Figure 1: The Associated Humber Lines’ ship S.S. Melrose Abbey, exact date and place unknown. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 2: The Associated Humber Lines’ ship S.S. Melrose Abbey, exact date and place unknown. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 3: The Associated Humber Lines’ ship S.S. Melrose Abbey, exact date and place unknown. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 4: The Associated Humber Lines’ ship S.S. Melrose Abbey, exact date and place unknown. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 5: Painting by marine artist Adrian Thompson showing some of the steamers of the Associated Humber Lines at Humber Dock, Hull, England. The ships were loaded with manufacturing goods and sailed to the continent of Europe and returned with fresh produce for the nearby local markets in Humber. This painting depicts a scene from the 1950s showing the Associated Humber Line vessels (from left to right) S.S. Melrose Abbey, S.S. Bury, and S.S. Harrogate. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 6: Illustration from the excellent book Merchant Ships of the World in Color: 1910-1929, written and illustrated by Laurence Dunn, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1973, plate 20, page 116. The illustration shows two ships from the Associated Humber Lines, S.S. Melrose Abbey (left, built in 1929) and S.S. Macclesfield (right, built in 1914). Click on photograph for larger image.
Named after
the ruins of a monastic abbey in Melrose, Scotland, the 1,908-ton S.S. Melrose Abbey was a passenger freighter
that was originally built for the Hull & Netherlands Steamship Company by
Earle’s Shipbuilding & Engineering Company at Hull, England. The ship was
completed in 1929 and was approximately 281 feet long and 38 feet wide, had a
top speed of 14 knots, and could carry 1,091 tons of cargo. Melrose Abbey also carried 84
first-class passengers and 38 steerage-class passengers.
After being
completed in 1929, Melrose Abbey’s
primary trade route was from Hull, England, to Rotterdam, the Netherlands. In
1935, the ship became part of the Associated Humber Lines, but remained on the
Hull to Rotterdam route.
Shortly after
the start of World War II in Europe, Great Britain began losing a large number
of merchant ships to the dreaded German U-boats. Although a convoy system was
eventually instituted to help reduce the number of casualties, the Royal Navy
had no efficient means of rescuing merchant seamen from torpedoed cargo ships.
At the start of the war, there were only a small and inadequate number of
warships that could escort the valuable merchant convoys sailing between
England and Canada and the United States. It was hard enough for the British
destroyers and corvettes to locate and sink the attacking U-boats, but stopping
to pick up survivors from sunken merchant ships was not only time consuming but
also incredibly dangerous, because stopping to pick up men in the water during
a U-boat attack made the stationary warship a prime target for the German
submarines. Literally thousands of British and Allied seamen from torpedoed
merchant ships were drowning or dying from exposure in the frigid north
Atlantic, and there were not nearly enough ships to save them.
The Royal
Navy, therefore, decided to take up several ships from commercial service and
convert them into “Rescue Ships.” The sole purpose of the rescue ships was to
be attached to a major convoy for the explicit purpose of rescuing people from
torpedoed or damaged merchant ships. They were equipped with full medical
facilities, including an operating room and sick bay, as well as a doctor, one
or two medical attendants, and emergency equipment (such as derricks with nets
attached to them) that was specifically designed to pull injured or
incapacitated (usually frozen) people out of the water. Rescue ships carried
only light defensive armament, such as machine guns and anti-aircraft cannons, and
had special high-frequency radio direction-finding sets (HF/DF), which would
enable the ships to locate enemy submarines that were stalking a convoy. Once
the rescue ships located a U-boat, they would warn the other ships in the
convoy of the submarine’s location. Rescue ships also carried motor lifeboats
and life rafts to pick up survivors.
Unfortunately,
when the rescue ships stopped to pick up people from the water, it made them
prime targets for German submarines. The rescue ships often carried out their
mission in the horrendous weather that was common in the north Atlantic, with
high winds, snow, rain, and huge waves making the rescue efforts incredibly
dangerous for the crews on board the rescue ships. Yet most of the crews on the
rescue ships were volunteers and there was never a lack of volunteers who were
willing to literally jump into the icy waters of the north Atlantic to save
other mariners in distress. In many ways, the crews on the rescue ships were in
greater danger than the men on the escorting warships, simply because the
rescue ships had to stop in the middle of a running battle and in terrible
weather to do their jobs. Escorting warships also picked up stranded sailors from
the water, but that was their secondary duty. Their first duty was to hunt down
and sink enemy submarines. By the time they got around to rescuing people in
the water, they were usually dead from exposure. When men were on life rafts or
lifeboats in the middle of the North Atlantic during the winter, every minute
counted. The sooner they were rescued, the greater their odds of survival. This
put added pressure on the captain and crews of the rescue ships, because they
knew that if they lost too much time rescuing people from one ship, the crews
from another torpedoed merchant vessel could be freezing to death in the sea.
