My father David Moore was flotilla navigating officer in HMS Halcyon aged about twenty four.

Our regular captain, Cdr. 'Tishy' Hinton, had been temporarily replaced on this operation, probably because of the back injury he suffered the previous year when we were mined in Tees Bay. His relief was a Cdr. Bill Bayley, who was a typical destroyer eccentric (he always wore a battered green pork-pie hat at sea) but was quite easy & rather an intellectual type of officer. Later he got us worried when he began to get crazy enthusiastic ideas about taking the sweepers into the inland waterways of N. Russia, but of course these came to nothing.

After a few days in the timber yards some of us took a boat into the city for a 'run ashore'. There was Fred Bradley our big RNVR First Lieut., who in civilian life was a wealthy Lloyds underwriter. Also I think Lt. Mason, the 'Guns', and myself.