Edgar Cove Boat Builder: Rise and Fall of Family Business

ON NAVAL SERVICE

It was always my intention after I finished my course at Imperial College that I would join the Navy and seek a commission in the Engineering Branch. During my final term I attended an Admiralty interview Board and was accepted. However at about that time VE day occurred and the war in Europe was over, but there was still war in the Far East so no change in plan was contemplated.

As soon as my results showed that I had got my degree I was commissioned into the RN as a "Probationary, Temporary, Midshipman (E) RNVR" (which is about as low as you can get on the Commissioned Naval officers ladder). I was posted to RNEC Manadon for a six months intensive course in Naval Engineering. This was very good because all previous entries had been posted to various shipyards where they had to hang around keeping their eyes open and picking up knowledge on a hit or miss basis.

We had lectures at Manadon interspersed with practical training in Devonport Dockyard where we learned to use various engineering tools and had special training in coppersmith work, retubing boilers, and servicing various items such as pumps etc. We also had the opportunity to go aboard various warships that were in the Dockyard from time to time. While we were there the atomic bomb ended the war in Japan but the Navy still wanted new entries so that those who had been on active service could start to come home, so on passing out from Manadon I was sent to sea to join my first ship with the rank of Temporary Sub.Lieut (E) RNVR, so that was a step up.

However regular officers, who had entered the Navy as Cadets at age 13 and later completed their college work at Manadon instead of external Universities, were no better qualified than we reservists but had an extra ring and were sent to sea as Lt.(E) RN. This did not seem fair as, like us, none of them had yet acquired the vital engine room watchkeepers certificate without which we were still considered to be under instruction and not yet qualified to take charge in an engine room.

My posting was to HMS Vengeance, one of our three Light Fleet aircraft carriers which was out somewhere in the Far East so with four other colleagues I became a "passenger" on the large aircraft carrier HMS Indomitable. The aircraft had been taken off her and she was being used as a troopship to bring soldiers back from the Far East. We passengers helped out where necessary in the engine room and also on the bridge and in due course arrived at Colombo. Although the war had ended, for some reason the actual location of individual warships was still secret but we picked up a good "buzz" in Colombo that Vengeance was in Trincomalee on the other side of the island . However, nobody told us to disembark so the four of us decided to sit tight and see what would happen.

In due course we arrived at Fremantle in Australia, still aboard Indomitable whose ultimate destination was Sydney. However while at Fremantle a signal came in ordering Indomitable to proceed elsewhere so all passengers were dumped ashore and after a few days in Fremantle we were loaded into a train full of soldiers bound for Sydney. There were so many on board that the train had to halt so all could get out and queue at the refreshment carriage for meals. While we were out of the train aborigines would come out of the bush and sell us various things they had made. I bought a boomerang, which I still have, and although the guy I bought it from demonstrated how it could be thrown so as to come back to him I have never since been able to get it to return.

At that time there was still no uniform rail gauge across Australia so we had to change trains three times for this reason. The 3000 mile journey took a whole week. On final arrival at Sydney we presented ourselves at Naval headquarters to be greeted with "Who the hell are you lot?". We explained how we had been put ashore in Fremantle and had arrived by train. They told us to go to the Officers Club in Macquarie Street and wait while they found out what to do about us. This took a month, during which time we thoroughly explored Sydney and enjoyed unrationed food for the first time in years. We were also made very welcome by Australian families who posted invitations on the club notice board for any officers who wanted to come over for an evening meal. It was nice to discover that almost all of them had daughters!

Finally Naval HQ contacted us to inform us that we were supposed to be in Trincomalee and we would be sent back there on the troopship "Asturias". So eventually we got back to Colombo once more and from there a bus took us to Trincomalee. Two of us finally joined HMS Vengeance only to find that due to the long delay arising from our diversion to Australia they had found someone else to fill our vacancies so we were surplus to requirements. We were aboard for about a week while they sought instructions about what to do with us and were then put ashore to await new postings.