It was a terrible choice to have to make under brutal conditions. Yet the mere
presence of a rescue ship in a convoy boosted the morale of everyone in it,
since all the merchant seamen knew there was at least one ship available to
assist them if their ship was torpedoed.
In February
1941, Melrose Abbey was selected by
the Royal Navy for conversion into a rescue ship. But while on her way to the
Clyde shipyards in Scotland, the ship ran aground in bad weather off the
Scottish coast on 31 March. At first, it seemed doubtful that Melrose Abbey could be saved, since the
waves were pounding the grounded ship to pieces. Then a drifting sea mine
exploded next to the ship, blowing a large hole in her side. But thanks to a
determined salvage effort, the ship was eventually patched up well enough to be
re-floated and on 26 July she was towed to Aberdeen, Scotland, for temporary
repairs. After those repairs were made, Melrose
Abbey was able to steam to the Clyde shipyards for final conversion into a
rescue ship.
The
substantial damage caused by the grounding and the mine meant that a large
amount of repair work had to be completed on Melrose Abbey before she could begin her new career as a rescue
ship. As a result of this damage, Melrose
Abbey was not able to sail on her first voyage until 12 May 1942. Over the
next two years, Melrose Abbey
escorted 46 convoys and rescued a total of 86 survivors from sunken ships. Melrose Abbey also provided medical
assistance to a large number of crewmembers on merchant ships sailing in these
convoys. Because the vast majority of the merchant ships did not carry a
doctor, the presence of a surgeon and a well-equipped medical facility on board
Melrose Abbey was of enormous
importance to many Allied seamen in the convoy. Many men were transferred at
sea to Melrose Abbey for medical
attention and many lives were saved because of the assistance this ship
provided.
Perhaps the
greatest rescue mission ever performed by Melrose
Abbey occurred at the end of January 1943. The ship, under the command of
Captain R. Good, O.B.E. (Order of the British Empire), was on an outbound
convoy from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to England. The weather was stormy and
bitterly cold. During a lull in the storm, a sick man from the cargo ship S.S. Bruce was transferred to Melrose Abbey via the ship’s motor
lifeboat, but the winds and the sea were so bad that it nearly killed the men
in the lifeboat. However, they made it back to Melrose Abbey and the ship arrived in England without further
incident.
But when Melrose Abbey sailed back to Halifax on
25 February 1943, the real problems began. At 1725 hours on 9 March, Captain
Good spotted white rockets being fired off his starboard bow, a sign that a
ship was in distress. Shortly after that, he received a radio report that the
American cargo ship Malantic had been
torpedoed. A fierce wind was blowing from the west, with occasional snow
squalls increasing the violence of the already heavy seas. After reaching Malantic’s last reported position,
Captain Good and the crew spotted a man in the water. While he was being picked
up, a lifeboat was sighted not far away. The lifeboat contained 11 men,
including the captain of the torpedoed cargo ship. Melrose Abbey approached the lifeboat, drew near to it, and was
able to rescue nine of its occupants. Unfortunately, the other men were too
exhausted to grab the lifelines thrown to them and fell into the ocean. Both
men disappeared and drowned.
The survivors
in the lifeboat informed Captain Good that there was another lifeboat in the
area with the balance of Malantic’s
crew. While Melrose Abbey began a
search for the missing lifeboat, the weather deteriorated even more, with
sleet, snow, and hurricane-force winds making the sea even more dangerous than
it was before. But Captain Good and his ship and crew would not give up the
hunt for the lifeboat. Remarkably, they found it not far away. The lifeboat was
completely waterlogged and the men it it were wet, frozen, and exhausted.
Sadly, when Melrose Abbey drew near
the lifeboat, one of its occupants made a grab for a rescue net that was thrown
over the side of the rescue ship. In making a grab for the net, the survivor
capsized the lifeboat, trapping several men underneath and causing them to
drown. The balance of the survivors grabbed onto the net, but the movement of
the ship was so great that the survivors were unable to climb on board Melrose Abbey. Captain Good then made
the brilliant yet dangerous decision to open the “cattle doors” abreast the
forward well deck, which was directly above the men holding onto the nets. It
was a huge risk because the massive waves could easily pour thousands of
gallons of water into the open cargo doors. But it was the only way to grab the
men holding on for dear life on the nets.
