although last definitely not least, my wife Claire for her steadfast support.
I was introduced to Fred by a mutual acquaintance in April 2017. At the time he was a very sprightly 95-year-old. I had been given some clues as to the bare outlines of his naval service. The shortest time he spent on any one ship was the two and a half months he spent on Truculent, which was to end in her tragic sinking.
He had had an early start to a seagoing life, sailing as mate at the age of only 14 on a Thames barge, skippered by his uncle.
His wartime service was remarkably eventful. As a boy seaman on HMS London, he visited Archangel, sailed on Arctic convoys and was on a boarding party to capture a German supply ship.
He followed this by three years in the Mediterranean on a motor launch, ML 463, where the small crew made the necessity to work as a team even more vital than on a bigger ship. He was involved in actions in the western Mediterranean as part of Operation Torch, the landings in North Africa. He saw the eruption of Vesuvius in 1944 whilst at Naples, and when, towards the end of the war, ML 463 was based in the eastern Mediterranean she was operating around the Greek islands as the Germans were retreating. Because of his early experience on a sailing barge, he spent some time on a captured Italian sailing vessel, sailing under the Greek flag with a Royal Naval crew.
The loss of Truculent in 1950 was a major tragedy, with only 15 survivors from the crew and the additional civilian personnel from Chatham Dockyard who had been on board as she returned from trials after her refit. In Chapters 6 and 7 the loss is discussed in detail, using the original documents from the Naval Court of Inquiry following her loss, and from the Swedish Court of Inquiry concerning the actions of Davina, the ship that hit her, quoting witnesses from both ships.
Within a handwritten Admiralty minute tucked away at the back of the file at the Royal Naval Submarine Museum archive is the following comment:
I agree with the first part of paragraph 11, i.e. that it was the initial error of altering to port that started the chain of events leading to the collision and that the correct action should have been to hold one’s course, alter to starboard or stop. There seems no escape from the fact that Truculent was to blame in this respect.
That there was an unforgivable lack of knowledge of the lights prescribed for use at night by the International Regulations for the Prevention of Collision at Sea by the officers on the bridge of the Truculent cannot be argued. All the other events of that night followed from that lack of knowledge.
I spent about eight hours with Fred, recording his memories. I have changed very little of what he said, only smoothing out the transition from the spoken word to the written. Once or twice I queried as to whether what he was saying would shock his grandchildren, although I suspect they probably already knew. He was unconcerned. All his words and reminiscences are inset.
‘We weren’t let off the hook’
If you live in, or visit, the south-east coast of England on either side of the Thames Estuary, you may see and admire Thames barges, either under way or tied up at a jetty. These days they are used as houseboats or barge yachts, or for training purposes, the latter two types often manned by a large crew, to handle the huge sails and heavy gear. There are few of these barges left.
But in 1937 when Fred Henley joined his uncle as mate – at the age of just 14 – on the barge Derby, there were huge numbers of Thames barges. At that time they were all cargo carriers, manned by a crew normally of just two, who sailed (they had no engines then) these barges up and down the Thames Estuary, and mainly along the coasts of Suffolk, Essex and Kent, and up their rivers and estuaries.
The Thames barge was the most common of all the barge types, although there were other barges of different designs which had developed in different ways to suit the area in which they sailed. Thames barges were about 80–90 feet (25–27 metres) long and they could carry about 100 tons of cargo. They were all fairly similar in their rig. They had a large mainmast, which carried the mainsail, whose upper, outer corner was supported by a long spar called the sprit, which crossed the sail diagonally and was secured to the bottom of the mast. The sail was controlled by ropes running from mast and sprit that enabled the sail to be brailed (reduced in size), or stored. Because of this, the Thames barge was often called a spritsail barge. In addition to the mainsail, a foresail was set on the forward side of the main mast. A smaller mast, known as the mizzen mast, was stepped at the stern of the barge and carried the mizzen sail. The traditional colour of all Thames barge sails was a deep reddish brown, which came from a dressing of oil and ochre; it never totally dried out, and transferred itself to the hands and clothes of the crew.
These barges had developed over a long period to suit their use, and the waters in which they sailed, and to carry the maximum load for their size. They were flat-bottomed, which enabled them to go into rivers where, when the tide went out, they could take the ground and stay upright. This flat-bottomed design also allowed them to sail, when they were without a cargo, without taking on ballast.
The design of a barge’s gear and her ability to manoeuvre under a small amount of sail, as well as full sail, had a great bearing on her ability to be handled by a very small crew. The barge skippers, like Fred’s uncle Alfred Reid, were superb seamen. They knew the rivers and the tides, and they knew their craft and what they could do.
The sailing rig, that is, mast and sprit, were made to lower so they could go under low bridges including Rochester bridge. The barges which regularly used the Medway, like the Derby and the Leslie, were so well practised in this that they could lower the gear, go through, as Fred describes, using sweeps or oars, and then raise the gear on the other side without stopping. They carried all sorts of cargoes, from corn and hay to cement and bricks. It was mainly these that the Derby and the Leslie carried, as they belonged to the fleet which, operating through subsidiaries, was owned by Associated Portland Cement, which registered over 100 barges. Both the Derby and Leslie were built in Murston in Kent which is on Milton Creek, off the River Swale. Although a small port, it was active in barge building. In 1886 there were 334 barges registered as Milton built. The biggest of the barge builders was George Smeed, who built his barges at Murston, where 79 were built. In the 1930s, when Fred joined his uncle, the Smeed yard had passed to the ownership of Associated Portland Cement. The Derby had been built in 1878 and the Leslie in 1894, both registered in Rochester. The Derby was a ‘stumpy’; this meant her mast was only tall enough to carry the mainsail and support the sprit. The Leslie was, however, fully rigged: she had a topmast which was an additional mast which projected above the mainmast so a further sail, the topsail, could be set above the mainsail. Both barges were about 80 feet long and had a beam of approximately 18 feet. As they were flat-bottomed, in order to improve their sailing abilities a lee board was fitted on either side, which would could be raised or lowered using a small winch. Another, larger, winch was used to raise the anchor. The lee boards and the anchor were all very heavy, and even with a winch to assist it was heavy work. Raising and lowering the lee boards had to be done quickly, when the barge altered course onto a different tack. It was not possible to raise the board until the sideways pressure on it came off while the barge was altering course. Once the board on one side had been lifted, then the opposite board was lowered, which also took skill as the board had to be lowered quickly, but under control.
