Saturday,
HONGKONG TELEGRAPH
September 21, 1940.
60 Minutes they won't
Forget
Good Whisky-
JOHNNIE WALKER
At
At
AMONG the ships of Britain's north Atlantic patrol was the 17,000-ton Scotstoun-ance the Anchor liner Caledonia. 6.18 a.m. on June 13 a torpedo under the stern crippled her. 6.48 two more torpedoes hit her umidships, blew up a magazine, She sunk at 7.18.
All but two officers and four ratings of her 350 complement were saved. And here is the story of Scotstoun's fight-told by Chief Petty Officer Frederick George Bishop and Signalman Ronald Gold.
by FREDERICK
G. BISHOP
I
teved
ordered nway. And the Kun uverhead were still thudding
It way
-and here the story is told
By RONALD GOLD
who was on the bridge
REPORTED to the "killick" managed to climb up that most and (Navy slang for petty officer, re-rint the aerial, and now he was racing towards the radio cabin. 1 There Was the bad moment at so-called from the ancher,
learned afterwards that within three the last companionway down. I put killick, he wears on his sleeve minutes of reaching the radio room my foot out from the top step and there was nothing there. Luckily, I badge) and got my orders to run he had managed to get a code mes- over Those three minutes was holding the handrail Pulling up as many ensigns as I could, ge myself together. I went round an-
Getting up
each helped to save us, because a minute other way and got loto the dispen- avaliable must is always a first step later the lust twa torpedoes hit us. wreeking the radio apparatus and sary.
no absolute when a warship
action. M into Koca
like end there,
Il bolding t torchlight.
LL
an
cnsign
down. ROCK
оп
We get [B
WAS already awake when miracle, were the others, the doctor The ensign goes up and stays up till the aerial for good this time.
The next minutes are t bit of a the first torpedo struck.
Apparently the ship
remem- was a stunning, sickening sen. they had followed the doctor into the many up as we ran in case some get blank, with the ship going over fur-
ther the whole time. But dispensary to carry out sume more shot sation, and the ship seemed to materials when the
10 away.
creep explosion took
up managed to gel three ensigna be watching the water jolt to a standstill, just as if place
round one of the gun crews hard at holsted on the foremust, main-
work on It wasn't
a B-incher. she had run up against
mast and on the gaff aft. # The ambulatury (dressing centre),
Firal knee deep, then waist deep cushiony wall. The shock flung where they had stood a few minutes easy, because the radio aerial was me out of my bunk. While I before, was now a gaping hole right in a tangle on the decks and the water, they held the shells high aftermast was leaning over all skew- above their heads as they fed their was picking myself up, my ears down to the interior of the ship. whiff ss à result of the first torpedo's Kus, Then, as the increasing angle still ringing with the explosion Everything the alarm buzzers started.
bad vanished-door, tables and all-and you could see the sky through the blown deck ters abave
unseating it from its housing.
A Good View
of the sinking ship put the, gun out
of action, they went and helped, out at another.
Then, as gun after gun was sub- merged, the order came; "Abandon
of
I heard afterwards that this first torpedo hod shattered the steering Following the doctor's torch, we That job done, I decided to get kehr and screws, rendering the ship made our way up to the main pro- back to my cabin for my trousers, ship." helpless. It had also ripped open menade deck, and there learned that beenuse the wind wan pretty cold I saw the captain come out the after hold, throwing most of the the order had been given to take to and the 1st would still enable me the control tower and stalk down bunyancy curo out into the sen, the bouts The ship was now femi- | to get there. Then I reported back the starboard wing of the bridge and had wrecked the wireless aerial ing right over with the edge of the The ship was selling by the stern mon decks awash
went at once to my action sta-
tion In the sick
Kun rega
14 Staklens,
+
to the bridge From the bridge and stare along the side. He was and in between my jobs I had a batless. bis white hair blowing good view of the notion spot, and about in the wind. We walted, but With any two decks -
Dy ABA
J Tranty
from the other signalinan I earned we weren't surprised when he half low, saw the attendants assembled, for word towards
a lot about the beginning of it turned around and said UVET his and
tatted shoulder: started laying frut morphin but very slowly Un case there werÁS
Nobody seemed to have spotted
"Take to the boats." The syringes and bundigeA, cullecting wounded to be picked up and at the source of the attack before the inessage was passed on, and one after surgical instruments 111! stripping tended to among the wreckage
first torpedo struck Thtt two another the gun crews went to their the operating tables for the antival
U-boats were dis bont stations or slid over the side We passed
after gun!
