CONVOYS IN ATLANTIC

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23589, 17 March 1942, Page 3

CONVOYS IN ATLANTIC

♦ Work of Escort Vessels ADVENTURES OF MEN IN DESTROYERS (8.0. W.) RUGBY, March 15. A picture of the terrifying severity of the winter conditions in which Atlantic escort vessels have brought convoys safely to Britain has been given by Mr H. C. Ferraby. the well-known naval commentator. "Here is one among many incredible adventures that men have been through in destroyers and other escort vessels in the Atlantic during the awful weather of the last winter,” he said. "The wind was blowing a moderate gale. Seas were running up to 20 feet high. A destroyer, battling through them, gave a violent roll to port and a huge wave broke on to the tippet' deck where the gun’s crew were clinging round their gun. That sea got under the heavy metal platform on which the gun stood and bent it upwards until it pinned one of the men between the upturned sheet of metal and the breach of the gun. ‘‘Heavy tackle had to be rigged with the ship rolling ' heavily before the plate could be bent back sufficiently and the injured man released. “That is the sort of thing that has been happening to.convoy escorts almost continuously since last September. "In another case, a succession ot unusually large seas astern swung a ship about for a minute or two almost out of control, and in one roll she lay over at an angle of 70 degrees. Her starboard propeller was actually out of the water, and the port side of the bridge was under water. The matt ifi the wheelhouse had a fleeting glimpse, as the signal platform was submerged, of a seaman clinging with both hands to the. thin wires of the mast. A surge of water swept his feet from under him and held him out horizontally so that actually during the half-minute that the ship hung at the end of the roll he was suspended submerged outside the ship. "Again, in a gale in which driving rain made visibility often less than 1000 ya''d.s. an escort vessel found herself with only two merchantmen out ot a large convoy. By hard work in heaving seas in which the task of keeping their own ship safe would have been enough for most men. the captain of the escort rounded up eight more merchantmen and got them at last into an area of eight miles, and still battling against a 35-mile an hour gale he shepherded them safely to the dispersal point.”