While aboard Vengeance I was pleased to find that they carried one of the Royal Naval Sailing Association's 14' sailing dinghies. My father had built many of these for the Navy although this one was not one of his. I had raced these boats in Plymouth Sound while at Manadon so took the boat out single handed and had a nice sail in Trincomalee harbour in a stiff breeze. I noticed that the wire of the main halliard was very rusty so on my return sought out the officer i/c ship's boats and informed him of this and told him that the wire could break at any time. He was a Lt. RN with quite a bit of seniority in that rank and he did not take kindly to being told that one of the boats in his charge was not up to scratch by a newly arrived Sub. Lt.(E) RNVR. So I made my report and left him to it. A couple of days later he took the boat out himself for a sail and I was highly amused to see the wire break and his mainsail fall into the water before he had got 200 yards from the ship!

So we had a period ashore in Trincomalee which was then a nice unspoiled place with the village a short walk from the huts in which we were lodged. These huts were roofed with thick pads of interwoven grasses and wider leaves and were home to many creatures that rustled around in the roof at night. We slept under mosquito nets but we were never bothered by mosquitos although we had to take daily Mepacrine tablets against malaria which made our skin go rather yellow. The mosquito nets were necessary because from time to time lizards etc would lose their footing and fall down from the roof so unless you wanted one in bed with you it was best to use the netting as then they tobogganed safely down the net onto the floor.

There was a nice Officers Club in Trincomalee and also a small lake in which the local laundresses would take our clothes to wash and then bleach in the sun. We wondered why our shirts always wore out quickly on the shoulders until we saw them being beaten against rocks to loosen the dirt. The local people also washed themselves and their animals in the same lake.

The Naval headquarters with workshop facilities was on the opposite side of the harbour which has a narrow entrance but the harbour itself is big and deep enough to take quite a number of large ships.

After a while we were surprised to be notified that we were entitled to leave. It appeared that all the time we had spent in the Officers Club in Sydney and on our roundabout journey starting in UK and ending in Trincomalee was regarded as active service entitling us to some leave! Accordingly we were handed a rail and bus pass for travel to a resthouse in a village called Diyatalawa which is in the mountainous region in the middle of southern Ceylon. It was much cooler than at sea level so we could no longer wear our tropical uniforms. So we had some days up there before returning to Trincomalee.

In due course the cruisers HMS Glasgow and HMS Jamaica arrived also the Light fleet aircraft carrier HMS Glory. Then we who were waiting ashore for postings were allocated to these vessels. I moved aboard HMS Glasgow, which had just arrived from Simonstown in South Africa. She was going to stay in Trincomalee for a few weeks before leaving on a long cruise so I had time to get to know the machinery layout. It was very hot so officers slept on camp beds under the awning on the quarterdeck. One could lie there watching the flashing lights of the buoys marking the entrance channel, which appeared almost in a straight line from our position. They all had different flashing characteristics but every few minutes they all came together and flashed simultaneously. More soporific than counting imaginary sheep.

HMS Glasgow was similar to HMS Belfast, now moored in the Thames, and was a cruiser of 10000 tons. Her main armament of 9 6" guns was in three turrets and she had many smaller guns as well as six torpedo tubes.

She had two boiler rooms each containing two boilers and two engine rooms containing in total four sets of turbine main engines driving four propellers. When on full power or on wartime service each turbine set was connected to its own boiler and was entirely independent of all the others. However there were many cross connections so one could combine engines and boilers in various ways so there were very many valves to open and shut and engineers had to know exactly where each one was and what it did. There were also many steam driven pumps as well as turbine driven generators for electricity so the pipework was exceedingly complicated. This meant that it took about two months for a newcomer to learn the systems before earning an engineroom watchkeeping certificate.

At full power her designed speed was in excess of 30 knots and that took the full 80000 hp of all the turbines. For general cruising around however we only used 8000 hp which still gave us 15 knots cruising speed and saved a large amount of fuel giving us a much greater range between refuelling. Despite the relatively low power required for cruising speed we always ran all four sets of turbines but usually only had two boilers fired up.

