Sinking of HMS Duchess (Part 2)

Since the publication of my book Collision in the Night about the story of the life and sinking of the destroyer HMS Duchess it has since come to light the story of one of her lost sailors from a relative who saw an online post and contacted me to tell me all about them.

It was the very early hours of 12th December 1939 that the Duchess was part of a task force escorting the battleship HMS Barham home from the Mediterranean that a collision occurred and the smaller destroyer turned turtle before sinking off the Mull of Kintyre in the Irish Sea. Over the years the story has not been looked into until I began my research around 2004 and started gathering information. It took me around 15 years to piece together what little was still available.

Tim Webb wrote to me to say that his grandfather, Petter Officer George Webb, was a stoker on board the Duchess, using his mothers name instead of his real surname (Vetter). Tims father was only ten years old at the time of the sinking and he died in 2000 after finally knowing that his name was etched into the Chatham war memorial.

Here is a scroll that adorned their house for many years as a reminder of George. Today the Webb family is very proud of their links and Tim immediately purchased a copy of the book to read about what really happened the night the ship went down.

The book Collision in the Night - The Sinking of HMS Duchess is available on Amazon and Lulu.com priced at £7.

X-51 (HMS Stickleback)

In July 2019 I found myself in Helensburgh, Scotland, stood outside the Scottish Submarine Centre, a place that I had never heard of but I was guessing it was a museum related to the Royal Navy submarine service which had a base just six miles from here at Faslane, a base that has just commemorated 50 years of the Continuous At Sea Deterrent where a nuclear submarine is said to be at sea 24 hours a day 365 days a year. 

But this museum is nothing to do with that. Instead it is a celebration of the X-Craft, a small submarine most famous for the daring attack on the German battleship Tirpitz during the Second World War. 

Inside I was greeted by a man named Brian Keating who has worked hard with the other team members to make this museum a treasure trove of information on these legendary subs and he started to tell me the story of the X-51. 

She was built as one of four mini-subs numbered 51 to 54 but once launched the X-51, also known as HMS Stickleback, was only actually in service for three years with the Royal Navy. She was sold to Sweden where she was renamed Spiggen (Swedish for Stickleback) and was used for their military for a number of years. 

When the sub was retired it was held in storage back in the UK until the creation of the Scottish Submarine Centre and it was finally put on display in early 2018. Inside the hall the sub sits on a plinth with a video show projected onto the surrounding walls telling the story of the X-Craft and the journey of the submarine that you are now standing under. 

What I thought was particularly interesting was the light show beamed onto the submarine body itself to show you what the different compartments contained and where they were. 

Speaking to Brian after the show he told me in more detail the future plans to commemorate other submarine events throughout history and how they had previously had a WWI centenary show on the anniversary of the armistice. 

This small museum is a fascinating place to visit and for a donation of just £5 it is well worth it. Hopefully in time there will be more visitors and further funding as this museum has potential to be even greater and the staff are obviously very enthusiastic about what they are doing. 

For further information visit http://www.scottishsubmarine.com

The Farsley Double Murder 1970

The Farsley Double Murder 
1970

Just after midnight on 15th February 1970 a robbery was taking place at the Sunnybank Mill in the centre of the town of Farsley in West Yorkshire. A man with previous experience in safe blowing and theft was armed with a shotgun and within minutes of him entering the grounds he had shot dead the night watchman, local man Ian Riley aged 32. 

Alarms alerted the police to an incident and without realising how serious it was going to be the police arrived on scene and surrounded the buildings. Inspector Barry Taylor climbed over the main gate and found the gunman instantly. Without any regard for human life the burglar opened fire again and shot him before taking off into the night. 

With two dead this now became a huge manhunt across Yorkshire with headlines announcing the tragedy of the unarmed men faced with a dangerous killer in such a quiet little town. Road blocks were set up in the hope of catching him with army helicopters scouring the countryside. 

