Whittles publishing £17.99. 145 pp. numerous b & w photos.
I elected to review this as it seemed an interesting change from the many accounts of combat vessels in WW2. Flipping through after it arrived, I saw mention of Turmoil and Flying Enterprise, which took me back to the tender age of six, the first time I really became aware of the news, as the saga of the struggling ship and then tow, and the heroics of her captain and the mate of Turmoil, were plastered across the newspapers day after day. I’m sure I’m not the only member who recalls this!
This is just one of several tales of loss. I hadn’t heard of the loss of the São Paulo, an elderly Brazilian dreadnought battleship going to the UK for scrap in 1951, under tow by Bustler, but she sank after the tow parted. The seabed has plenty of shattered battleships, but she and the German ships at Scapa must be the only intact survivors.
The class was designed before WW2 in response to a perceived need in the threatened war; the RN had no really powerful ocean tugs. Unusually, the RN were persuaded to use diesels; they had two driving a single prop, after the Dutch designs, and were all built in the Robb yard at Leith.
The contextual section covers familiar ground of WW2 naval history, and we then have the individual ship biographies. Many were transferred to the RFA in the 1970s, then sold off to Greek and Yugoslav owners, most lasting another ten years or so.
They played an important part in D Day, towing Pluto (Pipeline Underwater Transportation of Oil), and some of them also in combat rescue. The biographies have numerous anecdotes from those who served on them, mainly post war, when they were busy towing obsolete warships to scrapyards, as well as target towing for gunnery practise. Tow crews had more interesting lives than many, and captains displayed great seamanship. I was struck by the courage of the men who, after a tow broke, undertook extremely hazardous transfers onto vessels being towed for scrap. There’s no glory in dying to save a rusty wreck.
There are technical descriptions from the builders records, and numerous black and white photographs, but these, apart from one spread, are small, and a few haven’t reproduced too well. Many will be box brownie snaps, taken by crew of nearby ships, so this isn’t surprising.
R. Neish has published on the Leith shipyards where they were built, and has a further book due out soon.
It is well produced and edited, and justified my curiosity. It is expensive for its length, but perhaps we just have to get used to that. One for the Christmas list!
Jonathan Seagrave