NAVY’S ICE PATROL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 May 1941, Page 6

NAVY’S ICE PATROL

OUDOUSIGHT WATCHES LIFE OF HAZARD. EXPERIENCES ON CRUISER. For bad weather and general inhospitably you should come with me to that wild stretch of water north-west-ward of the Orkneys, from Shetland and the Faroes, to Iceland and the Denmark Straits, which lie between Iceland and Greenland. In all, it approximates to 800 miles of sea, says “Taftrail,” in "The Listener.” It is summer, say, and in those high northern latitudes there is daylight practically all through the 24 hours, with twilight and the sun only just below the horizon at midnight. In winter it is the very opposite, with the sun rising at 10 in the morning and setting at 3. For the intervening hours there is darkness, except on those rare occasions when there may be a moon and a cloudless sky in which to see it. Generally it is heavily overcast, with a low cloud ceiling. I was in a cruiser, and in one of her reports of proceedings, I came across the remark: "Visibility mainly one mile for a period of six days. Under a quarter of a mile in snowstorms.” There was ice about, too —icebergs whose unseen presence was manifest by the sudden fall in the temperature of the water. The spray was freezing as it fell to solidify the driven snow. “The temperature of the air never rose above freezing point for this six days.” says the same report. “For one day the temperature averaged Bdeg Fahrenheit” —that is, 24deg of frost. A photograph of the cruiser's forecastle at this time shows every deck fitting, rope, and rail enlarged to double or treble its normal size with a thick encrustation of solid ice. Boats’ falls had to be unfrozen before they would pass through the sheaves of the blocks. A venturesome midshipman going aloft to secure the photograph had both ears badly frostbitten. I happened upon other terse remarks which showed the severity of the weather, but gave little real idea of what that weather really meant to the 800 people living in that long steel box crammed with machinery, which was their ship. Here are a few entries chosen at random: "During the day the weather became steadily worse, and the swell increased from the southwest. At 3.15 a.m. the starboard whaler was carried away by a heavy sea.” ... “A north-easterly gale made it necessary for the ship to heave-to from the afternoon of Monday until the forenoon of Wednesday, when the ship regained her patrol line.” . . . . “Wind north-west, force 8. Short heavy north-wester!}' swell, with rough sea and thick fog.” . . . “Wind south-west, force 9.” followed a little later by the entry: "Weather very bad. Storms of snow and hail." And so on and so forth. For fully half the days at sea it was impossible to pass along the upper deck without running the risk of being washed overboard. Indeed, a man was actually lost in this manner. To find their way forward or aft, men had to descend to the lower deck and through a labyrinth of flats and passages and watertight doors. Sometimes they experienced that electrical phenomenon known as St Elmo’s Fire, when the signal halyards, rigging, mastheads, and yardarms, even cap-peaks, the hair of duffle coats, and the moustache of the captain of marines, became illuminated in a lambent bluish-white glare. Often they saw

the Aurora Borealis in the northern sky, its rays sweeping over the horizon like searchlights, or hanging like a rippling curtain of pale green and yellow, or a faint rosy pink. The aurora was generally taken to be the harbinger of bad weather.

This cruiser used to spend. 13 or 14 days out on patrol, followed by perhaps six hours in harbour, and then off to sea again. Fair weather or foul, they intercepted merchant ships, boarding them when the weather permitted. otherwise sending them into harbour for examination. Some were neutrals, some enemy. On one occasion. they noticed a strange merchant ship at a distance of twelve miles. She started to use her wireless, so the cruiser ordered: "Stop using your radio.” "What ship?” “Where bound?” Then the stranger was seen to be disguised as a Russian, a disguise that was amateurish and unconvincing. She was a German without any doubt. "Stop your engines instantly!” the cruiser commanded, and then, when the order was not obeyed, fired a round across the steamer’s bows, to enforce it.

Men on board her could be seen throwing things into the sea and turning out the boats, but at 5.5 p.m. in the gathering dusk she had stopped and started to lower her boats. The warship lowered a boat with a boarding party, and ordered the German crew to return to their ship. This they refused to do, or pretended not to understand. So the British party boarded the vessel to find that plates had been removed from the condenser and the seacocks opened. She had been scuttled and was making water fast. As it was impossible to save her, the boarding boat returned to the cruiser and was hoisted at 6.30 p.m., by which time it was dark.

The steamer’s, sinking was accelerated by a few rounds of gunfire, and then there remained the task of locating and picking up four boats containing the Germans. As the wind was force 5, with a lumpy sea and intermittent snow squalls, this was a work of some difficulty. It was not until five hours later that the last boat was picked up. and the whole of the 57 German officers and men were rescued.

On this occasion, as on others, the German crew had made previous arrangements for scuttling the ship and setting her on fire on sighting a British cruiser. Even their bags and suit cases wore packed in readiness for a hurried departure. These ships, with the armed merchant cruisers and armed trawlers that operate with them, function out of sight and large out of mind. We seldom heal' their names, for they rarely have the luck to be in action.