November 11, yesterday, is Remembrance Day in Canada. In the USA it is Veterans Day, once called Armistice Day after its founding moment, the cessation of hostilities at the end of a very grim WWI. At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the guns became quiet, and the horrific destruction came to an end. It was a huge war that cost so much to human lives, only eclipsed in our minds by the losses of WWII twenty-something years later. Canada paid a huge cost in the lives of the young men sent over to fight in Belgium and France in World War 1. It is this that got us started in remembrance of our national and private loss, at the end of the war to end all wars.
Then we have the next war – the Second World War. The steam-powered fishing vessel with the sailing ship lines of a classic medium clipper, Picton Castle, was conscripted into the British Royal Navy in August 1939, the month before Hitler attacked Poland. She was one of many such vessels drafted as the Royal Navy did everything it could to build up its fleet as swiftly as possible. So, the prosaic trawler the SS Picton Castle fishing the North Atlantic out of Milford Haven, Wales, along with hundreds of other like vessels, was conscripted into the Navy to put away their fishing gear and become a minesweeper. They tricked her out with a 3” gun on the bow, .50 calibers, and .30 calibers, and a few depth charges on the stern as well as their paravanes and wires and winches to carry out their tasks and were designated “His Majesty’s Trawlers”. The HMT Picton Castle was also fitted with an acoustic hammer on an A-frame welded to the bow for detonating mines sensitive to sound. And many young and old men threw their seabags aboard to see if they could make a difference, and hopefully survive the war as well.
These were stout little vessels for sweeping mines with their brave crews in the waters around England and the North Sea. The gear and the training for minesweeping and side trawling fishing have enough in common to make the task of retraining the fishermen that came with these vessels to the tasks a logical affair. Headquartered at “the Sparrows Nest” in Lowestoft on the east coast of England this patchwork fleet of small ships became the ‘Wavy Navy’ after the wavy stripes worn by reserve naval officers, and also called “Harry Tates’ Navy”. Harry Tate was a rough old scruffy vaudeville comedian giving off a certain devil-may-care ‘informality’. Perhaps a cousin to ‘McHale’s Navy.’ If I am not incorrect there would be very few conventional naval ratings in these ships, which were manned mostly by fishermen bringing with them their fiercely independent ways. In 1993 in the early days of getting this ship over from Europe, I met a couple of her WWII navy crew. They had some stories. Tom Gamble was one such crew member, her dyslexic telegraph operator during the war. He said that he had the Nazi’s confused with his signals!
But lest we get overly amused at this suggestion of fun-loving, sea-going salty hi-jinks bear in mind that this was war. These little ships were dragged into service in a pinch swept for mines – and getting blown out of the water – escorted convoys at 8 knots in fog and tide (no radar or GPS) and routinely getting dive-bombed to smithereens, strafed by the Luftwaffe, and blown up by mines of course. The loss rate of these Royal Navy mine-sweeper trawlers was enormous. The grim fact is that despite being tarted up with guns and painted gray these little navy ships were no one’s idea of a warship. At 300 tons these ships were just too small to point a gun straight. And at 8 knots these ships were none-too swift over the waves, to say the least. Our HMT Picton Castle went about her mine sweeping / convoy escort business up to the end of the war. We are told she was in on the Raid of St Nazaire, another time she was blown completely out of the water with no damage – tough little thing – and was the first Allied vessel into Bergen Norway as the Nazis were in full retreat. Then she spent another 7 months sweeping for mines among the ruins of war. These mines were everywhere, and even today sometimes pop to the surface in the North Sea and English Channel. In December 1945 she returned to Consolidated Fisheries, put her guns ashore, took aboard her nets and trawling gear, and like ever so many other survivors of the war, just got back to work. Pick up where they left off.
In 1993 we steamed the MV Picton Castle south around Jutland in the North Sea, headed for the English Channel, bound for Nova Scotia to become a square-rigger. We had only just bought the ship in Norway and had taken her to a shipyard in Marstal, Denmark to overhaul, clean, paint the bottom, tear the engine down to the bearings, and build it back up again followed by engine sea trials. Needed to be certain we had a perfect main engine. We had an ocean to cross. In the North Sea, we watched and heard fighter jets shooting around in a NATO training exercise. This was 48 years after the end of hostilities in this once war-torn area. As we motored along in the gray calm of the days in a veteran of that conflict in these very waters, it seemed as if we sensed the ghosts of this war not really all that long in the past. Fighter jets overhead.
It is the crew of this tough little ship, and those like her in this unsung and hazardous service, I wish to remember this day of all days. And, to remember Captain Hugh Plant and LT Martin Eisenhauer of the Royal Canadian Navy, honoured navy veterans, who helped us turn this fellow veteran into the sailing ship which would take so many to sea in the beautiful trade-winds in much happier circumstances long after that war.
Lunenburg’s Central United Church was full to overflowing this Remembrance Day. Young and old filled the sanctuary. As happens plenty this time of year it was blowing half a gale in from the North Atlantic – wet and cold. Remembrance Day ceremonies with Sea Cadets, Royal Canadian Legion, and area dignitaries and religious leaders were inside this year. Later memorial wreaths were placed at the monument next to the town hall in the park in the blustery rain.
