MARINE LOSSES

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 158, 5 June 1940, Page 7

MARINE LOSSES

RECENT OPERATIONS. 18 MERCANTILE SHIPS. MOSTLY LOW TONNAGE. (United Press Association— By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) (British Official Wireless.) Received June 5, 9.5 a.m. / RUGBY, June 4. Mercantile shipping losses due to enemy action for the week ending midnight on May 26-27 were ten British craft totalling 10,913 toils, four Allied ships .totalling 12,999 tons and four neutral vessels totalling 21,313 tons, ing a -total of 18 ships of 45,223 tons. TJie British losses represent about half the average weekly losses for 38 weeks. Most of the vessels were under 1000 tons. They also include two hospital ships, namely, the Brighton and the Maid of Kent, which were attacked by aircraft and sunk in direct violation of the Geneva Convention. The British convoyed 22,171 British; Allied and neutral ships up to May 19. Thirty-one have been lost. (Yesterday’s Admiralty communique stated that *24 minor vessels lost in the evacuation operations included the Brighton Belle and the Brighton Queen. The vessels mentioned may be one of these, a word possibly having been dropped in transmission.) A French communique states: “During the operations at Dunkirk France has lost seven destroyers and one supply ship. The destroyers lost included the Sirocco, famed for her successes against submarines since the outbreak of the war.” NAVAL LOSSES. An Admiralty ,«uiiim unique lists the total losses in the evacuation as six destroyers, one Elect mine-sweeper, one gunboat, one Fleet Air Arm tender, five paddle mine-sweepers, one minesweeper, eight trawlers, three drifters, two armed boarding vessels, one danlayer (vessel used to mark with “dan” buoys the areas which have been swept of mines), and one tug. The destroyer Havant was sunk by bombs. Eight members of the crew were killed and 20 wounded. Most of the survivors, including the captain, landed at a south-east coast town. “POTATO”JONES AGAIN. “Potato” Jones, the 67-year-old Welsh captain who persistently ran General franco’s blockade in the Spanish civil war, participated in the evacuation from Dunkirk. Captain Jones two months ago suffered a broken shoulder when German bombers attacked his ship, and he has scarcely recovered, but he is daily crossing the. Chance o Dunkirk. ’ A soldier said, scrambled on Jones’s ship and began to help the to haul in a hawser. A terrifying voice yelled, ‘Drop that! My men can run my own ship.. You work this damned gun.’ Members of the B.E.F. manned the gun to good purpose against German dive-bombers. The crew told me that the ‘old man’ does not like amateurs trying to work the ship.”