Lawrance Wilfred Gibbins, second left, Second Officer and Gunnery Officer of SS Clan Murdoch from 1939 to 1941, with his gun crew on the ship. The other men are ship’s officers with the exception of the Royal Marine at the rear. The gun is a QF (Quick-Fire) 12-pounder on a HA (High Angle) mount. For more on this gun see Part 1 of this blog (Photo: Collection of Captain L.W. Gibbins).
Several years ago I wrote a blog about this photo of my grandfather Captain Lawrance Wilfred Gibbins with his gun crew on SS Clan Murdoch in 1940-1. He told me that he had been in action with this gun against a German aircraft that machine-gunned his ship off north-east England early in 1941, towards the end of a long voyage from India recounted in the Clan Line wartime history In Danger’s Hour. The aircraft came out of low cloud, strafed the ship and by the time it returned for another attack the gun crew were in position and fired at it, not scoring a hit but possibly deterring it from making another attack. I was able to narrow down the date range for this incident from the Commodore’s report on Convoy FS.12, which shows that the convoy including Clan Murdoch was attacked on 15 February off Holy Isle, and the Ship Movement Card for Clan Murdoch, showing that she was ‘damaged by aircraft’ two days later off Hull. Since then I’ve developed a more detailed picture of that convoy and the circumstances of the attack, and rather than add to the existing blog I’ve extracted the section on the convoy in that blog and edited it into this new one, and called it ‘Part 2.’ The first blog is now mainly about the gun and its operation. My sources are primary where possible, in particular the Ship Movement Cards in the UK National Archives, and include Arnold Hague’s Convoy Database as well as collations of U-Boat and E-Boat operations.
SS Clan Murdoch (5,930 grt), taken before the war. My grandfather Captain Lawrance Wilfred Gibbins was her 4th Officer in 1929-30 and 2nd Officer from 1937 to 1941, and her Gunnery Officer from 1939-41. The gun in the photo above would have been mounted in the bow. She was launched in 1919 on the Clyde and spent twenty years plying the Clan Line’s main routes to Africa and India before being requisitioned by the Ministry of War Transport in 1940. She was considered something of a charmed ship, surviving many near-misses - in February 1942 while carrying 1,000 tons of bombs to Rangoon a Japanese torpedo missed her by 150 yards, and two months later she survived the Japanese aerial attack on Colombo in Ceylon. She finally did sink in 1953 off Portugal when under new ownership, having been sold first to the South American Steam Navigation Co in 1948 (renamed Halesius), and then to a Panama-registered company in 1952 (renamed Jankiki), when her cargo of phosphate shifted and she capsized. This photo shows her in her pre-war Clan Line livery, which was painted over with wartime grey in 1939 (source: Clan Line: Illustrated Fleet History)(Photo: Collection of Captain L.W. Gibbins).
The Clan Murdoch had undertaken a five-month voyage to ports in India and Africa, having left Liverpool on 4 August 1940 in Convoy OB.193 and been to Cape Town, Durban, Colombo, Trincomalee, Madras, Vizigapatam, Calcutta and Chittagong, and returning by the same route. It was the first voyage as Master for her Captain, Herbert Thomas Booth, who had joined the Clan Line as an Apprentice in 1917 during the First World War and been Chief Officer of the Lanarkshire prior to his promotion. On 10 January 1941 the Clan Murdoch joined Convoy SL.62 in Freetown for Liverpool with a cargo of jute, general merchandise and pig iron (one of the least favoured cargoes for merchant seamen as the huge weight of the metal meant that ships went down in seconds if torpedoed). Off the Azores two of her lifeboats were swept away in heavy weather, and on 30-31 January off Ireland the convoy lost three ships in the space of 24 hours to air attack – the Belgian Olympier, the Norwegian Austvard, from which there were only 8 survivors, and the British Rowanbank, lost with her entire crew of 68 British officers and Lascar ratings. Two days after that Clan Murdoch arrived on the Clyde, having completed a round trip of 27,924 miles. A week later - having been delayed while replacement lifeboats were found - she set off in Convoy WN.83 around Scotland towards Methil, serving as the Commodore ship .
Three of the other ships in that convoy were the Coryton, the Scottish Trader and the tanker the Virgilia, all of them also at the end of Atlantic voyages – the Coryton having left Halifax in Nova Scotia with a cargo of grain on 22 January in Convoy SC.20, which lost five ships to U-Boat attacks. The convoy ran into a severe gale in the Pentland Firth between the Orkney Islands and John O’Groats. Once at Methil they joined the Norwegian Vigrid and the collier Daphne II to form Convoy FS.12, Phase 5 (named thus as the FS convoys were numbered 1-100 in repeating phases). The Daphne II carried the convoy commodore, Commander W.J. Rice, R.D., R.N.R. The FS convoys ran from Methil to Southend on the Thames and were the main conduit for goods from the Atlantic convoys destined for ports in eastern England and London. The route was close inshore and was protected by minefields and by aerial cover, but the ships were vulnerable to U-boat, E-boat and aerial attack, including mines laid from the air, and many ships in these convoys were sunk or damaged. They were also open to attack from German aircraft returning from bombing raids on Hull, Newcastle and other coastal targets adjacent to this route.