Just two days later 31 year old Neil Adamson was arrested in Colne, Lancashire. That day he was officially charged with double murder. John Depledge was charged with assisting an offender, giving Adamson food and water and helping his journey across the country. 

The evidence was pretty much open and shut, with the killer pleading guilty to the two murders and 7 further charges of burglary. He was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 30 years. A few months later his friend was locked up for four years. Adamson never did get released, he died behind bars in 2000. 

With almost fifty years since this attack on two unarmed men it is becoming part of the history of this country that is fading from memory. Few people remember what happened there and even fewer know the story. 

A few years ago I decided that I would campaign for a plaque at the site (or close by) and write the story of what happened in a book. This story is not just a brutal killer taking lives, but it is of heroes who hunted him down, the investigators who brought him to justice and those families who were left behind to cope alone. 

Today I have had the backing of the relatives of both Inspector Taylor and Ian Riley for a memorial and for the story to be told in as much truth as possible. The Mill owners are also in talks with us to make this a reality which will hopefully be in time for the 50th anniversary. 

In order to achieve this I would very much like to speak to other people who were there that day, the police teams involved or the locals who remembered the search. Any information on this would be helpful. 

I can be contacted shipwreckdata@yahoo.co.uk or through the Facebook group Remember the Farsley Murders 1970. 

Sinking of HMS Duchess

World War 2 had its fair share of major incidents that cost hundreds - if not thousands - of lives and the war at sea was the worst of them all. When war was declared in September 1939 the destroyer HMS Duchess was in the Far East as part of the China Station and was told to head back home with her task group via the Mediterranean.

Going through the Suez Canal and into the Med, Duchess found herself operating out of Malta and Alexandria providing escort to a convoy and exercising with other ships of the Royal Navy. Her final mission was to escort the battleship Barham back to the UK along with several other destroyers, some of which would change over halfway through the trip.

Finally sailing from Gibraltar on 6th December 1939, the Barham, accompanied by the Duchess and Duncan, headed into the Atlantic up the western coast of Ireland where on the night of the 11th she had been joined by three further escort ships out of the Clyde - Echo, Eclipse and Exmouth.

But in the early hours of 13th December the six ships approached the final leg of the journey towards the River Clyde in sight of the Mull of Kintyre. In the darkness the ships were forced to adopt a zig-zag plan to avoid enemy submarines thought to be lurking in the Irish Sea and which had already sunk several ships.

Suddenly the Duchess was seen to cut across the bow of the Barham with disastrous results as the huge battleships bow cut deep into the smaller ships side. Rolling over and starting to sink, the upside down hull of Duchess was immediately illuminated by the escorting ships and with the SONAR dome now sticking up into the air the ships thought that this was a dreaded U-boat and were preparing to attack.

Soon it became apparent that this was the upside down Duchess and a rescue operation was mounted, with the destroyer sinking less than half hour after the collision, huge explosions being seen as the depth charges set off after falling from the ships upper deck. Survivors in the water were picked up but these were few - only 23 were found alive, with 136 dead.

The fleet then turned back towards the River Clyde once it was apparent that there was little that could be done.

With the war being only 3 months old this disaster was barely reported in the press. At the same time on the other side of the world the Battle of the River Plate made the positive headlines that were needed for Britain and a boost to morale - especially when images of an enemy warship burning were thrust onto the front pages just days later. Buried in the newspapers were scant reports on the loss of the Duchess just a few miles from land.

The wreck of the Duchess was located in 1966 and has been passed over by SONAR during surveys by the Royal Navy on several occasions. To date she has never been dived, most likely owing to the depth of water at 119m being too far down for regular sport divers.

In Boulge, Suffolk, at the Church of Saint Michael there is a memorial window to the Duchess, the words reading:

Sacred to the memory of Lieut Comdr Robert Charles Meadows White, Royal Navy. Eldest son of Sir Robert White Lt and Lady White of Boulge Hall and of the officers and ships’ Company of HMS Duchess which was sunk in active service December 12 1939.

