The other day I persuaded the bike to venture into Pennifuir Cemetery, looking for the grave of the Balvicar police constable who died in rather mysterious circumstances in 1937. I found the marker surprisingly quickly, but then my attention was drawn to the row of Naval graves placed against the southern wall perimeter. Some bore full names, initials and service numbers, others merely the affirmation,'A Sailor of WWII, known to God'. The names of the ships on which these men served tell of three distinct tragedies. The last of these events cost the lives of 337 Royal Navy personnel, an appalling loss, but that grim total could have been exponentially greater. The potential tally of this disaster was so traumatic in the extent that the will of the United States to then continue the war effort would have been seriously compromised. The circumstances would remain a secret until the end of the war.
At the lesser end of the scale, albeit tragic in itself, was the loss of the R.N. Examination Service Drifter "Christine Rose" which struck rocks in heavy seas off the Point of Knapp, Loch Caolisport, east of Jura on the 10 September 1941. The vessel sank with the loss of five crew members, including the skipper R.W. Griffiths. On the 8th September, 1944 the German U Boat, U482 under Kapitanleutnant Hartmut, Graf von Matuschka torpedoed and sank the 15,700 ton tanker Empire Heritage, 80 miles south west of Mull. The ship was struck aft of the bridge, the empty oil tanks flooding with hundreds of tons of seawater. The stricken vessel swiftly settled by the stern, then rolled over and sank. One hundred and twelve passengers and crew went down with the ship. Fifty survivors were left fighting for their lives, clinging to Carley floats and debris in the fuel-oil covered freezing seas. The convoy HX-305, of which the Empire Heritage had been part, could not stop to pick up the stricken souls now at the mercy of the heaving waves but continued on course, heading into the wastes of the North Atlantic for Halifax, Nova Scotia.
The only hope of salvation for these 50 men lay with the shadowing 1,346 ton MV Pinto which now made course for the scene. The MV Pinto was a converted merchant vessel commissioned as a rescue ship by the Ministry of War Transport, mustering a surgeon and two sickbay attendants. Although he suspected the U Boat was still lurking in the vicinity, the master of the MV Pinto hove the vessel to against the wind, attempting to shelter the men in the water whilst lowering the MV Pinto's boats and boarding nets to retrieve survivors. The U482 had indeed remained in the area, coldly observing the rescue efforts whilst submerged. The MV Pinto had no defence against submarine attack. Hartmut, a Prussian aristocrat and committed Nazi, gave no quarter. He ordered a spread of torpedoes to be launched at the stationary MV Pinto. The back of the ship was broken by the resulting explosions. 22 men lost their lives out of a complement of 60, including the ship's captain, Lawrence Boggs, M.B.E. Two survivors from the Empire Heritage were also killed. Captain Boggs is amongst those buried at Oban.
The third tragedy, for which there are gravestones in mute testimony, is the sinking of HMS Curacoa, a 4,260 tons C Class anti-aircraft cruiser. On the morning of 2 October 1942, HMS Curacoa rendezvoused north of Ireland, 87 miles West-South-West (WSW) of Mull, with the 81,000-ton ocean liner Queen Mary. The huge, grey-painted ship was then carrying 11,000 American troops in the vanguard of the U.S. build up in the U.K. Both ships were sailing in a "zig-zag" pattern to avoid the real risk of U-Boat attacks, the Queen Mary steaming at full speed of 26 knots. The much faster liner overtook the cruiser, and a fatal course miscalculation during the zig-zag manoeuvre led to a destructive collision. The cruiser was cut in half by the Queen Mary's bows, the stern sinking immediately. The forward part of the Curacoa remained afloat for a further 5 minutes, then up-ended and slipped beneath the waves, leaving 101 men in the water. The liner sustained damage to its bows but kept on course for the Clyde. With the potential of U-boats in the vicinity, stopping to pick up survivors could have led to a further huge loss of life. As it was, 338 men were lost from HMS Curacoa.
Bodies were subsequently washed up across the Western Isles, from Skye as far south as the mainland at Easdale. Those remains found within the shoreward parish districts of Oban, Kilbride and Kilmore, Easdale and Seil were buried at Pennifuir Cemetery. Many of the bodies recovered were unidentifiable. The scale of the tragedy was judged so significant that all news of the circumstances was heavily censored both in the USA and Britain. Post-war, it was established that the submarine U407 had been in visual sighting distance of the Queen Mary. A narrow escape indeed.
This contribution was made by Neil Owen. Neil is a local historian and heritage enthusiast
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