she took part in the tragic attack on the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir on 3 July 1940, to keep it out of the hands of the Germans.
About 5ft 10in tall, the Captain was a heavy smoker and was at times in less than perfect health, being prone to stomach ailments. Lieutenant N H G Austen found him a ‘most charming and friendly man’ and the two got on right away. The Abdiel’s young midshipman, Norman Goodwin, held the Captain in awe and remembered him as a strict disciplinarian by observation and personal experience, though on the whole he thought the Captain treated him well.
The Abdiel’s First Lieutenant was Lieutenant Nigel Hubert George Austen, better known to some as ‘Bunny’. He was the son of a vicar and was born in 1910 at Thirsk, Yorkshire. The ship’s first Torpedo (electrical) and Mine Officer was Lieutenant-Commander Paul Morrison Bushe Chavasse. He had just been awarded a Distinguished Service Cross and had commanded the minelayer Princess Victoria when she was mined and sunk off the Humber in May of 1940. In spite of his bruises, he had been bitten by the ‘minelaying bug’. When he applied for more of it, the Admiralty sent him to the Abdiel.8
Captain The Hon Edward Pleydell-Bouverie, MVO, RN. (Robin Pleydell-Bouverie)
Midshipman Goodwin was born in 1923 in Franche, near Kidderminster in Worcestershire. His father was from a line of millers and his mother ran a school from their house. After attending a prep school he decided on a career at sea and at the age of fourteen he joined the officer training ship Conway, an old sailing ship moored off Birkenhead. He did well, attaining the rank of Junior Cadet Captain and upon graduating at the age of seventeen he joined the Royal Navy. He was first posted to the armed merchant cruiser Canton, formerly a P&O liner and his next posting was the Abdiel.
Officers and men began joining the Abdiel while the ship was at Cowes fitting out. Lieutenant Austen joined at the end of July and found the Abdiel ‘the usual depressing sight of a ship in that state, a mass of rusty plates with dockyard gear of all imaginable sorts as well as dockyard workers. It all looked too dreary for words’. He and the other officers had all the plans of the ship and ‘each of us spent our time chasing up the first representatives in an effort to get things heaving around and ensuring that the parts of the ship for which we were responsible were as they should be’.
The Abdiel fitting out at Cowes. (Carisbrooke Castle Museum)
As fitting out progressed, the Battle of Britain was at its height, but in spite of frequent air-raid warnings the Luftwaffe did not hinder the work. The weather was wonderful and the Isle of Wight provided a grandstand seat. Lieutenant Austen was almost ashamed to admit that that in the evenings they were able to sit in a garden ‘with a drink in our hands and watch the war in the air go on as almost as though watching a film’.
As the months passed, the Abdiel looked less and less dreary as she neared completion. Finally, she was sufficiently finished to go to sea, first at Spithead. She carried out a full-power trial during which, according to Lieutenant Austen, she exceeded 40 knots. Then on 20 March she sailed to Greenock, where preparations were made for builder’s trials. There ended the best-laid plans.
On 21 March 1941, the German battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were sighted near the French port of Brest, at the end of their raiding operations in the Atlantic and they arrived at Brest the next day.9 The two sisters were a menace that had to be contained. On 22 March, he Admiralty ordered the Abdiel to the mine depot at Milford Haven in Wales to pick up mines. She left Greenock at 05.00 and proceeded at 35.5 knots to Millford Haven, dumping her dummy mines on the way. On the voyage she also carried out her first gunnery practice, on a raft with a flag on it, to unimpressive reviews.
After arriving at 14.30, she embarked as many mines as she could from the wooden mining jetty there and sailed to Plymouth. On the way, she was ‘given a welcome’ by an aircraft that announced it was not friendly by dropping its bombs in her wake. The Abdiel did not fire at the aircraft, which Lieutenant Austen thought was ‘not creditable’.
The ship then departed Plymouth to carry out her first minelaying operation, on the night of 23/24 March, off the Little Sole Bank. The destroyers Kipling and Kashmir escorted her as far as the Bishop Rock and then she was on her own, for the first time, in enemy waters. The visibility was good and as the ship approached the laying position, Lieutenant Austen thought ‘we could vaguely see the French coast and we felt remarkably visible ourselves!’10 For the first time in a fast minelayer, the order to ‘lay mines’ was given and she began to lay her 141 mines. Once the first one went out, ‘it seemed to us tense souls on the bridge to make a great splash and noise and one almost felt we could be heard ashore!’ The lay could not proceed quickly enough for those souls on the bridge, but eventually they heard ‘All mines laid’ and sped back to Plymouth. For this work, the Abdiel received a ‘well done’ signal from the First Sea Lord.11
The Abdiel at speed on trials. (Imperial War Museum FL 18)
Their Lordships were not quite done with her. The Abdiel was ordered to perform the same feat on the night of 28/29 March, this time in company with destroyers commanded by Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten. Lieutenant Austen ‘had a nasty feeling Lord Louis was spoiling for a fight’, which was not at all what the Abdiel was looking for. After sailing, Lieutenant Austen and the ship’s navigator thought they should try to use the taut wire measuring gear. Once the wire parted two or three times, they gave up on it. The Abdiel slipped her escort 25 miles off Brest and proceeded to lay her 150 mines without incident. Upon rejoining the destroyers, Lord Mountbatten signalled to the still-uncommissioned Abdiel that Samuel White & Co. was to be congratulated on their minefield.12 On this operation, the ship first fired her guns in action, at an enemy aircraft overhead.13
The Abdiel was finally formally commissioned on 15 April. She was ordered to proceed to the Tail o’ the Bank on the Clyde to have workmen put right some nagging defects and to carry out her much-anticipated first-of-class trials. The trials were, once again, not to be. As the Captain was conducting a church service on a Sunday morning, two tugs approached the ship and informed her officers that they were to park her at a berth ‘as they were wanted in a hurry’. The church service ended prematurely and off went the Abdiel to the Princess Dock in Glasgow to have her defects corrected, to load equipment and to receive secret orders.
Those orders required the Abdiel to sail off to the Mediterranean bound for Malta and Alexandria carrying urgently needed aerial mines, 2pdr anti-tank guns and other military equipment, as well as some service passengers.14 She would be in company with the light cruiser Dido and the 5th Destroyer Flotilla, commanded by Captain Lord Mountbatten in the Kelly, with her sister-ships Kipling, Kelvin, Kashmir, Jackal and Jersey.15
The Abdiel set sail for Gibraltar on 20 April. On the way, the weather was good, but an enormous swell was running and each wave was of great length. The heavily-laden ship’s hull hogged and sagged as she reached the crest of a wave, resulting in a nasty tear in deck plates on the forecastle. In spite of her damage, the Abdiel got a chance to show what she could do. As Midshipman Goodwin wrote,
Being so new, the rest of the fleet knew little of the capabilities of the Abdiel class. This was demonstrated when, in calm weather, we approached the western entrance to the Straits of Gibraltar. Captain D