When I first heard of the Duchess it was from a veteran of the Second World War who lived in Bempton near Bridlington. Bill Doubleday had served on the Barham and had gone on to have a naval career that had seen him travel the world. But it was his mentioning of the sinking of Duchess which made me want to learn more. Why was this ship so forgotten? Although I don't think he was on board for the disaster he certainly knew about it, probably from his shipmates who had been there at the time.

I decided I would write about this ship and although it took 15 years of digging through archives and hunting people down I finally published Collision in the Night in September of 2018. With photos of some of the people who never returned and a story of a ship which only lasted around 5 years, this is final testament to a crew of sailors who saw the world yet would never see home again.

The Pacific Glory - Collision and Fire

Very few shipwrecks make headlines like that of a stricken tanker and history has shown us that despite lessons being learned these giants of the sea continue to be lost around the world. There are some that have become famous due to the amount of damage caused by the pollution - entire cargoes of crude oil washing up on beaches and the inevitable photos of birds and seals caught in the black slimy tide of death making front pages until once again they are forgotten until it happens again. 

The biggest of these oil tanker spills such as the Torrey Canyon in 1967 off the Scilly Isles and 11 years later the Amoco Cadiz breaking up on the beaches of Brittany made depressing reading for the public who called upon the shipping owners to do more to prevent these huge vessels breaking up when they run aground. 

But nothing could have prevented the disaster that befell the Pacific Glory on 23rd October 1970 when, while transiting south of the Isle of Wight, she was in collision with the tanker Allegro. At first the damage was seen to be serious but nothing like what was about to happen - explosions rocked the ship and plumes of black smoke filled the night air. A huge rescue operation swung into action with a pre-planned emergency response all ready to go.

Fire teams from nearby Portsmouth and Southampton as well as local lifeboats, several warships and tugs sped to the scene to assist. 29 of her crew were rescued but it soon became apparent that 13 others had died and the fire was not going to be extinguished soon. The brave fire teams boarded the ship and the intense heat was sprayed until it was safe to advance on the blaze.

Spraying the ship for the next 24 hours, fire crews battled to contain the inferno and ran the ship aground in Sandown Bay in order to stabilise the sinking hulk. By the time the fire was extinguished she was down by the stern and losing a little oil, thankfully not enough to cause an environmental catastrophe on the scale of the previous disasters.  

Two weeks of pumping the oil onto a smaller tanker and salvage operations led the ship to be stable enough to be towed into Lyme Bay where work could begin to prepare the ship to be towed to Holland. Much to the concerned residents of Devon she sat in the Bay for another week as water was pumped out of the ship and she slowly gained her height and was put under town three weeks after the collision and fire that had hit the headlines around the world. 

Tragically this was not the last time Pacific Glory would be hit with disaster. Upon her return to China a further explosion cost the lives of two workers before she was renamed Oriental Confidence and scrapped soon after. 

Two years ago I decided this story needed telling and have gathered enough evidence and interviews to be able to write a book on this huge shipwreck. If all goes to plan the book will be written by the end of 2019 but there is still time to gather further information. If you can help with any part of this story - whether it is newspaper articles or eyewitness accounts - then please get in touch shipwreckdata@yahoo.co.uk

John Paul Jones and the Bonhomme Richard

The American War of Independence had been going on for years when Scottish sailor John Paul Jones reached the edge of the Yorkshire Coast on 23rd September 1779. The Declaration of Independence had been signed three years before but America would not get rid of the British until 1783 and until then the war was going to rage on with the help of the French who had taken the sides of the colonials against the Brits.

 Jones had been going to sea since he had first made a voyage at the age of 13 sailing out of Whitehaven in Cumbria. Over the years he rose to the rank of captain and had several disputes with his crew which left several injured and in some cases dead. He made the journey over to the American colonies and joined forces with them against the British, being given command of several vessels including the Ranger.

