passing his sub-lieutenant’s courses with many ‘firsts’ and qualifying as a torpedo officer in 1923 as ‘best of the year’. Again according to Admiral Burnett, Cowie’s athleticism, allied with his love of the stage and his ‘very considerable ability as a producer and writer, assisted him in maintaining his sense of proportion and very considerable sense of humour’. Both were essential in the minelaying business, Burnett wrote, ‘because there is nothing inherently amusing in steaming in foul weather, attacked at times by aircraft and submarines, with some 560 primed mines on board and laying them with great accuracy in the close proximity to fields which may or may not have drifted’.5 During part of the war, Captain Cowie served as the Deputy Director, Operations Division (Mining) (DDOD[M]), and his comments and his signature can be seen on many of the papers on the fast minelayers at the National Archives at Kew. In 1946, the King made him a CBE, Companion of the British Empire, and the President of the United States awarded him the Legion of Merit for distinguished service to the Allied cause during the war.
Captain Cowie married Mary Keogh, the daughter of a Surgeon Commander, whom he met at a tea party in Malta given by an admiral and his wife. They had two daughters, Jean Hannant and Anne Rowan (to whom the author was related by step-marriage). In addition to being an accomplished thespian, Captain Cowie was an avid shipmodeller. His great love was actually the law and, after retiring from the Royal Navy in 1948, he not only studied law, but became the Acting Solicitor-General in Bermuda. He passed the final bar in 1981.
The Royal Navy needed experts like De Salis and Cowie, because the Abdiels became operational at a time when minelaying and minesweeping were becoming an extraordinarily complex cat-and-mouse game, at least between the British and the Germans. The Italian Regia Marina was very active in minelaying operations, primarily using light cruisers and destroyers, but was far less proficient in – or interested in – minesweeping. The Japanese and Americans had little interest or proficiency in either, at least at the beginning of the war in the Pacific.
In one of the first moves of the naval war, the Germans introduced the magnetic mine in 1939 and one of the first victims was the new heavy cruiser Belfast, which had her back broken and took several years to repair. The British began to employ their own magnetic mine, which was based on a different principle than the German mine.6 Other types of mines were introduced, such as the acoustic mine, equipped with a microphone and actuated by the sound of an approaching ship. Mines could be set with time delays or set to explode after a certain number of ‘actuations’, such as a certain number of ships passing before the mine detonated. Mines could also be set to deactivate or sink after a set period of time. In 1944, the Germans were the first to introduce the pressure mine.
Protection against mines and minesweeping became part of the game. The days when mines could be swept just by cutting their mooring cables were gone. Minesweeping had to be adapted to meet their threat of each new type of mine. With magnetic mines, each side developed special ‘degaussing gear’ for their ships to deactivate a ship’s magnetic field and render magnetic mines harmless. Each side also developed mines with diabolical defences against minesweeping, such as ‘sprockets’ and ‘grapnels’, and even special floats called ‘obstructors’.
Another important development in the Second World War was the aerial mine, allowing mines to be laid not just by surface ships and submarines, but, for the first time, by aircraft, beginning with the Germans and the British. The British first obtained a sample of the new German magnetic mine when the Luftwaffe generously deposited one in a tidal area. Aerial minelaying would very quickly become an important part of mining operations during the war, the United States taking up aerial minelaying in a big way, to the great detriment of Japanese merchant shipping. At least in European and Mediterranean waters, aerial minelaying supplemented rather than replaced minelaying by surface ships.
Captain John S Cowie, CB, LM, RN, in 1922. (Jean Hannant née Cowie)
In the Second World War, naval mining would play a very important part in the war at sea and the British fast minelayers would play no small part in that war. The first to do so was the name ship of the class, the Abdiel.
THE ABDIEL COMPLETES AND PROVES HER WORTH
Home Waters and the Mediterranean, 1941
IT was only fitting that the name ship of the class would be named after the Abdiel of First World War fame, which was named after the faithful seraph in Milton’s Paradise Lost who withstood Satan when he urged the angels to revolt.1
The Abdiel was built by the venerable J Samuel White & Company, on the River Medina at Cowes on the Isle of Wight. She had the distinction of being the longest and largest ship ever built there. Ordered in December 1938, the Abdiel’s keel was laid on 29 March 1939, just as Hitler was moving into what was left of Czechoslovakia after Munich, making the Second World War inevitable. She was launched on 23 April 1940 and was supposedly commissioned on 7 March 1941,2 but was not fully completed until 15 April 1941.3
Her crew was from Devonport,4 and 50 per cent of them had never been to sea before.5 She was painted up in a medium gray and was given the pennant number M 39. Her motto was Semper Fidelis – ‘Always Faithful’6 – and her crest was decidedly not classical, featuring a silver mine with golden wings.
The Abdiel’s first commanding officer was the aforementioned Captain Edward Pleydell-Bouverie, MVO, who had already been with her for months during her fitting-out. He was born on 10 September 1899, the second son of the sixth Earl of Radnor and grew up at Longford Castle in Salisbury. At home with his wife Pearl – Lady Montagu – in Beaulieu in the New Forest of Hampshire, he liked to hunt pheasant and duck.
The Captain had already been to sea under the most trying circumstances early in his career. While still a cadet at Britannia Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, he was sent to sea on the old armoured cruiser Hogue almost immediately after the declaration of war against Germany in August 1914. With a number of reservists, he and his fellow cadets, soon promoted to midshipmen, formed the complements of the sisters Aboukir, Hogue and Cressy, which were patrolling off the coast of Holland when the three were sunk in quick succession on 22 September 1914, by the German U-boat U-9, commanded by Lieutenant Otto Weddigen.7 The heavy loss of life, especially among the young midshipmen, shocked Britain. Ned Pleydell-Bouverie survived because, as he later said, his father had insisted he learn how to swim in the River Avon by the castle where he grew up. At first interned in Holland, he and his fellow survivors were quickly repatriated to Britain.
The Abdiel after completion. (Lt Cmdr Ben Warlow, RN)
From that point on, young Pleydell-Bouverie’s career was for the time being less exciting. He experienced the battle of Jutland aboard the battleship Orion and after the war served afloat and ashore. One of his last appointments before the war was as a Commander on the royal yacht Victoria and Albert. Once the Second World War broke out, he was sent to France as a liaison officer to the French admiralty, finally becoming the Naval Attaché. Leaving Paris just ahead of the Germans in June 1940, he made it to Bordeaux and then escaped to Britain in a fishing boat and
