FROM DENMARK STRAITS TO THE BIGHT OF BENIN
(Peter Cunningham)

At midday on August 6th 1941 nine ships sailed out of Liverpool escorted by HMS Snowdrop. Other ships and escorts joined from Bristol, Londonderry, Greenock and Loch Ewe during the passage north and eventually the convoy, designated ON 4, comprised 52 ships, most for Western Atlantic ports but one section for Iceland, all protected by 21 escort vessels. HMS Picotee had to call at Stornoway to land a sick seaman, Jim Carter, to hospital. Half way across Snowdrop and HMS Ayrshire, a deep sea trawler requisitioned by the Admiralty, were ordered to escort the Iceland section to Reykjavik. At 0400 on August 11th our Asdic operator detected a submerged submarine. We went to 'Action Stations' and commenced to attack the enemy with depth charges. The Senior Officer of the escort detailed Picotee in place of Snowdrop and she with the Iceland section parted company at 0500 on August 11th. At that very time U501, which had left Trondheim for the North Atlantic on August 7th , reported ON4 but took no action. U568 overheard her report and closed to attack the convoy. It is very likely that we frustrated the attack on the convoy by U568 but unfortunately diverted the U-boat to the Iceland section. It torpedoed and sank the Picotee. Her entire crew of 65 were lost.
After such an experience and narrow escape our mandatory training course in the Western Isles could have been a damp squib. It was anything but!
I really had no idea why we were sent from Tobermory to Iceland in late January 1942, nerves still twitching from our frenzied work-up under the eagle eye of Vice-Admiral Sir Gilbert Stephenson KBE CB CMG. The more adaptable of us enjoyed "Smiling Through" with Jeanatte Macdonald on HMS Hecla on arrival in Hvalfjordur and spending kronur in Reykjavik the next day. Our unexpected destination, Akureyri on the north coast, was looked upon with nervous foreboding, allayed for me at any rate by the sight of my first Iceland Gull Larus leucopterus, in the Denmark Straits. On arrival I, as Navigating Officer, accompanied the Captain to the Naval Base for orders. The Staff Officer Operations told us we were to patrol the Straits between the edge of the Greenland ice sheet and the coast of Iceland and report any vessels seen. At this time the pocket battleships, Scharnhorst and Gneisenou, were lurking in Brest and it may have been them we were to look for if they tried to break out into the Atlantic through the Straits. The Captain, perhaps with the Bismark scenario of the previous year at the back of his mind, asked what we were expected to do if we sighted them, to receive the flippant reply the query no doubt deserved, "Don't ask silly questions". Although the odds, both in numbers and weight, were not in our favour; like the Light Brigade, "(Our's) was not to reason why, (Our's) but to do and die." HMS Snowdrop was a little flower class corvette, armed with a 4" gun and machine guns. The sting in her tail comprised a full complement of depth charges and the Depth Charge Officer was told that it was up to him if the worst came to the worst. He claimed however that his crew had been trained to deal with submarines and they had had no practice with capital ships.The Battle of the Atlantic was at its height and perhaps the Admiralty were more than usually badly off for expendable ships but we almost wished we were back with our group. And it was not long before we were on convoy work again.


After three days leave in the Clyde we were supplied with tropical kit and set sail for Gibraltar. On March 3, to my relief, Ponta Delgada in the Azores where I said it would. En route, a Curlew Numenius arquatus flew past us, co. 090 (magnetic) ( we didn't have a gyro compass either!), about 200 miles from the nearest land! I knew that because I had fixed our position that morning by star sights and the laborious Marc St Hilaire method, taught me from basics , "hands on", by our excellent, old RNR Commanding Officer..
Our onward voyage was enlivened for me by first sightings of dolphins, turtles, Portuguese Men o' War Physalia physalia, flying fish and storm-petrels. About the middle of March we arrived at our final destination, Freetown in Sierra Leone.
The Naval Base in Freetown at that time was in HMS Philoctetes, an ancient merchant ship moored in midstream. I had served 15 months at sea in a corvette, and for 14 months of that period had been in charge of a watch as a sub-lieutenant, the service required for the award of a Watch-keeping Certificate. Bearing the endorsement of my Commanding Officer I repaired on board the Philoctetes to obtain the N.O.I.C's approval I have it in front of me as I write; it is a prized possession for it was signed by a very brave man, R. Sherbrooke, Captain (D) 18th Destroyer Flotilla. I was to meet him again in Alexandria in March 1946, when as Officer of the Day I boarded his vessel on arrival. I cannot remember what passed between us but I hope I, as a veteran of Russian convoys like him, had the courage to congratulate him on his VC and remind him of our previous encounter.
Forbidden to keep a diary of our movements by K.R.& A.I., I was careful to confine my exiguous comments on natural phnomena to the small diurnal space afforded by my pocket diary. It was doubtful if entries, for example, on March 7 of a probable Leach's Storm-Petrel Oceanodroma leucorhoa, one of the Frigate-Birds Fregata sp. on the 10th or of Sandwich Terns Thalasseus sandvicensis and a skua Stercorarius sp. on the 11th were of much use to the enemy. A day or two later I watched an exciting chase by two skuas of flying fish Exocœtus sp. which "rose more than 20ft above the water and zig-zagged like a bird before seeking refuge in a 90 degree turn in sea." This enforced brevity of many entries I now find infuriating; like that of March 16 which was probably made in Freetown "Saw eagle like bird with broad, feathery white wings & golden brown in centre & front." Was it a bad description of a Palm-nut Vulture Gypohierax angolensis?
On arrival in Freetown I had bought Some Common Birds of West Africa , published in 1933 by the Church Missionary Society Bookshop in Lagos, Nigeria. It had been written by W.A. Fairbairn BSc, FRGS, MBOU, of the Forestry Department, Nigeria. The painted illustrations were, apparently, by the author and were not really very helpful, but that was the kind of thing one had to put up with in those days. Nor was the heavy old 1900A 7x50 binocular, the badge of the OOW, of much help either. Many of the vernacular names have since been changed and my vulture was then called a Vulturine Fish Eagle. On a fly leaf there is a note I made at the time that the local sub-species of the Black Kite Milvus migrans parasitus was common in Freetown.


