Lower Deck: Life Aboard a British Destroyer in WWII

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LOWER DECK

Life Aboard a British Destroyer in World War II

By

LIEUTENANT JOHN DAVIES, R.N.V.R.

With an Introduction by

ADMIRAL SIR JAMES SOMERVILLE. G.C.B.. K.B.E., D.S.O.

Lower Deck was originally published in 1945 by The Macmillan Company, New York.

* * *

This book is written in honour of Ginger, Buster, Gilo, Geordie, Sharky, Bogey, Drunken Duncan, and all the others who possessed little in this world except loyalty, generosity, and magnificent courage.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

INTRODUCTION 5

NAVAL WATCHES 6

HARBOR ROUTINE 7

1. H.M.S. SKYE Fires a Fish 9

2. —And you will not, repeat not, return here. 30

(Signal from Malta) 30

3. Make and Mend 36

4. Patrol 49

5. Commissions and Warrants 56

6. Naval Occasion 59

7. Convoy West 68

8. Nerves 84

9. Night Action 87

10. Run Ashore 95

11. Valediction 101

GLOSSARY 112

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 119

INTRODUCTION

This story which opens so abruptly—as abruptly, no doubt, as the Author’s entry on the Lower Deck—is the story of a gun’s crew in a destroyer: B gun’s crew in the Skye. That was not her real name, of course, but I can identify her quite easily. She was at one time temporarily under my orders when I commanded Force H, the Western Mediterranean Fleet, in the difficult days of 1940-42. The story does not deal with that period; it describes, and describes most faithfully, a part of her service in the Eastern Mediterranean when she was under the orders of Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham; engaged, with her sister ships, in assisting the defense of besieged Malta.

When reading this book you listen in to the Lower Deck; for the time being you are on the Lower Deck. You may think the language is at times rather robust, but the author has evidently decided that a strong breeze cannot be described in terms of catspaws. After forty-six years’ service in the Navy, I can testify that Lieutenant John Davies has portrayed with uncanny accuracy and great sympathy what passes in the minds of the men of the Lower Deck and the language they use to express their feelings.

You may ask, Are the men of the Lower Deck really such humorists? They certainly are; and I am certain this humor will appeal to every sailor and to every student of humanity.

You will find no heroics—on the Lower Deck heroics are not tolerated; but if you read between the lines you will realize that in spite of the light word, the ever ready jest, these men think and feel deeply.

Lieutenant Davies has rendered a great service in giving us this essentially truthful picture of how a gun’s crew lived, thought, occasionally slept, and very occasionally relaxed. It is a most graphic and entertaining record of a small part of a small ship’s company.

ADMIRAL SIR JAMES SOMERVILLE, G.C.B., K.B.E., D.S.O.

British Naval Staff Combined Chiefs of Staff

Washington, D.C.

NAVAL WATCHES

Midnight to 04.00 (4 a.m.)—Middle

04.00 to 08.00 (8 a.m.)—Morning

08.00 to 12.30 (12.30 p.m.)—Forenoon

12.30 to 16.00 (4 p.m.)—Afternoon

16.00 to 18.00 (6 p.m.)—First Dog

18.00 to 20.00 (8 p.m.)—Last Dog

20.00 to midnight—First

HARBOR ROUTINE

0620. Call men under punishment.

0630. Men under punishment fall in.

0630. Call the hands.

0700. Hands to breakfast and clean.

0755. Out pipes.

0800. Hands fall in.

0930. Cooks of messes fall in.

1000. Hands to quarters clean guns.

1020.* Stand easy.

1030. Out pipes.

1100. Up spirits.

1150. Cooks to the galley.

1200.* Hands to dinner.

1310.* Out pipes.

1315. Hands fall in.

1420. Stand easy.

1430. Out pipes.

1545.* Clear up decks.

1600. Hands to tea.

1600. Liberty men to clean.

1630. Liberty men fall in.

1655. Fire party fall in.

1730. Liberty men fall in.

1830. Hands to supper.

1900. Liberty men fall in.

2025. Clear up mess decks and flats for rounds.

2045. Men under punishment fall in.

2050. Rounds.

2200. Pipe down.

* The First Lieutenant is to be informed before piping orders.

