Warspite Read online

  Dedicated to the immortal Warspite,

  her crews and the casualties

  of all her wars

  First published in Great Britain in 2001, reprinted in 2010 by

  PEN AND SWORD MARITIME

  An imprint of

  Pen & Sword Books Ltd

  47 Church Street

  Barnsley

  South Yorkshire

  S70 2AS

  Copyright © Iain Ballantyne, 2001, 2010

  ISBN 978 1 84884 350 9

  Digital Editision ISBN: 978 1 78340 764 4

  The right of Iain Ballantyne to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is

  available from the British Library

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

  Printed and bound in England

  By CPI UK

  Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the Imprints of Pen & Sword Aviation, Pen & Sword Family History, Pen & Sword Maritime, Pen & Sword Military, Wharncliffe Local History, Pen & Sword Select, Pen & Sword Military Classics, Leo Cooper, Remember When, Seaforth

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  Contents

  HMS WARSPITE BATTLE HONOURS 1596-1944

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  CHAPTER ONE CREATORS AND FOREBEARS

  CHAPTER TWO BIRTH OF A SUPER DREADNOUGHT

  CHAPTER THREE JUTLAND

  CHAPTER FOUR ARMISTICE & MUTINY

  CHAPTER FIVE RECONSTRUCTION

  CHAPTER SIX TO NARVIK

  CHAPTER SEVEN CALABRIA, TARANTO & MATAPAN

  CHAPTER EIGHT DESPERATE HOURS

  CHAPTER NINE DELIVERING A KNOCKOUT BLOW

  CHAPTER TEN SWANSONG

  CHAPTER ELEVEN STUBBORN TO THE END

  Epilogue

  Appendix

  Bibliography

  HMS WARSPITE Battle Honours 1596-1944

  Cadiz 1596, Orfordness 1666, Sole Bay 1672, Schooneveld 1673, Texel 1673, Barfleur 1692, Velez Malaga 1704, Marbella 1705, Lagos 1759, Quiberon Bay 1759, Jutland 1916, Atlantic 1939, Narvik 1940, Norway 1940, Calabria 1940, Mediterranean 1940-43, Matapan 1941, Crete 1941, Malta Convoys 1941, Sicily 1943, Salerno 1943, Normandy 1944, English Channel 1944, Biscay 1944, Walcheren 1944.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This book would not have been possible without the generous assistance of members of the HMS Warspite Association.

  I first got to know them at their fourteenth annual reunion dinner, at the Hotel Prince Regent, Weymouth, in May 1999. In common with many other former Royal Navy sailors and Royal Marines, and indeed ex-soldiers and airmen who also fought in the Second World War, the members of the Warspite Association preferred to forget their experiences for four decades. Hence their association was, like many other veterans’ groups, only formed in the mid-1980s. Only after they had retired could they finally afford the time to contemplate their supporting roles in the great drama of history.

  While their stories may have been shared with former shipmates during reunions since the 1980s, until I started gathering material for this book many of the Warspite veterans had never really spoken in any depth about their time aboard the most famous battleship in Royal Navy history. Their experiences as ordinary sailors and marines aboard a mighty ship of war proved to be the definition of true British grit. We would be well advised not to forget how freedom was saved from extinction by ordinary men like them.

  Sincere thanks are therefore due to the following members of the Warspite Association who allowed me to interview them for this book: Reg Foster; Charles Pearson; Frederick ‘Ben’ Rice, Ken Smith and Jack Worth. I would also like to thank Warspite veteran Peter Finnigan for allowing me to use material contained in his own account of his time on the battleship.

  This book is a tribute to them and also to all the association members I did not have time to interview, not least those who have ‘crossed the bar’, taking their experiences with them untold. I was, however, given permission to use material published in the Warspite Association’s newsletter – Anchors Aweigh – which has enabled me to relate the experiences of many I was unable to interview.

  Several members of the Warspite Association generously loaned me images from their private collections to illustrate this book and to them I also extend thanks.

  Of course this book could not ignore the stories of either the six Warspites which preceded the battleship or the eighth vessel to bear the name, a nuclear-powered attack submarine. The Warspite Association embraces sailors who crewed this Cold War fighting vessel and, of their number, I must especially thank Jonathan Cooke and Tim Hale for talking to me about their experiences. They gave to me as much detail as they reasonably could without breaking the restrictions of the Official Secrets Act.

  When it came to locating former members of Warspite’s crew, and others who witnessed her exploits, beyond the association’s active membership list, the Royal British Legion’s official magazine, Legion, played a crucial role. Its readers responded from around the world with a flood of material after reading an article about the Warspite Association’s fourteenth reunion dinner in which I mentioned that I was writing this book. I am therefore very grateful to Legion magazine’s Editor, Chris Boiling, and Assistant Editor, Dominic Needham, for their assistance.

  I am grateful to the following for responding to the Legion article and providing their own eyewitness accounts: Albert Cock; Philip Gourd; Andy Hamnett; W.E. Heard; Charles Hunter; Arthur Jones; William Nichol; Frank Page; Ray Pattenden and Dougie Weyhaup. The family of one former Warspite sailor, H. Banks, who has sadly passed away, kindly sent me a copy of his unpublished account of service in the battleship during the Second World War, called An Outline of My Life Aboard The Grey Lady.