The convoy set out from Methil on Saturday 15 February. Poor weather that day prevented the German E-boats from leaving port; they normally patrolled close to the edge of the British minefields waiting for the southward (FS) and northward (FN) convoys. However, the incident reports for the north-east of England show that the coast from Berwick to Hull was under intense aerial attack that night, with bombers and minelayers ‘coming over in waves’ and being met with intensive anti-aircraft fire, amounting to several thousand heavy AA rounds. Considerable damage and casualties were caused in Northumberland and especially in South Shields, where one Heinkel 111 (6/KG-4) was brought down by AA fire. At least 45 aircraft are thought to have been involved in this attack on the north-east coastal area that night, many of them dropped mines between St Abbs Head close to Methil and Flamborough Head some 180 miles to the south off Hull.
The Coryton was machine-gunned and bombed that evening as the convoy passed a point several miles north-east of the Farne Islands. She was badly damaged, and her master, Captain J.R. Evans, decided to run her aground just south of Lindisfarne, ‘Holy Island’. The report of the Royal National Lifeboat Institute provided a detailed account:
Captain Josiah Raymond Evans, aged 48, received his Master’s Certificate in 1914 and was also an officer in the Royal Naval Reserve. He received the War Medal and Mercantile Marine Medal for service at sea during the First World War and his family claimed his Second World War medals (the 1939-45 Star, the War Medal and the Atlantic Star). He is commemorated by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission though not on the Tower Hill Merchant Navy Memorial, as his body was recovered.
SS Coryton (4,553 grt), launched in 1928 at West Hartlepool for John Cory and Sons, Cardiff. By the time of her sinking she had taken part in 18 convoys, including crossing the Atlantic four times from Halifax (Photo: Leslie W. Hansen. National Museum of Wales Collection).
The Clan Murdoch’s Ship Movement Card showed that she reached the Humber Estuary on the 16th, and that she was ‘damaged by aircraft’ on the 17th. The confusing series of notes in the Card (see below) about her subsequent movements, some of them added by a clerk after she had returned to the Clyde, are clarified in an account by Captain Booth summarised by the author of In Danger’s Hour. She had been destined to the Tyne to discharge her cargo, but had been diverted south to Hull and was anchored off the Humber Light Vessel when the attack took place. Having then been informed the following afternoon that the Humber was open and taking the Pilot on board, Booth received countermanding orders from the Admiralty to return to the Tyne, where she anchored three miles off the entrance in a NNE Force 7 gale and snow-storm that lasted 24 hours. He was then told that the Tyne was shut and was ordered to Methil and then further north to Dundee, and then back to Methil and to Dundee again. All of these sailings were independent except for the return from the Humber to the Tyne on the 19th with Southend-Methil Convoy FN.412. At Dundee she finally docked and discharged cargo before joining Convoy EN.81 from Methil to the Clyde, arriving on 7-8 March. The Ship Movement Card notes that she was under repair on the Clyde during the following week. On the 23rd she left for Liverpool and on 8 April set off in convoy for another long voyage to and from Africa and India.
It seems likely that these diversions were caused partly by poor weather, with NNE gales making the Tees and Humber dangerous, but mainly by bomb damage to the docks over those days and the risk from mines dropped in the estuaries. The incident reports for the 17th, when Clan Murdoch was attacked, note that ‘approximately 90 aircraft were employed in minelaying activity off Flamborough Head and further southwards’ (Flamborough Head being at the mouth of the Humber Estuary where the ship was anchored that night). On the 16th the minesweeper Southsea was sunk by a mine off South Shields killing 7 of the crew, on the 17th the SS Empire Knoll was wrecked off the Tyne’s North Pier and that night parachute mines were dropped in the sea off South Shields.
The Card for the Scottish Trader shows that she was under repair at London on 27 February and at Newcastle on 27 March, so she too may have been damaged in these attacks. During this period the E-boats became active again, with S-102 attacking Convoy FN.11 on 19 February and sinking the Algarve with all hands, and German bombing and minelaying continuing along the north-east coast on a daily basis.
The Ship Movement Card for Clan Murdoch in February-March 1941, noting that she was ‘Damaged by Aircraft’ on 17 February (National Archives).
The Clan Murdoch was the only ship in Convoy FS.12 not to be sunk in 1941; more than half of the men in that convoy did not survive to the end of that year. Daphne II was torpedoed by E-boat S-102 on 18 March while accompanying the return convoy FN.34, sinking off the Humber though fortunately with no loss of life. Vigrid was torpedoed on 24 June by U-371 some 400 miles south-east of Greenland; the master, 33 crew, 3 gunners and ten passengers (American Red Cross nurses) abandoned ship in four boats, two of which were never heard of again and the other two picked up on 8 July and 13 July, with 21 survivors. Virgilia was torpedoed and her fuel oil cargo set alight on 24 November by S-109 off Great Yarmouth, with 23 of her 44 crew perishing in the flames, and Scottish Trader was sunk on 6 December by U-131 some 300 miles south of Iceland. She was a straggler from Convoy SC-56, and zigzagged in an attempt to avoid the six torpedoes that were fired at her. There were no survivors from her 43 crew.
The Coryton’s Ship Movement Card records salvage attempts in August-September 1941, when a survey indicated that the forward end might be refloated, but all attempts were abandoned after heavy seas caused both ends to collapse. Today the wreckage lies partly buried in sand and shale a few hundred metres off Ross Sands in Budle Bay, with the boilers standing proud of the seabed and other structure visible. A photo of the wreck taken soon after her grounding can be seen here, as well as photos of the site underwater in this 2007 report by the Tyneside branch of the British Sub-Aqua Club.