Tragedy on board the Alfa America

© Joerg Seyler via ShipSpotting.com

On Thursday 28^th March 1996 a call came through to Humber Coastguard at Bridlington that an incident on board a huge oil tanker off the East Yorkshire coast required urgent assistance. Two people had entered a slop tank for routine checks and had become unresponsive, a call for Humberside Fire and Rescue was made at 2017 Hours and before long a number of rescue parties were making their way to the ship which was at anchor around three miles from Flamborough Head.

The ship was the crude oil supertanker Alfa America (IMO number 7716048), built in 1979 at the Mitsubishi yard in Nagasaki, Japan. Launched as the Nordic Faith, she was renamed Fina America upon her change of owners in 1983 before being sold again to Shinobu Shipping Co Ltd in 1994 where the name Alfa America was emblazoned on her bow. At over 51,000 gross tons, she had a deadweight of 90,000 tons and flew the flag of the Bahamas, carrying a crew from Croatia.

As the fire teams reached the ship by Sea King helicopter, the mine hunter HMS Hurworth also provided assistance as she neared the huge vessel. Providing a platform for teams to work from, the ships company also assisted with teams on Breathing Apparatus to back up the firefighting teams and rig fans for ventilation. As the fire teams made their way into the confined space of the waste tank, oil and waste coating every surface, it soon became apparent that there were both of the missing crew were dead and an RAF firefighter who had attempted a rescue and had become distressed now himself required urgent medical attention. A third crewman who had gone in after the first two was also flow to hospital.

The crew of the Alfa America were informed of the tragedy, but due to the complications of the compartment and the terrible conditions within the tank itself, the ship would have to continue its journey to Teesport (which it was already heading to after departing Hull) in order to get a team on board to recover the bodies. With a heavy heart, the anchor was weighed and the ship proceeded north to a very dismal port visit.

The two bodies were recovered and an investigation showed that it was an accidental overcoming of fumes that had caused the crewmen to lose consciousness in a confined space. The death toll could easily have been higher if it wasn’t for the fact at least one of the fire fighters from Humberside Fire and Rescue had experience working on tankers previously. The crewman and firefighter who were taken to hospital made a full recovery.

Alfa America faded from the news as quick as it had arrived, she was front page of the Yorkshire Post and a few other local papers, other than that very little was written. She was later sold yet again and renamed Alfa Ship (2002-6) and finally Sing Lee which was her final name before being towed to Bangladesh in April 2006 for scrapping. Ironically the deaths of two crewmen just a few miles from Yorkshire made less headlines than the controversy over her scrapping, as an article in the Bangladesh newspaper The Daily Star points out that Greenpeace had listed this ship as a hazard and therefore the Government would refuse to dismantle her due to the presence of toxic materials and environmental waste involved. She was eventually scrapped as planned.

Capsizing of a Hovercraft

One of the safest modes of transport on the sea is in fact the hovercraft, not technically a ship, or a boat but it is an aircraft which originally came under the regulations of the Civil Aviation Authority. Over the years these craft have shown that they can mix speed with success for both the civilian capacity (ferries) and military. But as with any mode of transport, accidents do happen and in this case a freak accident that had never happened before….and has never happened since.

It was a stormy day on Saturday 4^th March 1972, the waves were choppy out in the Solent (the body of water separating the Isle of Wight from the mainland). The passenger carrying SRN6 type craft, numbered 012, was departing its terminal on the Isle of Wight for the fast crossing to Southsea, just outside the entrance to Portsmouth Harbour. On board were 27 people including the pilot and, just by chance, one of the passengers asked a random question – How do you get out of here in an emergency? He was shown how to break the window and that satisfied his curiosity.

The small craft skimmed the surface of the Solent and slowed down as it approached the Southsea terminal. What nobody knew at the time was the tidal conditions mixed with the bad weather were causing deep troughs just outside the harbour and the craft started dipping side to side. As one side dipped down, the opposite side caught the strong wind and acted like a huge sail, silently flipping the hovercraft over until the entire craft was upside down.

Those who saw this from shore were shocked at what had just occurred. Emergency services were called as the craft, now flat and exposing the underbelly, drifted towards the landing site. But in the cabin, the passenger who had asked that vital question started breaking the emergency glass and getting people out to safety.