After two or three months I was awarded my watchkeeping certificate and thereafter took charge of the engine and boiler rooms when I was on watch. After I had received my certificate I was moved from the RNVR to the RN, but with the prefix "temporary" to my rank. It must be realised that although the RNVR was prominent in the smaller naval craft such as minesweepers, MTB's etc this was not necessarily the case on the larger capital warships, especially one which served as a flagship as HMS Glasgow did. There were no RNVR deck officers aboard, as far as I can recall and I was the only RNVR officer in the engineering branch.

Apparently the Admiralty thought that, on a cruiser, an officer with straight rings would command more respect from other ranks than one from the "wavy navy", hence my transfer to the RN. Whether or not that was true the fact remained that I was still Sub.Lieut.(E) RN (albeit "Temporary") but doing the same responsible job as full Lieutenants (E) RN were doing. This did not seem fair as they were the same age as I was and we were all trained to the same standard, although by different routes. The situation then arose that the ship took on a newly qualified Lieut.(E) RN just out of Manadon. He was put into my watch and was under my instruction despite my lower rank because I was a qualified watchkeeper and he was not. To add insult to injury I found, when he had gained his own watchkeeping certificate, that he had acquired, at a stroke, eight years seniority over me and it was this restriction in seniority that weighed strongly with me when they later offered me a permanent commission in the RN. It seemed likely to hamper my whole future career, so I opted for demobilisation instead.

This story was not true for all specialities. Many Radar officers at the end of the war were RNVR and if they had all been demobilised it would have caused some problems, so some of them received permanent commissions with considerable promotion. The same applied to the Electrical branch which was formed while I was in the navy. Electrical technology had advanced so much during the war that it was no longer appropriate to leave it as a subsidiary part of the engineering branch. My roommate in the hut at Trincomalee had then been a Midshipman (L) RNVR. A little over 18 months later he had advanced to Lt.Cdr (L) RN!

HMS Glasgow was the flagship of the East Indies fleet and so had aboard Admiral Palliser and all his staff. This put great pressure on accommodation and we Sub Lieuts had to share a six berth cabin usually occupied by Midshipmen, and Midshipmen in turn had to sling hammocks in the passageways. Our cabin was over the compressor room so it was necessary to learn to sleep regardless of noise levels and this ability has proved useful in later life.

It soon became clear what HMS Glasgow's next mission would be. We were going to tour British colonies that bordered onto the Indian Ocean on a mission to "show the flag" for the first time post WW2. After WW1 a similar tour had been made by HMS Hood in the 1920's. Details and many photographs of HMS Hood's voyage are to be found on Wikipedia. Our old friend William Stone, who recently died aged 107, would have been aboard her at that time. I am not aware of any other such voyage being made in the 1930's . Perhaps they were only made to make up for lack of visits to our colonies while we were fighting wars. In 1946 WW2 was finally over and the British Empire was still intact and none of us had any idea that this situation would soon change. In order to highlight that things were returning to normal HMS Glasgow had been repainted from the wartime grey into the pre-war colour for the East Indies station, namely all-white hull and superstructure with yellow funnels. She looked most impressive in those colours, like a huge yacht. This picture shows her at anchor off Port Louis, Mauritius.

In some ports we went alongside the quay, but in the smaller ports we anchored off in the harbour or as near as we could get. At night the ship would be floodlit for the benefit of watchers ashore, so it was altogether a pretty impressive sight, as intended.

HMS Glasgow floodlit at night. Dar-es-Salaam, 1946

On arrival at a port the ship would be open to all. Gangways would be laid out if we were alongside, otherwise a shuttle service of ships boats and shorebased ones would ferry people out to the ship. Ordinary townspeople would be shown around and entertained by the sailors, but VIP's and local bigwigs would come onto the quarterdeck where they would meet with the Admiral and the Captain and senior officers.

