures written by one of the men on another boat in the group, the yacht Saggita, gives a vivid description of their dangerous work. In April 1915 Westward Ho! and the Sagitta were mine-hunting in the North Sea:
Soon after sweeping started there was a loud explosion in the sweep between our partner the Westward Ho!, and us, and a mound of water was hurled into the air. Two mines had burst in our sweep. A few seconds later another bobbed up, cut from its moorings by our sweep wire. The sound of the explosion was followed by complete silence. All the ships had immediately stopped, and lay rolling slightly to the disturbance caused by the bursting mines.
Any harm done? No, all the ships were there. "We will pick up that mine" said the Commander. Our end of the wire was "slipped," or let go, a boat was lowered, and he and the C/O, with two hands went off. Of course, strictly speaking, the C/O should not have gone. His place was on board, especially as mines were about, but the immediate danger in the boat attracted him — he was that sort of man — and he would not hear of anyone else going. Off went the boat, while the rest of us looked on, and wondered what would happen. The boat circled round the black, sinister looking mine, bobbing about so innocently in the sea, and then the C/O jumped into the water, swam up to the mine, and cut the two outside wires leading to the detonator.
This the Commander thought should make it safe, though he was not sure. The mine was then towed alongside, a derrick swung out, the mine hooked on, hoisted out, and lowered on deck after the detonator had been pulled out. We breathed freely once more. It was certainly safe now that the detonator was out.
The next job was to pick it to pieces, and this was successfully done. It was found to be surprisingly well made, and all the inside parts were highly finished. In fact they could hardly have been bettered if intended for an exhibition. Considering that it was destined in the ordinary way to be blown to bits it seems strange that so much care should have been bestowed on polishing and machining the works. One of the parts bore a quite recent date, proving that the mines had not been laid long. In fact in one way and another quite a lot of information was gleaned from this mine, which was sent to the Admiralty when we returned to harbour.
The two ships to be lost in the war were in the Grimsby Flotilla.
On October 6, 1915, Brighton Queen hit a mine off the Belgian coast and sank quickly, with the loss of seven men (Bristol's local press, in the way of local press then and now, noted that none of them were from Bristol).
Two months later the Lady Ismay struck a mine in the Thames Estuary and went down in two minutes with the loss of 19 men.
The same number, however, were saved by boats from the ships accompanying her.
This episode was quite famous at the time for the action of Chief Petty Officer Walter Carter of Dartmoor Street, Bedminster. He was commended by the Admiralty for trying to save another man by dragging him onto a life raft and giving artificial respiration.
The four remaining Campbell ships at Grimsby were later moved to the Tyne where they saw out the rest of the war doing similar work.
Six of the other steamers were sent to the Clyde and spent the war around the coast of Scotland. One, the Glen Usk, was present when the German fleet surrendered at Scapa Flow on November 21 1918.
Albion and Ravenswood went to Dover and with the Grimsby flotilla they took part in clearing mines before the Zeebrugge Raid.
Their crewmen were delighted to find out after the war that they had been described in an official German report as "light cruisers".
They were under heavy fire, and Albion also survived a German air attack. She was not so lucky two years later when a small bomb hit her stern and two officers were killed.
The Waverley went to Portland and the Glen Rosa to Cardiff, where she swept the Bristol Channel for mines. Both were sent to the Thames later in the war.
The Barry had the most interesting war of all of them. Called up in 1915 she first took 400 prisoners-of-war to Dublin to be moved to a camp in Ireland. She was then sent to the
where she spent six weeks ferrying troops, ammunition and supplies to the Gallipoli beaches, almost always under artillery fire.
When the campaign was abandoned it was the Barry that was the very last to leave, evacuating the men of the rearguard from Suvla Bay.
Barry saw out the rest of the war in the Mediterranean ferrying troops and supplies around.
"They went forth," said a newspaper reporter in 1919 of the 11 which one by one had returned to the city docks and were now being painted white once more, "on the great adventure and braved, oft-times, the fury of heavy gales on work for which they were certainly never intended. And in spite of all the dangers, they came back. When they first went away, the steamers were manned entirely by local men, and although two of the White Funnels were lost, other vessels of the same fleet were able to rescue all the Bristol men aboard."
LINK
ON THE evening of February 15, 1919, the paddle steamer Albion locked in at Cumberland Basin. It was a Saturday evening and as the word spread, a few dozen onlookers gathered to see the battered ship, still armed, still painted the regulation grey of the Royal Navy.
Perhaps the small crowd raised a ragged cheer. Albion, her sister ships and their Bristolian crews were war heroes, and now the first of them was back. It was another small sign that peace had truly returned.
Some of the onlookers would surely have chatted about the good times they had had on the ships, and would have looked forward to the summer outings to come.
The first of the P & A Campbell White Funnel pleasure steamers – "the swans of the Avon", one local writer called them – had returned home.
In all of the annals of Bristol in the Great War, the full story of the Campbell paddle steamers remains fairly obscure.
It's the same with Bristol's merchant seamen generally; merchant seamen didn't tend to write their memoirs.
Yet in the case of the White Funnel fleet, the ships and their crews, who were almost all Bristol men, did vital war service.
One was a transport at Gallipoli and some of the others had encounters with enemy submarines, but for the most part they were used as minesweepers.
This was not just thankless work, it was dangerous. In statistical terms, you stood a better chance of survival in the First World War as a soldier in the trenches than you did working on minesweepers.
It was to the immense credit of the Bristol steamers that only two out of 13 were lost.
The casualty figures were impressive, too. Though some men were lost, there do not appear to have been any casualties from the Bristolians among them.
These relatively small losses says a lot for their professionalism and experience, and the quality of their mostly Clyde-built ships.