1. H.M.S. SKYE Fires a Fish

Wednesday April 22 to Thursday April 23, 1942

23.57 Hours Three minutes to midnight. As I climb the last ladder from the wheelhouse to the after bridge, the keen night air strikes pleasantly after the stale stuffiness of the mess deck.

A dark heap on the searchlight platform heaves, stumbles erect, and yawns hugely. I call out to it softly.

All right, Fearless, you’re luckier than me.

Fearless Freddie yawns again, stretching his bulky arms across the stars.

Late again! Watch been piped ten minutes.

Oh, go and get your head down, for God’s sake. Anything doing?

Doin’? What d’yer think’s goin’ to be doin’, stuck up ‘ere on this ‘ere in the middle of the bleedin’ night?...Cocoa was cold.

Freddie departs, muttering. He is an Able Seaman, with the three badges of long service on his arm. It is the privilege of such gentlemen to grumble. They deserve it.

Tommy Masterson arrives, eyes and nose alone visible. His duffel coat is skewered around his waist with a bit of spun yarn, and billows out into a voluminous skirt that almost sweeps the deck. He is a stocky little man from Manchester. In peacetime used to service cinematographs. Now stands a watch with me. We are the searchlight manipulators.

‘Ullo, ops!

Hullo, Tommy.

Where’s Ginger?

Ginger’s right ‘ere! A black shadow detaches itself from behind the director. Right ‘ere, waitin’ for reliefs as don’t come on time to let no one get no sleep! Ginger has the same privileges as Freddie, and a predilection for negatives....Don’t let it ‘appen no more!

Geordie Kilby passes, climbing up to the director. He nods, without looking at us.

Ain’t it deadly? says Geordie sadly. Ain’t it simply bleedin’ deadly?

Geordie is a product of Newcastle. Thin, nervous, never still, he goes his querulous way about the ship. Like all Newcastle men he is almost incomprehensible in his speech, through which runs, like a monotonous refrain, these words, muttered softly now to the shadows of the bridge.

Ain’t it deadly? Ain’t it simply bleedin’ deadly?

It is a pleasant night. Moonless but starry. The mast above cuts a black trace on the dark heavens. A tubular steel mast, it is true, not so romantic, maybe, as the mast of a tea clipper or island schooner—the tall ship and a star to steer her by type. It carries nothing much except signal halliards and radio aerials, but it is a mast, and as such a thing of grace and beauty. And His Majesty’s Destroyer Skye is tall enough, if you interpret the verse aright.

A light wind moans low in the rigging. We have heard these same wires shriek many times in angry protest as the mast rushes madly across a stormy sky, and I have clung up here as sick as a dog and hoping for early death; but tonight there is only a gentle rise and fall of sound, unearthly, melancholy. There is an infinite sadness about a ship at sea at night.

Aft, the camouflage of her quarter deck seems to interpose a dark gap between the ship and her wake. She seems to end suddenly just aft of Y gun, and then there is about twenty feet of nothing before the white and phosphorescent turmoil thrust up by her screws. The whiteness fans out, V-shaped, leading the eye on to the indeterminate horizon.

Suddenly this horizon is vividly lit by a series of brilliant flashes, five—six, in rapid succession.

Bit late tonight, eh? Thought it was about time they got started.

The voice comes softly. Petty Officer Peck has his head stuck out of his little window in the director where he is on watch.

More flashes, now isolated, now in groups of five or six, and then a stream of small red points of light moving slowly up into the sky, first from one and then from several points on the horizon. Then a sudden great white incandescence engulfing the night.

Malta’s baptism of fire is renewed once more.

And we in Skye, together with the rest of the Malta Striking Force, slide quietly on. Unmolested ourselves, we are steering due east, leaving the beleaguered island astern at thirty knots, rushing away from this holocaust of death and destruction suddenly let loose in all its fury on the ground and in the air, away into the night to fetch back to the heroic little island the sinews of war. Plane to fight plane, alleviating perhaps a little the titanic struggle the R.A.F. carries on daily, and nightly, with such casual gallantry. Bombs and bullets for the planes, shells for the guns. And food. Food for the men who fly the planes, who fire the guns. Food for the inconspicuous islanders who bear the dreadful load war has brought them with a cheerful dogged endurance—the British call it guts. Food for the patient women, the little children.

