THE TRAGEDY OF A Q-BOAT COMMANDER

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 96, 20 October 1934, Page 25

THE TRAGEDY OF A Q-BOAT COMMANDER

This story is one of the saddest of all the uncounted tragedies that men of the British Merchant Sorvico have endured since tho shipping slump laid up so many British merchantmen. It concerns ' a Royal Navy Reserve officer who commanded a "Q" boat during tho war and sank at least one German submarine. Now ho is a

,deck-hand in a tugboat (writes Montague Snyth in the "Daily Mail").

Yes, and glad indeed to get the £2 a week wages which that job brings. He has a wife and two children to keep in what was once a well-furnished home in West Hartlepool.

He asked me not to givo Ms name, but I have seen his. papers and can vouch for all tho facts of this story.

Before the war he was an officer in ships of the Ellerman Hall Line. As a Royal Naval Beservist he joined the Fleet on the outbreak of war, and was eventually appointed to command the "Q" boat Mollina, with 70 men under him. ■ This was at a time, when the camouflaged "Q" boats were a surprise to the enemy.

From "Q" boat commander the next step was to-first lieutenant in H.M.S. Eamillies,, in which he served until

May, 1919. Then, he came homeland disillusionment began. "I found," he said, "that all the men who were too young to serve in the Navy during the war. were in the Merchant Service jobs, and, of course, they stayed there. But I got a few posts as a ship's officer, and the last was in Command of a tanker. When tho world trade slump came this was laid up in New York in January, 1932. "I do not want to remember much of tho next two • years. I had six weeks' work as a temporary clerk at an employment exchange, and for a time I tried to sell vacuum cleaners.

"Tho home we had built "up went bit by bit. We 'scld furniture for food. We had to live somehow, the wife and children and I.-

"You can understand that even to a man with a clean record who can still command a ship it was something to bo offered £2.a week as a deckhand in a tug. I jumped at the chance."

I wish I .could add a happy postscript to' this story, but tho fact is that the work of tho tugboat in. which my friend is now a deckhand-is nearly finished, and former Naval officers are not. supposed to draw* the dole.