The Merchant Seamen in WW2 
 
      Tom Purnell 
      Memorial :
      The Men Who Died 

            Unrecognised, you put us in your debt; 
            Unthanked, you enter, or escape, the grave; 
            Whether your land remember or forget 
            You saved the land, or died to try to save. 
            For All Seafarers 
            by John Masefield

      At least 35,000 merchant seaman died as a direct or indirect consequence 
      of the war. In total 2,426 British registered ships were lost, with a 
      tonnage of 11,331,933 grt. (27,491 men lost their lives serving on German 
      U-boats. Together with 5,000 taken prisoner this was a casualty rate of 
      85%.)1 
      British merchant ships employed seamen from all over the world. Of the 
      seamen engaged on foreign-going ships in 1938, 27% were Chinese or from 
      British India with a further 5% being Arabs, Indians, Chinese, West 
      Africans or West Indians living in UK ports such as South Shields, 
      Liverpool and Cardiff.2 
      Many tributes have been paid to the crucial role played by the Merchant 
      Navy in winning the war. The historian John Keegan notes that : 
        "The 30,000 men of the British Merchant Navy who fell victim to the 
        U-boats between 1939 and 1945, the majority drowned or killed by 
        exposure on the cruel North Atlantic sea, were quite as certainly 
        front-line warriors as the guardsmen and fighter pilots to whom they 
        ferried the necessities of combat. Neither they nor their American, 
        Dutch, Norwegian or Greek fellow mariners wore uniform and few have any 
        memorial. The stood nevertheless between the Wehrmacht and the 
        domination of the world".3
      One seaman who served on one of the many Corvettes which escorted convoys 
      throughout the war recalled that : 
        "We had great respect for the Merchant seamen. I think they were 
        underestimated, especially now by the British public today, because they 
        talk about the Battle of Britain. Granted the pilots did a marvellous, 
        marvellous job, but when you stop and think, how did they get the fuel 
        across to fly those planes, it was the Merchant seamen.....And, 
        honestly, I think they're the bravest men out, the Merchant Navy."4
      Admiral Lord Mountevans, writing after the war, captured the atmosphere 
      and danger of the convoys: 
        "Those of us who have escorted convoys in either of the great Wars can 
        never forget the days and especially the nights spent in company with 
        those slow-moving squadron of iron tramps - the wisps of smoke from 
        their funnels, the phosphorescent wakes, the metallic clang of iron 
        doors at the end of the night watches which told us that the Merchant 
        Service firemen were coming up after four hours in the heated engine 
        rooms, or boiler rooms, where they had run the gauntlet of torpedo or 
        mine for perhaps half the years of the war. I remember so often thinking 
        that those in the engine rooms, if they were torpedoed, would probably 
        be drowned before they reached the engine room steps..."5
      In August 1941, when the outcome of the U-boat challenge to the convoy 
      system was far from decided, Admiral Sir Percy Noble, Commander-in-Chief, 
      Western Approaches wrote that : 
        "For two hundred years, and more, these brave men, lacking the training 
        and organisation that adapts their brothers in the Royal Navy so readily 
        to the rigours of war, have, nevertheless, fashioned their own 
        magnificent tradition. Day in, day out, night in, night out, they face 
        to-day unflinchingly the dangers of the deep - the prowling U-boats. 
        They know, these men, that the Battle of the Atlantic means wind and 
        weather, cold and strain and fatigue, all in the face of a host of enemy 
        craft above and below, awaiting the specific moment to send them to 
        death. They have not even the mental relief of hoping for an enemy 
        humane enough to rescue ; nor the certainty of finding safe and sound 
        those people and those things they love when they return to homes, which 
        may have been bombed in their absence. 