It didn’t take long for fire crews to arrive, boarding the craft and hacking away at the craft with axes to try and gain entry from above. By now survivors were coming ashore, the pilot remaining on board the crafts upturned hull to assist the fire teams. Helicopters searched for survivors who may have drifted out to sea and ferry those to hospital that were now on dry land.

Tragically five people died, one of them a young girl who had been taken on the hovercraft as  treat by her uncle who had also perished. One body was never found. SRN6-012 was taken into Portsmouth Harbour by the RFA Swin (right) and raised where an investigation began. The final blame was placed on the bad weather and it was clear that the pilot had taken all precautions and could not have predicted such a freak event.

The craft itself was repaired and put back into service away from the UK, eventually being scrapped years later.

It was 1997 that I first heard of this in an article in the Daily Mail “On this Day” section. I was shocked that there was very little about this in the public domain. The only other hovercraft accidents involved the much larger SRN4 The Princess Margaret hitting Dover harbour wall in 1985 killing four people, but it took years of research to finally get enough information together to finally publish a small book which I named Capsized in the Solent.

I did try to get a memorial plaque put up for the five who died, but sadly there was not only very little interest but people were actively expressing that one wasn’t placed anywhere and that the whole tragic event should be swept under the carpet. There might not be a plaque, but my writing hopefully gives people a chance to know what happened that day and how one man’s random question probably saved most of the lives on board.

It is inevitable that people contact me long after my projects are complete, but a recent interview with the BBC has led to two survivors getting in touch with me recently and already I am getting new insight into a long-forgotten tragedy which should always be remembered. 

Houndsditch Police Murders and the Siege of Sydney Street

The jewellers shop at 119 Houndsditch, London, was owned by a Henry Samuel Harris and in the cold month of December 1910 he had no idea that a plan was being hatched to rob his workplace and take the contents of the safe. This was being done by a bunch of criminals from Latvia and Russia who had spent the weeks renting the premises next door to the jeweller in order for their plans to take place.

The gang took their time with the plot, bringing equipment in over several weeks to cut through the building and the safe. A good robbery takes a lot of planning, and good planning takes time. On 16^th December the robbery plan was swung into action, but the amount of drilling and noise that was being made alerted people walking past and it was brought to the attention of a passing policeman.

Further suspicions were roused when a member of the gang was seen acting strangely and so further police officers were called, by now a group of them were gathering near to the shop. One of the adjoining houses was knocked on to see if there was anything going on, not realising that a previous officer had already done this and had alerted the gang to the police presence. By now the robbers were surrounded, but things took a turn for the worst very quickly.

The robbers decided to make a run for it and opened fire on the police officers, killing one and injuring two more. As they appeared in the street they shot their way out of the area, injuring a further two officers, but not before one of the robbers was wounded and had to be carried away by his associates. The injured police officers were taken to the London Hospital at Whitechapel, but two of them died the following day.

The deaths of Sergeant Charles Tucker, Sergeant Robert Bentley and Constable Walter Choate was now a huge murder hunt, a gang was on the loose that had cruelly cut down three police officers in their line of duty. Investigations showed that foreign gang members were to blame, cemented by the later discovery of the body of one of them as robber George Gardstein had succumbed to his injuries in the fire fight and his body left for the local doctor to discover after the gang had called on him for help saying he had been shot accidentally by a friend. The police were quick to find that he was the one injured in the shootout.

The publicity in this case was overwhelming, soon information came forward that brought up more evidence against the perpetrators, including that they were currently hiding out at No 100 Sydney Street. When the police went round to check on the morning of 3^rd January 1911 they were fired upon and this proved that they were the guys they were hunting for. Gunfire between the gang and the police went on most of the day, the military were called in to help what was now being called the Siege of Sydney Street and all eyes were now watching every move and reported in the press.

Home Secretary Winston Churchill turned up to see for himself the situation, but things were about to escalate even further when smoke was seen coming out of the building. The building was soon an inferno, the cause of the fire never being determined, but the shooting stopped and nobody was seen to leave the house. Eventually the fire teams gained access and found two bodies, but as the building collapsed it fell on several of the rescuers, one of whom died six months later.

