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HMS
SCOTT Principal Surveys 1945 |
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S J Hennessey |
France, West Coast.
England, East Coast |
Brest.
Sole Bank minefield;
The Downs; Southwold to Winterton; Thames Estuary. |
SCOTT, meanwhile, under Hennessey, completed surveying Brest in
comparative leisure since there was little strategic urgency, and
then was given a rapid refit at Grimsby. Fully fit again, and now
under Bill, she was put to work on the east coast of England
between the Downs and the Humber assisting minesweepers in
clearance work, and locating and sweeping some of the many wrecks
in the channels between the east coast sandbanks.
Source: EXTRACTS from: Charts and Surveys in
Peace and War – The History of the RN Hydrographic Service 1919 –
1970 by Rear Admiral R O Morris CB
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HMS Scott - Bridge
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Date of Arrival |
Place |
Date of Departure |
Orders, Remarks etc |
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11.1.45 |
Plymouth |
12.1.45 |
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Early in 1945 SCOTT was ordered to proceed to Brest to work under
the orders of Vice‑Admiral Thierry d'Argenlieu Chef d'Etat‑Major
General Adjoint to Admiral Nord in the clearance and
rehabilitation of the roadstead and commercial port of Brest.
As we slowly made our
way to anchor amid a plethora of wrecks in the outer harbour the
sight of this great naval city was staggering in its destruction.
Not a single building remained undamaged. The naval dockyard in
the Penfeld River and the renowned U‑Boat pens, with their
protected maintenance workshops and living accommodation, lay in
ruins, whilst the whole length of the quays in the Commercial Port
east of the river was obstructed by a tangle of fallen cranes and
tumbled warehouses. The Americans had put to good use the
thousands of tons of ammunition which had been landed across the
oyster beds of the Morlaix River.
The rehabilitation of
Brest was no longer of major strategic importance to the Allied
Armies which, supplied through Antwerp and Dutch ports, had
recently repulsed the Germans' last major onslaught in the
Ardennes. So caution was exercised in sweeping and salvage work in
Brest and the whole of the clearance work proceeded at a more
leisurely pace than usual. As each underwater obstruction was
discovered it was either demolished by explosives or lifted by
salvage craft, after which a pair of survey boats, with a wire
drag depth sweep rigged between them, slowly searched to find the
least depth remaining.
Extract from ‘No Day Too Long’, G S Ritchie |
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Brest |
20.2.45 |
6/2 Anticipate work
required by COMAR Brest will be complete 18/2 |
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20.2.45 |
On 20th February 1945
we sailed from Brest on final completion of our work for the
Allied Naval Commander Expeditionary Forces, Admiral Sir Harold
Burroughs, from whom we received the following warm signal which
gave all of us onboard tremendous satisfaction:
'Now that you are
leaving my sphere of operations I want to express to you and your
ship's company my thanks and appreciation for the splendid work
that SCOTT
has done in the last nine months since D‑Day. I am fully aware
of the important part you have played towards the rapid opening
of captured ports and I want you all to know that it has not
passed unnoticed.
'I wish you good luck
and a good leave. T.O.O. 211745A.February 1945'
For us the Second
Front was over.
Extract from ‘No Day Too Long’, G S Ritchie |
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21.2.45 |
Plymouth |
23.2.45 |
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24.2.45 |
Humber |
13.5.45 |
27/2 SCOTT taken in
hand by Consolidated Fisheries Grimsby, completion 9/5 |
From the end of
February until shortly after V‑E Day, 6th May 1945, SCOTT was
undergoing a much needed refit in Grimsby whilst her company
enjoyed well earned leave. I spent the evening of V‑E Day with
Disa (my wife) in the nearby Lincolnshire town of Louth where the
townsfolk gathered round the impressive church to see the great
steeple illuminated by the Royal Engineers with searchlights. It
was, of course, a memorable evening ‑ all our troubles seemed
over.
It was now time to
commence the great post-war clearance of Britain's home waters in
which SCOTT was to play a prominent part. To open these seas to
peacetime navigation and fishery, thousands of mines had to be
swept, hundreds of wartime wrecks had to be located and vast areas
in the shallow waters off the south‑east coasts had to re‑surveyed
after five years of wartime neglect of the unstable seabed.
