The British Sailor of the Second World War

By Angus Konstam

This book tells the dramatic story of how the Royal Navy transformed ordinary citizens into first-rate sailors and navy personnel during the Second World War. It covers how they were recruited and trained and how they endured life at sea in hostile waters, protecting convoys in the Mediterranean, hunting submarines in the Atlantic, and standing up to relentless air attacks in the Pacific. Told through vivid first-hand accounts of life onboard, it reveals what it was like to be a sailor navigating, patrolling, and fighting in the largest theatre of the war – the vast oceans.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Oct 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9780747814429

Angus Konstam

Angus Konstam is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and has written widely on naval history, with well over a hundred books in print. He is a former Royal Navy officer, maritime archaeologist and museum curator, who has worked in the Royal Armouries, Tower of London, and Mel Fisher Maritime Museum. Now a full-time author and historian, he lives in Orkney.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

IN 1939 THE ROYAL NAVY was suffering from decades of cutbacks and government parsimony. Then the SecondWorldWar came, and the service had to cope with a dramatic expansion in both the size of the fleet and the level of naval manpower. By 1945 over a million men and women had served in the Royal Navy – more than double the number who answered the navy’s call during the FirstWorldWar. By the war’s end the Royal Navy was the largest and most powerful of Britain’s armed forces.

The majority of these new recruits were ‘hostilities only’ sailors, most of whom had never been to sea before. They all had to be trained, both in the basics of service life, and in the specialist skills the navy required of its sailors. In return, they brought with them a fresh outlook and enthusiasm to the task, which in turn influenced the way the Royal Navy functioned. The old hands of the peacetime navy played their part in showing their new shipmates how things were done. Meanwhile experienced and trainee seamen alike were having to meet the needs of a new kind of naval warfare, fought against enemy aircraft and U-boats – threats that the peacetime Royal Navy had been ill prepared to meet.

src

A cheerful Able Seaman manning the twin 0.5-inch machine-gun turret of a motor torpedo boat (MTB-24), pictured in Dover during 1942. Ratings in Coastal Forces craft had to perform a wider range of tasks than their counterparts on larger vessels.

Somehow these sailors – or those who survived – learned their trade with a relish that befitted the navy’s reputation for quiet professionalism. These seamen endured the harsh conditions of the Arctic convoys, the unremitting air attacks in the Mediterranean, and the challenges posed by escort work in the Atlantic. They served on all kinds of warship, from stately battleships and aircraft carriers to lowly motor vessels too small to be given a proper name.

When called upon they fought the fires or tried to stop the flooding that could claim their ship, and, if that failed, they endured the deadly aftermath as they fought for their own survival in oil-covered seas. Together they saw the long hard-fought war through to its conclusion, and in the process they lived up to the high reputation of a service that had a historic expectation of victory, regardless of the odds facing it. This book tells the story of these wartime sailors and reveals a little of their life and times through six years of unremitting war.

src

Four crewmen line the stern of a motor gunboat, as their vessel returns to port after a patrol. In Coastal Forces, dress regulations were relaxed, and the thick off-white Coastal Forces’ pullover was frequently worn.

src

The crew of the ‘Gem’ class anti-submarine trawler Cornelian, pictured shortly after they had shot down a German bomber off Eddystone Lighthouse on 5 March 1942. This converted trawler was armed with a single 4-inch gun.

LEARNING THE ROPES

IN THE AGE OF SAIL , recruitment into the navy was by way of the press gang or the prisons – very few sailors actually volunteered. This all changed with the introduction of steam power, and the attendant need for new skills other than the ability to‘hand, reef and steer’. From the mid-nineteenth century on, sailors were inducted into training establishments and taught the skills they needed in shore bases before they were sent to sea. Before the war sailors were first recruited as teenagers of fifteen or sixteen. They then served for twelve years from their eighteenth birthday. At this point they had the option of either leaving the service or re-enlisting for a further ten years, in order to qualify for a pension when they reached the age of forty.

New