Several people were put on trial for the crimes, but only one was found guilty of conspiracy which was later overturned. The main figurehead in this entire drama centred around a man known as Peter the Painter, a Latvian anarchist who many believe was not only not involved but may not have even existed, almost like chasing a ghost.

The whole episode was a tragedy that left 7 dead (3 police, 1 fireman, 3 gang members) and left a mark on the City of London police that remains today to be one of the largest loss of life of police officers at any one time. Today the sites no longer exist, World War 2 bombing raids putting paid to them, but two plaques honour the three officers and one fireman at the two locations. The City of London Police Museum has a fascinating collection of items relating to the loss of their three officers in their headquarters on Wood Street, London.

The Sinking of HMS Barham

Of all the warships in the Royal Navy that have gone down in history, the story of HMS Barham is one that has been told many times, not least because her demise was caught on camera so horrifically and a completely unrelated incident involving the supernatural led her to be in the news for what can only be described as a bizarre case of modern day witchcraft.

Barham was launched on New Years Eve 1914 on the River Clyde, one of five Queen Elizabeth class battleships that was 643 feet 9 inches long, around 33,000 tons and carried an impressive armament of four 15 inch guns on two forward turrets. With over 1000 crew on board, she was built in a time when the Dreadnoughts were the up and coming warship, more powerful and heavily armoured than anything launched before, and Barham was one of those ships. Not least because she had been launched as the world was plunged into war just a few months earlier.

After she was commissioned in October 1915 she found herself at the Battle of Jutland on 31^st May 1916 which was both a victory and a disaster for both sides. She was struck by German shells several times which left 26 of her crew dead and dozens more injured. Her war service continued and she was present at the final surrender of the High Seas Fleet in 1918.

21 years later she was part of the Mediterranean fleet when the Second World War was declared, so her mission now was to head back to British waters and join the home fleet. As she neared the UK at the top of Ireland she was met by several escort destroyers to add to the others that were already in a protective screen around her. But in the early hours of 12^th December 1939, as the fleet reached the Clyde approaches off the Mull of Kintyre, one of these escorts, HMS Duchess (below), was struck by the Barham and sank. 136 of her crew were killed, there were only 24 survivors. (For more information on this my book Collision in the Night tells the story of the Duchess.)

So Barham now sailed around the Atlantic and Mediterranean assisting with operations which included a U-boat torpedo striking her causing enough damage for her to put about and head for repairs. Soon back to sea she took part in several engagements where her guns were blazing against the enemy forces and in November 1941 she was heading out of Alexandria hunting for Italian convoys.

On 25^th November the submarine U-331 saw the fleet and fired four torpedoes at the Barham, three of which struck the ship in quick succession. The huge battleship rolled over slowly as crew fought to escape the sinking ship, but at this exact moment the warship Valient was doing something that would propel the death of the Barham into history. On board the Valient was a cameraman filming the ship for Pathé News. 

The Barham was rolling right over onto her side when suddenly the magazine blew up and hug
e pieces of the ship flew in every direction. The sight was shocking and the smoke enveloped everything around it. By the time the smoke had clearend, Barham had gone. 862 of her crew were killed, the nearby warships managing to rescue 487 survivors, two of whom would die later.

Meanwhile in Portsmouth a woman named Helen Duncan was conducting a séance in front of an audience and announced that a sailor had come to her and said that the warship HMS Barham had been sunk. The military immediately took an interest in this because nothing official had been released yet, therefore how she got that information was a mystery (this could have been simply hearing from a relative who had received an official death notice before it was made public). She was arrested and became the last woman in Britain to be tried for witchcraft and fraudulent spiritual activity.

The Barham wreck has never been found, but she lies somewhere in the Eastern Med. Maybe some day we will gaze upon her once again.

Memorials to the Barham are dotted around the country at various war memorials, one being at the National Memorial Arboretum which I visited in 2020.

Disaster for the Ark Royal – 2003

It was just 24 hours after war had been declared between a coalition force comprising of the USA, UK, Poland, Australia and a host of other nations against the dictatorship regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Deployed off the coast at the top of the Persian Gulf were several warships of these nations. Britain had sent their aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal to lead the naval task force under Commodore Jamie Miller.