        When the Battle of the Atlantic is won, as won it will be, it will be 
        these men and those who have escorted them whom we shall have to 
thank."6
      And indeed when the victory was won and the enemy vanquished the thanks of 
      the nation were forthcoming. On 30 October 1945 the Houses of Parliament 
      unanimously carried the following resolution expressing gratitude to the 
      Merchant Navy on the victorious end of the war : 
        "That the thanks of this House be accorded to the officers and men of 
        the Merchant Navy for the steadfastness with which they maintained our 
        stocks of food and materials ; for their services in transporting men 
        and munitions to all battles over all the seas, and for the gallantry 
        with which, through a civilian service, they met and fought the constant 
        attacks of the enemy."7
      The Right Honourable Alfred Barnes, Minister of War Transport said : 
        "The Merchant Seaman never faltered. To him we owe our preservation and 
        our very lives."
      And yet for many of those in the merchant fleet who had served their 
      nation before and during the war, and perhaps even more so for those who 
      had lost loved ones, these thanks may have rung a little hollow. Despite 
      their sacrifices in the first war the merchant seamen were far from 
      well-rewarded for their efforts in the inter-war period and during the 
      second world war. There had been little improvement in working and living 
      conditions on ships between the wars, despite the large profits of many 
      shipping companies. Unemployment amongst British merchant mariners fell 
      below 20% in just two of the years between 1920 and 1939. The basic 
      working week, at 64 hours before overtime, was much longer than in other 
      trades. Pay was low (usually the minimum allowed under British law), 
      conditions often unhygienic and always uncomfortable, and food of very 
      poor quality. Indeed "the men who sailed in these ships - the men who 
      created the wealth - were those who benefited least."8 
      In 1938 the death rate for merchant seamen was, according to the Registrar 
      General, 47% higher than the national average, the main killers being 
      tuberculosis, cerebral haemorrhage, and gastric or duodenal ulcers. In 
      1932 the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine had shown that the 
      mortality rate below the age of 55 was twice the rate for seamen as for 
      the rest of the male population. In the 1930's there were in Britain more 
      than 150 charities devoted to the care of merchant seamen. 
      Morris Beckman has vividly described conditions on the Venetia. On joining 
      the ship in the Autumn of 1940 Beckman was appalled by his living quarters 
      : 
        "The bulkheads and deckhead had once been cream. They badly needed 
        repainting and were patterned by the dried out remains of hundreds of 
        cockroaches and other seafaring insects. A limp cobweb dangled from a 
        corner over my pillow. Brass fittings were pitted and rusting. The small 
        sink was a network of grease-filled cracks held together by veined 
        porcelain. Overall hung the odour of resident filth...........Insect 
        droppings lay everywhere like the residue of a city smog. I ran my 
        fingers along the edge of the bunkboard. They came away black. I opened 
        the door covering the pipes under the washbasin. The place swarmed with 
        cockroaches, bugs and slugs, and it stank."9
      Fragments of insects featured regularly in the ship's water and food and 
      bugs and slugs were found in the mattress. At least Beckman, as a radio 
      officer, had his own quarters. The seamen, oilers and greasers, all 33 of 
      them, 
        "lived in the fo'c'sle in the most arduous conditions and without chance 
        of any moment of privacy within it......space was set at a premium and 
        encroachments could lead to anger between exhausted, cold, soaked men. 