ocean-going of the doctor
B starboard on to rafts. crew still at it and up to the waists, covered for ut un
their PETISCOPES barely But the stern High-angle gun kept Of course, I didn't know what had in water A lot were stripped down quarter,
sea's spume that on the end with the corpses of huppened except that #1 1/(43 sume to the pants and shirt in case they feathering the
overiaid the
swell. beavy
two of its crew who had been killed fo wwn for it. thing serious, because after a colos might soon have
The alarm sounded immediately during the first explosion washing sal din the engines huil stopped, und But they griturd, at us as we passed.
At heavily we were rolling
Looking out over the sea towards on the klaxons, and a few minutes about in the waves at its base.
Jator our G-inch nur! later
and stern high- length that stopped, and survivors hard to keep an une's feel
great plures raised by
Kuns begat: their
uproar, climbed up the Keeply sloping deck member thinking when the casual shells, i noticed it wits rusered with
ship lay wallowing in the and joined the captain, the doctor, But I kept floating barrels that had been blown The Hes
started to come
As we rough of the swells a wide-open the chief gunnery Instructor and the busy on the routine jobs of prepare out from the ship's sides them because that helped to keep passed the last gun crew I actually target-and torpedo after torpedo rest of us on the bridge. one's mind off wondering what was beard them singing above the noise came at her from the hidden sub- happening upstairs.
It was
re
re, the
of the fring, bawling "Roll Chut the marines, which, however, were Captain Saved Barrel" as they were passing the kept at a distance by the gun bar- All the same, it was a relief when shells and running them home
rage.
I heard the Ku start thundering
and knew that, whatever it won, we "Passed Out"
were hitting back. The doctor came
From my boal I saw the captain The gun crews could see the tor- holding grimly on to the bridge rall, pedoes coming at them so, through- and heard him order the other off-
But out the aetion, one of the stern high- cers over the side.
nod
at a
In Just then and greeted us with a
Then I got to my bout station and angle guns, depressed to its lowest from the first lieutenant the lituc grin and a quick, approving nod at
point, was actually firing at the tor- group seized him by the arms and what we had done. He had been found the boat already in the water pedoes and diverted several from plunged with him down the sloping this ship's doctor in peacetime, by the and nearly full. Silding down the their course. I myself observed at bridge and into the water, where a way-o
named falla tricky business, because in least six bounce out of the water and boat picked them up. young Scotsman
the boat was up one Burns and as cool a customer s 1 the wells
go speeding harmlessly past the minute and down the next-I got in have ever known.
Race To Save Us
It seemed only about ten minutes and we pushed away from the sink-
ing shitp
had gone by (afterwards I knew it was nearly half an
hour, but it is
In the bout, 1 am not ashamed to
ship.
Some of the men were singing os we pulled away to watch the Scot- stoun go down.
up
The lieutenant in my boat stood
and called for three cheers for
amazing how quickly time pusses say, 1 "passed out" for a bit. But o I saw the marvellous high-angle her. Those who could stand up when you are concentrating like we lot of us were pretty well done in gun on the stern hard of is pump cheered, and I could hear those in were),
the and I was having a lust and were lying across the thwarts, ing shot in front of the torpedo the other boats and rafts do check-over, when I noticed that the And some were sick because of the wakes which were coming at us now same. Then she was gone, instrument dishes were not big wild mution of the boat after the and again.