On April 10, just north of the Equator, we passed close alongside "a curious, blunt-headed, black, whale-like fish". From the huge size and spotted back, I later came to the conclusion that I had seen my first and only Whale Shark Rhincodon typus, the biggest fish in the world.
In those waters navigation was a dawdle with perfect horizons, clear skies and on occasion Venus and sun conspicuously available for a morning fix! I suppose the two extremes of watch-keeping conditions in a minor war vessel at that time could be found in the middle watch in January in the Barents Sea and in the morning watch in July in the equatorial Atlantic. There the sun rose at a reasonable time, halfway through the watch, when the duty hands were called to wash down the upper deck. One could paddle around in bare feet in warm sea water, picking up enough stranded flying fish for the Wardroom's breakfast and, if one was lucky, rejoice in a tropical shower.
We seem to have been mainly on our own then, escorting small convoys along the coast, shedding or picking up ships one by one at interesting places like Monrovia, Accra and Takoradi. A Red-billed Tropic-bird Phæthon aethereus was the only notable bird seen, not far from Lagos. A photograph reminds me that we had a boiler clean in a floating dry dock in Lagos on May 22 before taking one of the "C" Class cruisers under our wing, as A/S escort, to Cape Town for repair. An entry for June 1 puzzles me now. It concerns a "Dark grey seabird that took shelter on fo'c'sle and allowed itself to be handled. Little bigger than Common Tern Sterna hirunda. Brown tail coverts. Webbed feet. Black thin bill. Small black eyes."
Off Pointe Noire, in latitude 5 degrees South, more than a dozen of us went sick with fever and, carrying only an SBA , we abandoned our charge and entered port for orders. These were to return to Lagos where I and the other patients were landed to the European Hospital. I, the only Scot, was lucky in that the doctor, matron and some of the nursing staff were Scottish and I received VIP treatment. My convalescence was aided by the loan of a wind up gramophone and a bundle of 78rpm Scottish Dance Music records. I had a beautiful room, open to the forest, but recall that I had serious thoughts of a return of delirium when I woke up one morning to see green lizards running up the walls. The only ornithological memories are of an African Pied Wagtail Motacilla aguimp vidua at the hospital and of two Woodland Kingfishers Halcyon senegalensis perched together on mooring wires at Apapa.
For some reason, not recorded, during July and August, we ranged quite far into the South Atlantic and called at St Helena where I bought picture postcards. The only birds worth recording seem to have been Frigate-birds and White-tailed Tropic-birds Phæthon lepturus that I noted were not uncommon south of the Equator.
On September 9 I was somewhat indiscreet in recording the sighting of a Kiskadee. That I failed to note whether it was a Great or Lesser would have been due to sheer ignorance and not a ruse to confuse the enemy. I can now safely avouch that it was most likely a Great Kiskadee Pitangus sulphuratus trinitatis, which is found in Trinidad, whither we had gone for fuel and stores. When I went ashore in Port of Spain to replenish our stock of depth charges the civilian Ordnance Officer who came to my aid proved to be a fellow Glaswegian. He had gone through school with me to fetch up as dux in his final year, to whom I had been proxima accessit. Some years previously I had grudged him success in a higher grade in the Civil Service than I attained. But now, there he was stuck in an office in a torrid, tropical island while I, a more or less licensed pirate as far as the Huns were concerned, roamed the tropic seas in comparative comfort.

“The author wishes to thank Derek Taylor (ex Yeoman Signals) for information on convoy ON4”