It was in 1778 that his name was on the lips of his own countrymen when he raided the town of Whitehaven, the very port that saw his own career begin at such a young age, and from that moment on his name was one that was to be looked out for, with the Royal Navy putting Jones at the top of their hit list.

As he was given a new warship, a converted merchant vessel, named Bonhomme Richard, he began to devise a plot to continue his attacks on the British. Now as he patrolled the waters off Flamborough Head he found the perfect target - a convoy.

The British warships Serapis and Countess of Scarborough were escorting a fleet of ships and were soon getting their guns ready when the American fleet was sighted. The convoy hastily retreated while the Serapis and Countess took on the Bonhomme Richard, Pallas, Alliance and Vengeance. Incredibly the two ships managed to fend them off for a long time until the Serapis and Bonhomme Richard became locked together.

There they drifted over the night blasting each other constantly until it became obvious that drastic action had to be taken. Jones boarded the Serapis and took over the ship, moving all available items over from his own ship before setting it adrift where she sank up to two days later.

Serapis was taken to Holland as a prize where she would later sink after catching fire off the island of Madagascar, the wreck being discovered in 1999.

The Battle of Flamborough Head went down in history. It has always gone down as an American victory but in actual fact was it really? The British mission was to protect the convoy - which escaped without harm. The American mission was to attack the convoy which they failed to do. The battle was ended after the British surrendered not realising that the Bonhomme Richard was in a worse state than they expected.


There are monuments to both Jones and the battle that you can visit, on the top of Flamborough Head itself is the Toposcope (above) commemorating this historic battle, a statue in Washington DC (Below) and his birthplace in Kirkbean has a museum full of interesting artifacts from his life. Near the town of Filey in East Yorkshire is the John Paul Jones public house (top photograph).

There have been many expeditions to search for the wreck of Jones's ship including four by famous author Clive Cussler. More recently the Ocean Technology Foundation have scoured the seabed using some of the most high-tech equipment available with assistance from the United States Navy. Although several interesting points have been discovered there is to date nothing concrete to link any discovery with that of the missing Bonhomme Richard. This includes the countless claims of a discovery that have produced no evidence to date of anything even remotely linked to this wreck.

John Paul Jones died in 1792 in Paris, his grave remaining a mystery until 1905 when a US-led search team finally announced that a six year search had located the "Father of the American Navy." His body was exhumed and brought to his final resting place as the US Naval Academy in Maryland where he lies in his magnificent tomb to this day.

A trip to Paris in 2018 gave me the opportunity to see the house where John Paul Jones died where a plaque now hangs (above).

RMS Queen Mary

Three years ago I married the love of my life and together we took our honeymoon in the United States, the first week would be in San Francisco and the second on board the liner Queen Mary. Now this liner has always been at the top of my list of places to visit and for some very good reasons - for this liner is not only historic but a legend in the history of ocean-going travel.

In the days when the luxury liners were the only way to travel for the upper class and the only way to emigrate to a foreign land for those who had saved up all their earnings, the ships of the early part of the 20th Century were becoming floating palaces and record breakers. After the Cunard Line launched the Lusitania and Mauritania followed by White Star Line introducing Olympic and Titanic it became a race against the clock to cross the Atlantic and win the coveted Blue Riband, an award given for the fastest crossing. But following the sinking of both Titanic and Lusitania within a few years of each other led to both companies being hit hard and safety recommendations changing life at sea permanently.

Fast forward to the 1930s and we have ship number 534 at John Brown & Co shipyard at Clydebank, a huge hull that was kept under wraps until she was named Queen Mary and launched on 26 September 1934. She made her maiden voyage on 27 May 1936 from Southampton bound for New York, although she did not win the trophy she did wow the crowds, the newspapers following her every move. It would only be a matter of months before she held this record though and celebrated the fastest crossing in August 1936. This was a time of great difficulty around the world in the Great Depression, both White Star Line and Cunard becoming one company and therefore Queen Mary was a "Cunard White Star Liner" vessel. (Later White Star Line would be completely dropped and the company remaining just Cunard.) She made her headlines for the right reasons and quickly became a favourite with the film stars, royalty and celebrities alike.