  After reading the Legion article, John Corbett, who is also an active member of the Warspite Association, came forward with a very significant contribution. Many thanks are due to him for allowing me to use previously unpublished material from The Journal of J.G. Corbett Midshipman, Royal Navy. Mr T. Sutherland of Berlin, whose late father served on Warspite during the Second World War, responded to the Legion article by loaning me his father’s superb photo album. A number of others who responded in writing to the same article also provided images. Among them, special thanks are due to John Hockley for allowing me to use pictures in the private collection of his late father, Jack Hockley, another who served on Warspite during the Second World War. Steve Wyles, only grandson of George Wyles, who was one of Warspite’s divers in the late 1930s and during the Second World War, has kindly allowed me to use images from his family’s private collection.

  The staffs of the Imperial War Museum’s Sound Archive and Department of Documents, together with the staff of Plymouth City Library’s Naval Archive were very helpful during the course of my research. The US Naval Historical Center was very efficient in providing some of the key images for this book. I would also like to acknowledge the help of the National Maritime Museum and Topham Picturepoint picture archives, even if, in the end, many of the images they provided were not used.

  I am particularly indebted to Dr Robert Franklin for giving access to his father’s superb collection of photographs of Warspite and her crew during the First World War.
Judith Ellis has given permission to use extracts from the war diary of her father-in-law, Gordon, who was a Surgeon Lieutenant in Warspite at the Battle of Jutland. She has also graciously allowed me to use portrait photographs of her father-in-law and pictures of Warspite on the rocks at Prussia Cove taken by him in 1947.

  Thanks are due to the copyright holders of the various Collections held by the Imperial War Museum, extracts of which form an important element of this book. Every effort was made via the Imperial War Museum to contact all the relevant copyright holders.

  I must thank Andrew M. Ramsay for enabling me to enlarge the scope of the account of the Battle of Matapan by allowing me to draw on material in his book, HMS Formidable.

  Reg Shield and John Constantine at Devonport Management Limited – management company of Devonport Royal Dockyard – were able to help me with images of submarine Warspite arriving at Plymouth for, and during, her final refit in the early 1990s. My thanks to them and DML, or Babcock Marine as it is known today.

  Thanks are also due to my photographic colleagues Nigel Andrews, Tony Carney, Neil Hall and Mike Welsford for helping assemble a superb range of images for this book. Tribute is due to John Pearce and to Stu Reed for helping me with research matters. Anthony Abbott and Bob Drayton are acknowledged for helping to put the word around that I was looking for Warspite veterans.

  Thanks to Peter Hore for his blunt perspective on the book, which I am sure helped to shape it in its final stages.

  I am grateful to all at Leo Cooper/Pen & Sword Books for giving me the opportunity to write this book and being so patient, especially Henry Wilson and Roni Wilkinson. Susan Ottaway should be mentioned and thanked for her judicious editing which helped sharpen the text tremendously.

  And last, but by no means least, I owe a debt of gratitude to Dennis C. Andrews, maritime artist extraordinary, for his fantastic pictures and drawings, and Syd Goodman who provided not only superb images from the Goodman Collection but also no-nonsense guidance and salty encouragement. Syd, who sadly passed away in 2006, also allowed me to draw on his considerable archive of printed matter, including his excellent, and unpublished, potted history of the seventh Warspite’s career.

  If there is anyone I have forgotten to mention please accept my sincere apologies.

  Since the hardback edition of this book was published in 2001, time has thinned out the surviving Warspite veterans, some of them acknowledged as key contributors to this story. Hopefully, this paperback edition stands as a lasting memorial to them all.

  Iain Ballantyne

  May 2010

  Chapter One

  CREATORS AND FOREBEARS

  Anxious Moments on the Tamar

  On 26 November 1913, a young politician witnessed the launching of a gigantic vessel of war upon which he had gambled his political career and the safety of the British Empire. The vessel’s name was Warspite; the politician was Winston Churchill.

  Gathered around the First Lord of the Admiralty at Devonport Dockyard in the English naval city of Plymouth, was a tumultuous crowd of 30,000. Under a grey overcast sky, the assembled thousands held their breath as one, for the Warspite stubbornly refused to be launched. Mrs Austen Chamberlain, wife of the Government minister, had broken a bottle of wine against the bow and then, using a hammer to hit a chisel held by a dockyard official, severed a cord releasing with a massive crash, wooden supports either side of the gigantic hull. However, despite the best efforts of burly dockyard workers and hydraulic rams to send her down the slipway, the battleship had stayed put.

  But then the creaking of timber blocks giving way under the hull shattered the tense silence and someone cried out: ‘She’s off!’ With the masses cheering their lungs out, and craft on the river blasting their sirens, the Warspite finally went on her way, sliding stern first into the wide Tamar. She settled gracefully in the water, the cheers of sailors aboard her answered from all sides by the crowd.

  With 30,000 people cheering her down the slipway, HMS Warspite is launched at Devonport in November 1913. US Naval Historical Center.