The second day of the Iraq invasion saw a US helicopter crash on 21^st March 2003, all 12 people on board were killed comprising 8 Brits and 4 Americans, but the aircraft wasn’t shot down, it turned out the helicopter had a mechanical fault. Not a good start for any military operation, but things were not about to get any better.

Two Sea King helicopters from 849 Squadron A Flight based at Royal Naval Air Station Culdrose were carrying out operations from the Ark Royal in the early hours of 22^nd March. One was returning from a sortie while the second had just refuelled on the deck and was taking off. Their job was to conduct surveillance work in the Al Faw region of Iraq.

As one was taking off the other one was inbound and both aircraft sighted each other, they were warned that they were heading close to which they both acknowledged that they had each other in sight. But nothing prepared anybody for what was about to happen. The two Sea Kings collided in mid air much to the horror of those tracking the two craft.

To this day nobody knows what happened and why they hit each other. As the wreckage dropped into the sea just a few miles away from the ship it was obvious that there were no survivors. All 7 personnel in the two helicopters died – Six from the Royal Navy, one from the USA.

Over the next few days the debris from the aircraft was recovered along with the bodies of the seven crew, an investigation shedding no more light on what caused the crash than before. Tributes were paid by Captain Alan Massey, commanding officer of the Ark Royal as well as those high up in the Royal Navy and Government.

In Basra, the main town at the centre of British military operations, a memorial was made with small brass plaques giving the names of each person who died during Op Telic (the mission name), already there were 14 names to go on just in the first 48 hours from the losses of the helicopters and many more would be added.

The Iraq war ended officially in May 2003, the continuous conflict would not be at an end for another eight years. By the time British forces left the country, 179 UK service personnel had lost their lives, for the USA that would be 4,424. Today the regime is long gone, the country is an ally and the memorial plaques were taken from the base in Basra and placed at the National Memorial Arboretum in the UK. (See images below.)

HMS Ark Royal was eventually decommissioned in 2011 to be scrapped two years later in Turkey

    

    

 

Death in the ice – The loss of the Erebus and Terror

There are few sea stories that come with a vast amount of drama of such ships as those that set sail to the Arctic as part of explorer John Franklin’s expedition to find the North West Passage, a channel said to link the Atlantic with the Pacific and could save many weeks and months sailing around America to get to the west coast. Franklin was no stranger to voyaging and in 1845 he set off aboard the ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror with 133 men.

They sailed on 19 May 1845 from Kent, by the time July had come they had made it up to the ice, landed five men due to sickness and bade farewell to the two ships that had accompanied them. With 129 men on board in total, great things were expected, with the voyage expecting to take a long time, but as no word of them came back people started to get concerned.

After two years with nothing from Franklin, search parties were drafted up to be sent out to conduct a hunt for the two ships and their missing crews. Years went by with rumours of sightings of the ships, over land the Inuit tribes told of a group of explorers that starved to death and showed them items that were confirmed to be from the lost expedition.

As the years ticked by, more evidence was found including written records of the expedition, frozen corpses, items from the ships and graves of several sailors. It was in 1984 that permission was granted to exhume three graves on Beechey Island by Professor Owen Beattie who wanted to find out exactly what had killed them.

Beattie found that pneumonia with lead poisoning had been the cause of death once the corpses had been exhumed and tested. The cans of food were poorly soldered and they lead may have contaminated the food and slowly killed them.

But the most interesting discovery came only recently when search teams located both ships on the seabed. Erebus was located in just 36 feet of water, deteriorated but upright, in September 2014. Two years later the Arctic Research Foundation announced that the Terror had been found in 79 feet of water and in pristine condition.

Since the discoveries there have been several dives on the wrecks with remote cameras and incredible images of these lost ships have been broadcast to the world. There is still a lot to learn about the mysterious vanishing of this entire expedition, but now all the pieces of the puzzle are there, it will only be a matter of time before we learn as much as there is to know about this.