Sailing in mid‑May
for Plymouth we there embarked fuel, stores and a quantity of
surveying beacons required for our work with the Canadian
minesweeping flotilla 'M/S 31'. Their job was to sweep clear
extensive deep minefields which had been laid four years earlier
to trap U‑Boats in the Sole Bank area, far out in the Western
Approaches to the English Channel. Our job was to mark the limits
of the mined areas with survey beacons anchored in 100 fathoms or
more, and because of the prevalent overcast weather it was
necessary on each occasion of laying the beacons, or relaying them
when swept away by gales, to take a departure from the vicinity of
the Bishop Rock Lighthouse and run out a measured distance of 100
miles or so by taut‑wire. Having laid the beacons we stayed around
until a good set of star sights could be obtained at dawn or dusk
alongside a beacon. The minesweepers took the whole month of June
to clear the area, where but a few mines were proved to have
survived four years of Atlantic weather.
Extract from ‘No Day Too Long’, G S Ritchie |
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? |
Portsmouth |
23.5.45 |
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24.5.45 |
Plymouth |
26.5.45 |
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26.5.45 |
Falmouth |
28.5.45 |
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1.6.45 |
Falmouth |
4.6.45 |
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8.6.45 |
Falmouth |
12.6.45 |
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15.6.45 |
Falmouth |
? |
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23.6.45 |
Falmouth |
25.6.45 |
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2.7.45 |
Plymouth |
5.7.45 |
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6.7.45 |
Dover |
10.7.45 |
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The Downs, an
extensive anchorage and inshore channel between the Kent Coast and
the Goodwin Sands, has always been an unstable area. The Sands
themselves, in the shape of a giant lozenge, oscillate about their
north/south axis from year to year. What had happened since 1940?
SCOTT undertook the resurvey in July 1945...
Extract from ‘No Day Too Long’, G S Ritchie |
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20.7.45 |
Dover |
23.7.45 |
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9.8.45 |
Sheerness |
23.8.45 |
111/8 SCOTT taken in
hand, completion 18/8
17/8 Consequent on VJ
holiday, revised completion date 21/8 |
In early August Lieutenant Commander Robin Bill relieved Commander
Hennessey, our greatly respected wartime captain, and we moved
into the shallow waters off the East Anglian Coast. Many of the
offshore sandbanks, such as Scroby Sands on which seals bask at
low water, had changed their shape during the war years. As we
defined their new limits Trinity House tenders moved in to buoy
them.
In this shallow area
the search for wrecks was a priority, for every one of the
hundreds sunk in wartime was now a potential danger to navigation.
To locate wrecks the sonar equipment, developed for hunting
U‑boats, was used. Running survey lines a mile apart the sonar
operator slowly searched ahead from the port beam, through the
bows to the starboard beam and back again as the ship steamed
slowly ahead. Every time the operator received the 'ping' of a
returning echo from a seabed obstruction its bearing was plotted,
so that two or more such bearings from different directions would
intersect and fix the position of the obstruction.
Extract from ‘No Day Too Long’, G S Ritchie |
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23.8.45 |
Lowestoft |
? |
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By the autumn of 1945
a considerable flotilla of wreck disposal vessels had been got
together manned by men recently experienced in clearing wrecks
from captured harbours. Attempts were made by such vessels to
remove the masts and superstructures from dangerous wrecks we had
located to increase navigation depths over them. On some occasions
it was possible to dig a trench with depth charges laid alongside
the wreck into which the wreck could then be overturned by
carefully placed explosives...
...With SCOTT working
out of Harwich, Lowestoft or Yarmouth the ceaseless sounding and
sweeping continued through the winter of 1945/1946, the only
respite being at weekends when the long slow railway journey
across East Anglia to Liverpool Street Station could be made by
those of our company whose turn it was to pay a brief visit 'up
the smoke'...
Extract from ‘No Day Too Long’, G S Ritchie |
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29.11.45 |
Harwich |
? |
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11.12.45 |
Harwich |
19.12.45 |
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With the war in Europe ending in May 1945 and that in the Far East
in September the first call on the Hydrographic Service was to
survey and re‑chart the devastated ports of Europe, the
Mediterranean and the Far East, and to assist in clearing
minefields and charting safe passages through those which could
not be cleared immediately.
Franklin and SCOTT were quickly disarmed and restored to full
surveying status. A minor distinction which identifies them
post-war is that while
Franklin's mainmast was restored to its pre-war position for'ard
of the chartroom, SCOTT's was stepped on the chartroom roof.
Source: EXTRACTS from: Charts and Surveys in Peace and War – The
History of the RN Hydrographic Service 1919 – 1970 by Rear Admiral
R O Morris CB
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