Just after midday a Constal. Com- enough for my liking.
ship. The shock and strain of the And I saw something else. Just mand plane appeared, circled over past hour helped. And hunger, as I got to the bridge I saw a radio us twice, and thên” Anshed' with an None of us had had food since the operator coming down from the Aldis lamp: "Cheer up, there's f
broken aftermast. Somehow he had destroyer coming"...
Terrific Bang
I remembered that I had a very big developing tray in my cabin (1, go in a bit for photography in my spare time).
Going across to the doctor and bawling above the noise of the gun- fire, I asked permission to go up and get it. I reached
my cabin and had Just got my hands on the tray when the second explosion occurred. That was the two torpedoes blowing up the magazine bear the sick bay.
It was the most terrific bang 1 have ever heard in my life and it knocked
me out for a moment. I came to lying on the floor in total darkness, because all the lights had
gone out. The sudden list the ship had taken had alid me up against a wall, but, strangely enough, I was still clutching the developer tray.
Thudding Away
night before.
WHY DIDN'T YOU THINK OF THIS?
THERE'S a wood shortage so why not put sulphur on both ends of match, making one match do the work of two?
Home Guards (LD.V.8)
have been shooting at non- stop motorists who fail to re- cognise their signals--so why not equip Home Guards with police-whistles in addition to their red lamps? ·
Scimen struggling in the water cannot always attract the atten tion of the boat searching for them-why not equip overy Hfe- beit with a whistle, rattle or flare sewn in, a watertight container?
Groping, I found the door and got it open. Volanes of smoke and] cordite fumes blow in. Still grop- ing along in the blackness and lean- With "no-name* rallway sta- ing eldeways against the list, I found tions, you often don't know where a small my way, along the alleyways down, you are why not have towards the dick bay. I thought: boy (perhaps a Boy Scout volun-
Tw
gone now and the clip's going, too, But, of course, your action a tion is your action station until:re:
train, carrying the name of the station on, à board, luminated at night? dressed
These "why didn't some-one- think-of-it-before" ideas come in response to a "Why not?" petition.
com-
Of many sound ARP. sugges» tions the best Is: "Many people have a pair of · old radio 'head-
phones, Remove inside, all with
cotton wool as as ear protection
in
un fire and bomb blasts." other good ones: Exhibit public places the various types of bombs incendiary, high explosive; fuse, etc. so that you can recognise 'and deal with them if unexploded; spray roads with green, paint ná camouflage from alt attack,
And a lot more-mataly from house-wives, with simple sugges tions for easing their daily job. || Baby's alioca:~ Fit rubber toecaps, to protect shoos and floors,
Dustbins: Perforated bases to allow for drainage,
Floor scrubbing: Attachable sponge knee-corerings; instead of having to shift that scrubbing mat from place to
place.
Shopping: Take tins to the but
cher when buying' mincement, kidneys, etc. When buying joints. take an offsidin bag, lined with but ter muslin. The lining can be taken out and washed...
Washing-up: Put all the old, bits
Into a tin with
perforated
of soap
base; run hot water through it to make soapy water...
Ddd but none the less useful sug- Nestions:
Thumb-depressions
dinner plates to prevent salt and mustard sliding over. Hooks on backs of Jam spoons to stop them slithering, alimlly into the pot. Ready.
knotted ties for schoolboys to ald overwork- mothers.bid (tholean, cut into
Many good Scotch whiskies go to make Johnnie Walker. Each one is
most carefully selected for some special,
individual excellence. Fine distilling, long maturing, really expert blending -these make Johnnie Walker the whisky that you enjoy above all others.
Sole Agents for China 1 GALDBECK, MACGREGOR & CO., LTD, SHANGHAI • HONGKONG • TIENTSIN
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