Figure 1: S.S. Crispin before being converted into an ocean boarding vessel for the Royal Navy. Photograph courtesy of the Library of Contemporary History, Stuttgart, Germany. Click on photograph for larger image.
Named after St. Crispin, the
patron saint of shoemakers, the 5,051-ton S.S. Crispin was a cargo ship
that was built in 1935 by Cammell Laird & Company at Birkenhead, England.
The ship was built for the Booth Steamship Company (also known as the Booth
Line) and was based at Liverpool, England. Crispin was approximately 410
feet long and 55 feet wide and had a top speed of 13 knots. For roughly five
years, Crispin was used by the Booth Line primarily on its route between
England and Brazil, although the ship did make stops in the United States as
well.
In August 1940, Crispin
was acquired by the Royal Navy for use as an “ocean boarding vessel” during
World War II. Ocean boarding vessels (OBVs) were merchant ships which had guns
added to them for the purpose of enforcing wartime naval blockades.
Theoretically, they were to be used to board foreign vessels. In a secondary
role, they would also be used as anti-aircraft ships to help protect convoys
against German long-range bombers, such as the dreaded four-engine Focke-Wulf Fw 200
Condor. Crispin was
armed with one 6-inch gun, one 4-inch gun, six 20-mm guns, and two .303-caliber
Lewis machine guns. Fully equipped as an OBV, Crispin carried a rather
large crew of 141 officers and men. The ship also was loaded with empty oil
drums which were to give it, in theory at least, added buoyancy in case she was
torpedoed. Commissioned as HMS Crispin, the ship was assigned to escort
merchant convoys that were headed across the Atlantic to Canada.
Once Crispin was
commissioned, though, her real mission was disclosed to her crew by the ship’s
captain, Commander B. Moloney, Distinguished Service Order (DSO), Distinguished
Service Cross (DSC), and a member of the Royal Naval Reserve (RNR). He told his
crew that Crispin would act as a “Q-ship,” or a decoy, which would trail
a convoy looking like a helpless cargo ship in hopes of attracting German
aircraft and surfaced submarines, thereby drawing the enemy away from the
convoy. According to the captain, while at sea the Red Ensign of the British
Merchant Navy would be flown, all guns would be hidden until needed, and then Crispin
would open fire as soon as the enemy was sighted. In addition, the crew would
not wear Royal Navy clothing while on the upper deck. Because of this, the
captain warned the crew that if they were taken as prisoners of war, they would
not be treated as such under the Geneva Convention, since they were not in
uniform. Crispin would trail a convoy sailing from England to Canada, and
then as soon as the ship neared its destination it would join an east-bound
convoy headed back to England. Once reaching England, Crispin was to
return to her base at Liverpool.
Q-ships showed just how desperate
the Royal Navy was in trying to deal with the dangers posed by U-boats and
long-range bombers, which were taking a heavy toll of British merchant ships.
Yet HMS Crispin went out and tried to do her duty, even though at the
time it was almost considered to be a suicide mission to use cargo ships as
anti-aircraft and anti-submarine vessels.
For several months, Crispin
escorted convoys that were sailing between England and Canada, and made no
contact with the enemy. Then, shortly before midnight on 3 February 1941, Crispin
was hit in the engine room by a single torpedo fired from the German submarine U-107.
Crispin had just been detached from convoy OB-280 and was going to join
convoy SC-20 the next day. The ship was sinking slowly and a total of 121
crewmen managed to abandon ship and were picked up by two other British escorts
that were in the area. But 20 men were lost (including Commander Moloney) when Crispin
was hit and when the ship suddenly sank several hours after being torpedoed.