        In the tropics it became an oven plagued with flies and 
        cockroaches....In gales with portholes closed and ventilators canvassed 
        over it reeked of rubberised clothing, wet wool and body odours."10
      In an earlier section it was noted that many convoys completed their 
      journeys unscathed, and that some merchant seamen went the whole five 
      years of the war without witnessing enemy action. This was far from being 
      the experience of most, however, and each and every one of the serving 
      merchant seamen had to bear the strain of knowing that a torpedo attack 
      could come at any moment. As one who served in a wartime merchant ship has 
      put it : 
        "the men in the engine-room suffered the tortures of the damned, never 
        knowing when a torpedo might tear through the thin plates of the hull, 
        sending their ship plunging to the bottom before they had a chance to 
        reach the first rung of the ladder to the deck"11
      This tension and worry was not lightened by the general discomfort of 
      merchant vessels in the fierce North Atlantic weather, nor by the 
      knowledge that "little consideration appears .. to have been given to 
      efficient means of life-saving, either for the crews of escort vessels or 
      for the merchant seamen."12 Despite these dangers 
        "No British merchant ship was ever held in port by its crew, even at the 
        height of the Battle of the Atlantic, when to cross that ocean in a 
        slow-moving merchant ship was to walk hand in hand with death for every 
        minute of the day and night."13
      The Battle of the Atlantic was in Churchill's words the Battle for 
      Britain. Yet the front-line soldiers in this battle, those who were the 
      targets of the German torpedoes, received no paid leave on returning to 
      port and "if a man wished to spend time with his family, he had no 
      alternative but to quit the ship and go off pay."14 In the recession-hit 
      1930's few officers would take this option fearing that in their absence 
      they would be replaced.15 Even more astonishingly, under British law when 
      a ship was sunk the obligations of the shipowner to pay the crew's wages 
      went with it. Those fortunate to complete their Atlantic passages received 
      their pay in full. Those whose ships went down, including the relatives of 
      those killed, would, unless they were fortunate to work for one of the 
      more philanthropic lines, only receive wages due up to the day of the 
      sinking.16 The resentment caused by this is well expressed by Sidney 
      Graham a London Eastender who served on several Atlantic and Arctic 
      convoys and once spent 10 days in a lifeboat : 
        "...as soon as you got torpedoed on them ships your money was stopped 
        right away. That's the truth. Everybody kicked up a bit 'cos you 
        couldn't walk about with nothing in your pockets, could you, let's be 
        fair - and all the rum shops were open! Only thing they give us was our 
        clothes....we couldn't walk about naked, could we? Well, we felt 
        devastated because you didn't think they'd ever treat you like that. 
        Because they treated you like you were an underrated citizen, although 
        you were doing your bit for your country, know what I mean? It's hard to 
        think what you been through and what you were doing...and they treat you 
        like that. What did we get? Didn't get no life, did we. I even had to 
        fight for me pension, me state pension. "17
      Despite protests by the seamen and their trade unions nothing was done to 
      rectify this state of affairs until May 1941 when the Essential Work Order 
      came into force (largely in response to growing shortages of seamen).18 
      Fourth Engineer Tom Purnell on the Canonesa was paid £15 10/- per month 
      plus a war risk payment of £5 per month. For his last journey which began 
      on 26th July and ended with his death late in the evening of the 21st 
      September he was paid £38 19/- before deductions. His account of wages, 
      signed by the ship's captain, gives the 'date wages began' as 26th Jul. 
      1940 and 'date wages ceased' as '21 Sep. 1940'. Not a penny more was paid 
      than was strictly necessary. As one writer has put it : 
        "These were the men... upon whom Great Britain called for a life-line 
        during the years of war, and these were the men whose contract ended 
        when the torpedo struck. For the owners had protected their profits to 
        the very end ; a seaman's wages ended when his ship went down, no matter 
        where, how, or in what horror."19

      Good additional descriptions of the perils faced during North Atlantic 
      convoys are provided in the attached accounts of Convoy SC107, written by 
      a chaplain who was aboard the Royal Canadian Navy escort ship, HMCS 
      Restigouche, the sinking of the 'Putney Hill', written by Alan Shard who 
      was aboard that ship both during the attack on Convoy HX72 and when she 
      was subsequently torpedoed herself in a later convoy, and the sinking of 
      HMS 'Patroclus' and HMS 'Laurentic', by Chris Paddock whose grandfather 
      was aboard the 'Patroclus' when she was torpedoed by U-99. 
      The arming of merchant ships as DEMS (Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships) 
      was an important tactic employed by the allies. Attached is an interesting 
      article on DEMS by Cliff McMullen. 
      In tribute to the role of the Merchantmen I have also reproduced several 
      poems written by merchant seamen about the Second World War.