  Overjoyed, Mr Churchill blew off steam by lustily joining in the singing of ‘Rule Britannia’, giving extra emphasis to the song - and his relief - with the enthusiastic waving of his hat.

  The launch of Warspite at Devonport Dockyard had been delayed a month to await the arrival of heavy castings and time was of the essence. Never before had a hull of some 12,000 tons been put in the water on the Tamar and there would not be another adequate high tide for a long time. Britain was engaged in a rapidly escalating naval construction race with Germany and just under nine months later the two nations would be at war.

  Churchill had fought tooth and nail to build Warspite and her four sister ships, in a bold bid to achieve final supremacy over the Kaiser’s fleet with a class of new super dreadnoughts.

  A controversial concept, they mounted 15-inch guns on a heavily armoured hull. Not only was it by no means certain such large calibre guns could be mounted and fired safely, the new super dreadnoughts also rejected plentiful British coal in favour of oil from the Middle East to fire their boilers.

  But, if the First Lord of the Admiralty had needed a boost to his confidence, he had only to study the history of the six previous Warspites, each of which carved an illustrious career.

  From Raleigh & Essex to Pax Victoriana

  The first Warspite set the fighting tradition commanded by swashbuckling Elizabethan high seas privateer Sir Walter Raleigh.

  The origins of the name Warspite are not clear but the most popular theory is that it was a compound creation – ‘War’s spite’ embodies contempt for one’s enemies (an obvious reflection of English feelings towards Spain at the time). The word ‘spight’ was also a colloquial name for the green woodpecker. A ‘warspight’ would obviously be ready to ‘peck’ at the wooden hulls of opponents.

  From the first moment he went aboard Warspite at Plymouth in 1596, Raleigh was certainly eager to hurl spite, and peck at the Spaniards with a cannonade or two. The forty-two-year-old adventurer’s new ship had been launched earlier that year at Deptford, on the Thames, displacing approximately 650 tons and carrying thirty-six guns. Now Sir Walter was getting her ready to sail at the head of a squadron in an ambitious raid on Cadiz.

  The year 1596 was not a good one for England.

  Standing outside Sherborne Abbey is this statue of the first Warspite’s first Captain, Sir Walter Raleigh. Nigel Andrews.

  The sheen of victory over the Spanish Armada of 1588 had well and truly dulled and everywhere the threats grew. The Spaniards had taken Calais that April and were said to be assembling a new armada at Cadiz.

  England’s security could therefore be assured by the destruction of enemy naval vessels in the port, so removing the means to transport troops across the Channel.

  But the stars of the ‘old firm’, which had vanquished the previous armada, were dead – Hawkins and Drake during the Panama expedition that had set off in August 1595 and ended in disaster. Most painful for Raleigh was the loss of his cousin and mentor, Richard Grenville, killed in the Azores some five years before, after his ship, the Revenge, was trapped by fifty Spanish men-of-war. Two vessels that had played a leading role in destroying Grenville - the Saint Philip, on whose deck he gasped his last breath before his corpse was thrown overboard, and the Saint Andrew - were said to be at Cadiz.

  Raleigh once enjoyed an intimate and unrivalled position in the Queen’s favours which had brought him a knighthood, rich lands and power. But his place in the Queen’s affections had been taken by the Earl of Essex who was also his rival in martial affairs. When Raleigh heard Essex was to be joint leader of the expedition with Howard of Effingham – the man who led English naval forces against the 1588 armada – he was outraged. His hatred for Essex, and jealousy of his joint command, poured more oil on his burning determination to make Cadiz a personal triumph. But when Raleigh went to Plymouth to join Warspite he managed to keep his temper under control and showed only
courtesy to Essex.

  A large force had been assembled – eighteen Royal Navy ships, ten armed merchant vessels and twenty-four Dutch warships plus 100 other assorted craft. Nearly 10,000 English and Dutch soldiers were to be carried by the fleet. Warspite was to lead one of four naval squadrons while Essex had charge of another, with the Repulse as his flagship. Despite the Queen blowing hot and cold over the whole venture this ‘bristling and ferocious fleet’1 finally set sail from Plymouth on 1 June and three weeks later was approaching Cadiz.

  Things did not get off to a good start. In heavy seas an ill-fated attempt was made to disembark troops for a direct attack on the city of Cadiz.

  Raleigh’s squadron had been sent off to clear the approaches of any Spanish warships which might interfere, so Sir Walter had been unavailable to point out the folly of such an opening move. Its cardinal sin was ignoring destruction of the armada and capture of treasure ships. A direct assault on the city could bog down the English, allowing the Spanish vessels to slip away. Witnessing the chaos and confusion from Warspite on his return, Raleigh immediately intervened. Putting Warspite near the Repulse, he rowed across to have an urgent conference with Essex during which his bitter rival surprisingly bowed to his wisdom. Next he rowed to Effingham’s ship and managed to persuade the overall commander to cancel the assault on the city. It was decided that on high tide in the morning the English warships – spearheaded by Raleigh’s squadron with Warspite at the very tip – would sail straight into Cadiz Harbour.