Captain
Good’s crew stood attached to secured lifelines in the doorway as the big cargo
doors were opened. As the men gradually fell off the nets and into the water,
the waves lifted them and literally hurled them through the ship’s open doors. Melrose Abbey’s crewmen then grabbed the
survivors before they could be washed out to sea again as the water poured out
of the ship. Ten men were rescued in this manner, often while many of Melrose Abbey’s crewmen were up to their
necks in frigid water which crashed through the open doors.
While all
this was going on, Captain Good received a radio report that four more ships
had been torpedoed. Melrose Abbey
began a search for survivors as her speed was reduced to only five knots
because of the terrible weather and sea conditions. The rescue ship located
four men clinging to an upturned lifeboat and rescued them. After that, a
second boat was sighted containing one man and four dead seamen. Both of these
boats were from the Norwegian ship Bonnieville,
in which the commodore of the convoy had been embarked. He was lost, along with
his entire staff.
Melrose Abbey then found a raft carrying two
survivors from the British cargo ship Nailsea.
One man was rescued, but the other fell off the raft and drowned. Although Melrose Abbey continued searching the
area for more survivors from the four ships, none were found. It took the
rescue ship 22 hours to rejoin the convoy. During these search and rescue
missions, Melrose Abbey also recorded
167 HF/DF radio bearings of U-boats, 77 of which were strong and positive. This
vital information was relayed to the armed convoy escorts which were searching
for the U-boats.
Perhaps the
best tribute to Captain Good’s amazing seamanship during this convoy can be
summed up in a letter written by his Chief Engineer, Mr. A.B. Low:
“From 7:30 PM
till 8:00 AM with mountainous seas running, Captain Good handled his ship in a
manner which won the admiration of the entire ship’s company…For hours he
steamed round, the ship swept at times by huge seas, and when a raft or
lifeboat was found, by superb seamanship he brought his ship round to form a
lee side, right alongside both lifeboats and rafts. By doing this many lives
were saved which otherwise would certainly have been lost…It is one of the
wonders of the world when a Master gets praise from a Chief Engineer, but I,
like the rest of the crew, feel his deeds should not pass unrecorded.”
During World
War II, the British merchant marine lost approximately 32,952 men. This does
not include all of the other men lost in the merchant marines of the United
States and its allies. There were only 29 British rescue ships during the war,
and several of these were rejected because they proved to be unable, for
various reasons, to be used as rescue ships. Six rescue ships were sunk due to
enemy action, either by U-boats or enemy aircraft. The few that remained
managed to save roughly 4,194 individuals, people who otherwise would have been
lost. This also does not include the hundreds of merchant seamen who received vital
medical attention from the rescue ships while at sea. Many of these men would
undoubtedly have died had they not received the prompt medical help that was
available on board the rescue ships.
As for Melrose Abbey, she was released from the
Royal Navy in May 1945 and returned to her former owners, the Associated Humber
Lines. She was converted back into a cargo passenger liner and resumed her Hull
to Rotterdam route in March 1946. Shortly after the war, the ship was
overhauled and heavily modified to increase passenger capacity. Once the
modifications were completed, Melrose
Abbey could accommodate 92 first-class passengers and 24 second-class
passengers. In early 1958, the cargo liner was re-named Melrose Abbey II to release her old name for a new passenger ship that
was then under construction for the Associated Humber Lines.
The ship
continued on the Hull to Rotterdam route until January 1959, when she was sold
to the Typaldos Lines in Piraeus, Greece. Once there, Melrose Abbey was converted into the 2,069-ton cruise ship Kriti, with cabins built into her former
holds and a much enlarged and altered superstructure. Kriti was now able to accommodate 180 first-class and 130 tourist
passengers. The cruise ship sailed on various routes around the Aegean Sea, but
was laid up in Piraeus in 1966 for financial reasons. Kriti was eventually scrapped around 1980.
Few people
today even know the existence of the British convoy rescue ships during World
War II. They had an incredibly dangerous job and always managed to complete
their missions, usually under terrible weather conditions. The men on those
ships were mostly volunteers and they risked everything just so their fellow
merchant seamen could have another chance at life. Much praise should be heaped
on these ships and the men who sailed on them, because they gave hope to the
people on board the vulnerable cargo ships that had to brave both German
U-boats as well as the harsh weather in the north Atlantic.