When the Second World War broke out in September 1939 she was put into service as a transport vessel and carried thousands of troops in every crossing - her record being over 15,000 troops as well as her crew, which is still held to this day for the amount of people carried on one vessel. With her hull painted grey she earned the nickname "Grey Ghost" which must have been quite a sight seeing this huge ship coming out of a foggy patch!

It was during this time of her career that a very unfortunate and deadly accident occurred. During a voyage east towards the UK carrying thousands of troops she was in close proximity to the cruiser HMS Curacoa. The date was 2nd October 1942 and it was one that would not be spoken about for many years. At some point the Queen Mary slammed into the midships of the smaller warship and sliced her in half, as the crew fought for their lives in the water the liner had no choice but to proceed towards her destination - there was a a reward for any U-boat captain who could sink this ship especially if it took out this many soldiers in one go! Thankfully the escorting warships picked up around 100 survivors, but 337 others lost their lives. This disaster was covered up until after the war due to the effect on morale and never letting the enemy have such valuable information as the loss of a ship by accident. A later investigation blamed the cruiser for the collision.

After the war the Queen Mary continued her life as a transatlantic liner but as the years ticked by it became apparent that less people were making the transatlantic journey when aircraft could take them to their destination in just a few hours. With her sister ship Queen Elizabeth they became holiday cruise ships, but as the 1960s saw an increase in the jet airliners the passengers for these great ships became fewer and fewer. Operating at a loss Cunard realised that the only sensible business thing to do was to sell the ships. Queen Elizabeth was purchased by CY Tung to be used as a floating university, unfortunately this was never to be as she caught fire in Hong Kong in 1972 and sank.

But for Queen Mary her life would continue but not as ships usually are. She was sold to the town of Long Beach in California and she made her 1000th crossing to her final destination where she was refitted as a hotel and museum, opening in 1971. Over the years the ship has featured exhibitions, festivals, parties, weddings to name just a few. She is loved still the world over and remains the only example of a liner from this period - the rest being scrapped or sunk.

In February 2016 with excitement brewing my wife and I arrived at this magnificent ship and was immediately in awe at the size of the hull. Seeing modern day cruise liners leaving Southampton I was actually expecting Queen Mary to be smaller to look at but I was surprised to find that she looked huge. The next week was spent exploring the ships and taking every tour possible (yes including the ghost ones - it had to be done to see some of the closed off areas). The entire ship is oozing with history, with original fans in the cabins, plaques and information boards, photographs of her heyday, swing music quietly playing out of speakers around the decks. Being run as a hotel the service was fantastic, the main ship tour was not only historically accurate and full of detail but the guide, James (pictured here), was a funny guy who somehow kept a serious face when telling his wisecracks! He made the tour memorable with the things he said and how he said them, I recommend checking out some of the YouTube videos with him in, if you are reading this James - thank you and keep up the good work!

I have always had a love for this ship, photos and souvenirs adorning my house of a time that we both wont forget. I'd love to return back to Queen Mary and see what new things have been added - the Diana exhibition has now closed and will most likely be replaced with something just as fascinating and hopefully they will continue to open parts of the ship up to tourists that have previously been off limits.

What did surprise me though was there was NO mention whatsoever of the Curacoa disaster. Perhaps using one of the disused spaces as a memorial chapel to the hundreds who died may be a good idea but they certainly shouldn't be forgotten. Like it or not this incident is now a piece of this ship's history and is already well known about now. Over the years since the ship was built 50 people have died and a list appears on the walls of one of the exhibits at the stern.

Over the years the ship has corroded and there is currently a plan in place to bring the ship back up to standard but as with any preservation of a historic relic - especially one of this size - it will take time. But while there are still fans of this amazing ship still ready and willing to care for her she will have a long life and continue to amaze her modern day passengers, long after she had sailed her last voyage.