And petrol, lifeblood of modern war.

Micky Mayhew, Petty Officer of the Watch, has just been round to see that everyone is properly closed up.

Bloody funny thing happened just now, he said. "Florrie Ford and Scouse Brown told me. Old Scouse was forward starboard lookout on the bridge during the First, and it was just on the end of the watch and he was thinking about getting his head down when he heard someone come up and stand behind him. It was as black as hell out here then, and he thought it was Florrie come up to relieve him. So he didn’t look round, but just passed the glasses over his shoulder and said, ‘‘Ere you are, mate, there’s damn’ all to report,’ and then he went below.

Well, a couple of minutes later Florrie comes up to relieve Scouse, and when he arrives the bloke in the lookout’s chair passes up the glasses over his shoulder and says, ‘‘Ere you are, mate, there’s damn’ all to report,’ and I’ll be damned if it wasn’t the Captain himself!

Our speed seems to have gone up still further, judging by the vibration. Malta is on our port quarter now, dropping rapidly away. It is perhaps half an hour since the attack started, and from its intensity it is obviously one of the short, sharp blitzes the enemy seems so fond of lately. Already the brilliant flashes are becoming desultory. Then they cease. The searchlights black out suddenly as though controlled by a master switch. In the blackness of the night a solitary white flare falls slowly, slowly, burns suddenly brighter. Then it too goes out.

We should be back in two or three days with a convoy, but somehow I can’t help feeling we won’t be.

Everything seems quiet enough out here. I think Malta is probably the only place in the world where it is better to be at sea than in harbor—at night, anyway. It is quite pleasant lying on the searchlight platform, except that it is so damn difficult not to go to sleep. Tommy and I usually take it in turns to sit or lie down. One of us keeps on his feet for an hour, or a couple of hours, while the other stretches himself out on the platform grating. With a couple of gash duffel coats you can make yourself quite comfortable, especially on a night like this. In bad weather it’s a different story, though. You’re about as far above the water line as you can be, and so get the worst of the movement. I should hate to reckon up how many times I have been sick up here—I’ve always kept a bucket in the caboose under the director for my own special use. And apart from rolling and pitching this after-bridge is an uncomfortable place anyway. You can’t move without banging into something. You bark your shins on the searchlight platforms, and the director door has a habit of swinging open and whanging you in the back of the neck. If you want to stretch your legs all you can do is walk round and round the director foundation, which makes you as giddy as hell.

I’ve kept a watch on the searchlight for six months now, and during that time we’ve used it once—when we thought we’d got a sub. in the straits, just off Gib.

Tommy’s just managed to scrounge some kye from the buntings, and Geordie has come out of the director to share it. Geordie keeps his watch in a space so confined that it is almost impossible to move hand or foot, let alone drink cocoa.

Wonder what they’re doing up the line? says Tommy, between sips.

Up the line! Geordie is sadly scornful. Why, what d’yer think they’re doing! ‘Aving a bleedin’ good time. All working in factories—pack up at six, go ‘ome to supper, and then down to the local for a couple of pints, and finish up at the pictures—probably sit in the two and sixes and ‘old ‘ands with yer best girl, while you’re out ‘ere, tearing your guts out for nothing. Bleedin’ deadly, I call it! What would you do if you were up the line now, Tommy? I ask.

Tommy is thoughtful.

Oh, I dunno, he says. Probably go out and get a skinful. But I dunno. Reckon I’d just do anything me old woman wanted me to. I ain’t seen her for two years.

Well, replies Geordie, fer an old married man, you ought to be ashamed of yerself. What about that big blonde party I see you with in the ‘Blue Anchor’ last Saturday? She wasn’t yer wife, was she?

You mind your own bleedin’ business, Tommy says. A man’s only ‘uman. And don’t you go pretending you don’t ‘ave nothing to do with women. You’re one of the quiet ones, you are.

I’d rather ‘ave a good ‘ot dinner! says Geordie, wistfully.

01.15 Hours Captain, sir!

Something’s happening. Alarm bearing, Green Nine-0! In the silence we can hear the Officer of the Watch, young Subby Smith, quietly call down the