Franklin and his team are commemorated in London and there is a museum in Oslo, Norway, which gives plenty of details about the search for the North West Passage in the place where Roald Amundsen’s two ships Fram and Gjoa are now on display. It will only be a matter of time before items recovered from the Erebus and Terror are on display for all to see and maybe even one day the wrecks themselves raised like the Amundsens Maud was a few years back.

But incredibly, it was the mysteriousness of the Franklin expedition that has made this the most memorable of them all, the loss of two ships and 129 crew has gone down in history as one of the great sea stories, with still so many unanswered questions, but this has ensured that their tragic legacy will live forever.

The statue of Sir John Franklin in central London (right) and a monument in nearby Greenwich (below). 

HMS Royal Oak – The Story of Joseph Cachia

Of all the missions in the Second World War, one stood out in the early months as both death defying and impressive, despite the huge loss of life it caused. It was always believed that the Royal Navy’s Home Fleet based at Scapa Flow was safe from attack, the bay close to the capital Kirkwall was the perfect size and shelter to anchor a fleet of the finest warships afloat away from danger, but all this confidence came to a sudden and explosive end by the actions of U-boat skipper Gunther Prien. 

It was the night of 13th October 1939 when Prien took his submarine, U-47, to the north coast of Scotland, his mission being to sneak into Scapa Flow and attack the ships before making a run for it. This was almost a suicide mission, but one that required an enormous amount of patience, calculation and bravery if they were to navigate between the defences that protected these ships. 

On board the Royal Oak, things were silent, most of the sailors asleep in their messdecks. One of these was Leading Steward Joseph Benedetto Cachia (right), born in Malta yet serving on board this ship so far from his native Mediterranean island nation. At 36 years old, Joseph married Catherine Debattista on 19th November 1931 in Sliema and had two daughters, Lilian and Carmen. He wasn’t the only Maltese national on board, around  a dozen more at least, mostly people who lived by the sea and wanted to join the Royal Navy for adventure, never believing that one day they would be back in a World War far from home. 

The Royal Oak was an old battleship now, commissioned in 1916 just in time to see action in the Battle of Jutland, but she still had immense firepower, not least in her eight 15 inch guns in four turrets that could pack a punch for any enemy ship that got too close for comfort. With a crew of over 1200, she spent her peacetime years conducting patrols and even managed to star in a movie. At 620 feet in length, she was dwarfed by some of the more modern warships that were now being seen on the world’s stage. 

Meanwhile as Prien was sneaking through the Scapa Flow defences, the hands of midnight ticked over into the morning of 14th October. With the silhouettes of the vessels at anchor, Prien lined up his U-boat for attack. He fired several torpedoes at the battleship, only one of which struck home, so he quickly made ready for a second attack where three more torpedoes all hit their target. Royal Oak was doomed, she rolled over and sank less than half an hour after the first explosion. 

U-47 managed to escape from Scapa Flow and returned to Germany a hero, Prien being awarded the Knights Cross. Royal Oak went down and took 835 crew with her, there were 424 survivors. One of those killed with Leading Steward Cahia. 

It is only when the relatives of those who died on board such ships start to dig into their family history that the story of the people on board ships such as Royal Oak come to light. Cahia’s name is mentioned in several places – the Book of Remembrance at Kirkwall Cathedral, the Naval Memorial situated on The Hoe in Plymouth and he is also named on a monument in his hometown of Sliema in Malta. 

Joseph Cahia became one of the first Maltese casualties of the Second World War, the island was not directly affected with the war until fighting broke out with Italy in June the following year and the island was under siege from the axis powers, a siege that was broken by the success of the convoys fighting through to deliver much needed supplies. Cahia’s daughters both emigrated to Australia after the war and his descendants talked about him with pride for many years after. The tragic part of this story was that he was only duty that day covering for a shipmate that was on a date. Would he have been one of the lucky ones if he had not done a good turn for a friend?

Today the Royal Oak is upside down still where she landed after that fateful night in 1939. She has been dived on but is officially a war grave and so only with special permission can this shipwreck be visited, usually by divers from the Royal Navy who will change the ship’s ensign and make sure that the spirit of the Mighty Oak is kept alive.  

For Leading Steward Cachia, his legacy and that of his 800+ shipmates will never be forgotten. 

National Memorial Arboretum plaque to Royal Oak