Before the war Campbell's steamers had been a popular feature of Bristol's summer.
People would dress in their Sunday best for an outing down the Avon and into the Channel on weekends and Bank Holidays, heading off for a day out in Lynmouth, Clovelly, Minehead or Ilfracombe.
Because of all these happy memories, it came as a shock when the ships were requisitioned by the Admiralty to become minesweepers. By the middle of the war the Navy had taken all 13 of them.
The Navy brass knew what they were doing. Paddle steamers operating as pleasure boats were highly manoeuvrable but, more importantly, because they operated in coastal waters they had shallow draughts.
Enemy mines were usually laid to hit lower hulls; a pleasure boat stood a fighting chance of being able to sail right over one unscathed.
The same applied with submarine torpedoes. "They always went nicely under our bottom, thank you," said an officer of the Devonia after the war.
The first to leave were Devonia and Brighton Queen, headed for Devonport in September 1914.
Most of the others were taken, one by one, to G.K. Stothert's dockyard at Hotwells, and fitted out for war; painted grey and armed for duty with machine guns and 12-pounders.
One by one, they were taken down the Avon by men from Bristol, Pill, Shirehampton and Avonmouth now acting under Admiralty orders, to take station around Britain's coast.
Devonia, Brighton Queen, Cambria, Westward Ho!, Glen Avon and Lady Ismay remained together as a flotilla through the war, based at Grimsby, and later on the Tyne.
An account of one of their adventures written by one of the men on another boat in the group, the yacht Saggita, gives a vivid description of their dangerous work. In April 1915 Westward Ho! and the Sagitta were mine-hunting in the North Sea:
Soon after sweeping started there was a loud explosion in the sweep between our partner the Westward Ho!, and us, and a mound of water was hurled into the air. Two mines had burst in our sweep. A few seconds later another bobbed up, cut from its moorings by our sweep wire. The sound of the explosion was followed by complete silence. All the ships had immediately stopped, and lay rolling slightly to the disturbance caused by the bursting mines.
Any harm done? No, all the ships were there. "We will pick up that mine" said the Commander. Our end of the wire was "slipped," or let go, a boat was lowered, and he and the C/O, with two hands went off. Of course, strictly speaking, the C/O should not have gone. His place was on board, especially as mines were about, but the immediate danger in the boat attracted him — he was that sort of man — and he would not hear of anyone else going. Off went the boat, while the rest of us looked on, and wondered what would happen. The boat circled round the black, sinister looking mine, bobbing about so innocently in the sea, and then the C/O jumped into the water, swam up to the mine, and cut the two outside wires leading to the detonator.
This the Commander thought should make it safe, though he was not sure. The mine was then towed alongside, a derrick swung out, the mine hooked on, hoisted out, and lowered on deck after the detonator had been pulled out. We breathed freely once more. It was certainly safe now that the detonator was out.
The next job was to pick it to pieces, and this was successfully done. It was found to be surprisingly well made, and all the inside parts were highly finished. In fact they could hardly have been bettered if intended for an exhibition. Considering that it was destined in the ordinary way to be blown to bits it seems strange that so much care should have been bestowed on polishing and machining the works. One of the parts bore a quite recent date, proving that the mines had not been laid long. In fact in one way and another quite a lot of information was gleaned from this mine, which was sent to the Admiralty when we returned to harbour.
The two ships to be lost in the war were in the Grimsby Flotilla.
On October 6, 1915, Brighton Queen hit a mine off the Belgian coast and sank quickly, with the loss of seven men (Bristol's local press, in the way of local press then and now, noted that none of them were from Bristol).
Two months later the Lady Ismay struck a mine in the Thames Estuary and went down in two minutes with the loss of 19 men.
The same number, however, were saved by boats from the ships accompanying her.
This episode was quite famous at the time for the action of Chief Petty Officer Walter Carter of Dartmoor Street, Bedminster. He was commended by the Admiralty for trying to save another man by dragging him onto a life raft and giving artificial respiration.
The four remaining Campbell ships at Grimsby were later moved to the Tyne where they saw out the rest of the war doing similar work.
Six of the other steamers were sent to the Clyde and spent the war around the coast of Scotland. One, the Glen Usk, was present when the German fleet surrendered at Scapa Flow on November 21 1918.
Albion and Ravenswood went to Dover and with the Grimsby flotilla they took part in clearing mines before the Zeebrugge Raid.
Their crewmen were delighted to find out after the war that they had been described in an official German report as "light cruisers".
They were under heavy fire, and Albion also survived a German air attack. She was not so lucky two years later when a small bomb hit her stern and two officers were killed.
The Waverley went to Portland and the Glen Rosa to Cardiff, where she swept the Bristol Channel for mines. Both were sent to the Thames later in the war.
The Barry had the most interesting war of all of them. Called up in 1915 she first took 400 prisoners-of-war to Dublin to be moved to a camp in Ireland. She was then sent to the
where she spent six weeks ferrying troops, ammunition and supplies to the Gallipoli beaches, almost always under artillery fire.
When the campaign was abandoned it was the Barry that was the very last to leave, evacuating the men of the rearguard from Suvla Bay.
Barry saw out the rest of the war in the Mediterranean ferrying troops and supplies around.
"They went forth," said a newspaper reporter in 1919 of the 11 which one by one had returned to the city docks and were now being painted white once more, "on the great adventure and braved, oft-times, the fury of heavy gales on work for which they were certainly never intended. And in spite of all the dangers, they came back. When they first went away, the steamers were manned entirely by local men, and although two of the White Funnels were lost, other vessels of the same fleet were able to rescue all the Bristol men aboard."
LINK