The Royal Marines band would be playing for our visitors and the ship's stewards would be kept busy ensuring that everyone had enough to drink. We junior officers would entertain the younger members of the VIP families while the very young ones would be entertained with various slides and other games organised especially for them. With a few alterations by the ship's carpenter the after capstan made a fine roundabout for the children. By the time we had made a few ports of call everybody had these affairs organised into a fine art.
Wherever possible we were able to go ashore and explore. However in some of the places we visited we engineers had to remain aboard for much of the time. An engine room watchkeeping officer always had to be on duty as we always had steam on at least one boiler and of course generators and other machinery were running all the time so maintenance work was always ongoing.

In total we made three voyages, starting and ending at Trincomalee.

Voyage 1

Mauritius/Seychelles/Mombasa/Dar-es-Salaam/Zanzibar/Tanga/Kilindini/Aden/ Maldives/Colombo.

While in Mombasa a detachment of sailors, Royal Marines and their officers was sent to Nairobi where they paraded through the streets with the Marine's band playing.
In Zanzibar we were anchored offshore opposite the Sultan's palace. He came aboard in Zanzibar's State Barge, in which the Sultan sat in state under an ornate canopy while being rowed by sixteen oarsmen dressed in red uniforms embroidered with gold braid. The white hull of this impressive "barge" was surmounted by a red topstrake with much gold decoration. This same vessel had taken the Sultan out to HMS Hood in the 1920's.

Voyage 2

Bombay/Karachi/Bahrain/Kuwait/Abadan/Basra

Kuwait was a small town in those days, surrounded by a mud wall!

The trip up the Shatt-el-Arab river between Abadan and Basra was exciting because there are many shifting sandbanks and in the middle of the night, despite having a pilot aboard, we ran aground on a sandbank. I was off watch asleep at the time but was woken by the vibration of the engines going astern. Realising that there was some problem I got into my boiler suit and went down to the engine room to find that the officers on the bridge were demanding full power astern while the condenser vacuum was steadily disappearing, thus reducing our available power. Anyway, she came off in the end and in Basra the engine room staff were fully occupied opening up the condensers and removing a mess of sand, weed and little fishes that were blocking the tubes. Using astern power when you are on a sandbank sends debris forward under the ship so that it gets sucked into the cooling water intakes.

Voyage 3

Madras/ Calcutta/ Rangoon/Singapore

In Rangoon the highlight of the visit was a tour of the famous Schwe Dagon pagoda, the centrepiece of a large complex with many smaller pagodas and shrines surrounding it.
In Singapore the ship went into drydock to clean and check the bottom and other maintenance work kept all engineering staff busy.

Singapore drydock. Two of HMS Glasgows four propellers

On the way back to Trincomalee, seeing that our bottom was clean, it was decided to carry out a full power trial so for the first time since I joined the ship we had all four boilers and engines at full capacity. The machinery achieved full power without any problems. Later the officers on the bridge reported that the ship had exceeded 30 knots so despite the wartime service she had seen HMS Glasgow could still reach her designed speed.

At full power the noise in the engine room was terrific. We had no ear protection in those days and turbines and gearing make a very high pitched sound. I took a few minutes off to go out onto the quarterdeck to look at the wake. She had settled a little by the stern at 30 knots and the wake created by 80000hp and four propellers was highly impressive.

Shortly afterwards they fired a test round from one of the 6" guns. This was a violent noise heard and felt all over the ship and one could only wonder what it must have sounded like in wartime when they fired a full broadside of all the guns together.

Soon after returning to Trincomalee my demobilisation order came through and I was shipped to Aden aboard a destroyer to await a troopship returning to UK. I was billeted in the RAF station at a nearby village called Sheikh Othman for several days and was the only naval person there.

I finally arrived back in Southampton in the spring of 1947 and from there caught a train back to Kingsbridge and then bus to Salcombe.

After some leave the next priority was to decide what I wanted to do and find a job in civilian life.

It was much later that I realised that while serving in HMS Glasgow on her 'showing the flag' voyage around our colonies bordering the Indian Ocean I had been given a unique opportunity to see the last days of the British Empire in that region as it once was. It seemed good to me and for a time I even contemplated joining the "Colonial Engineering Service" to help further development of the local infrastructures. I am glad I did not.

John Cove,
September 2010