The Early Days - by Vincent Hart

I became a crew member of MFV 1069 and can clearly remember quite a few of my shipmates, though, regrettably not by name. Notably, the first Skipper of 1069, Mr.E .L. Monaghan, gunner of HMS Amethyst, an Irishman, I will never forget and whom I understand served with distinction during the Yangste incident. 1069 was also honoured with the presence of another escapee, 3 badge Killick Seaman j. Mullins.

After much spitting and polishing, the three 70 footers went to sea, still with black hulls and battle ship grey superstructure,along with the mast for’ard and after a short period of working up, began our patrol duties around the Hong Kong Islands. I recall we often patrolled in the morning , then anchored in one of many bays for make and mend swimming parties etc.

It was during one of these sessions, anchored in Clear Watef Bay, that an RAF  Sunderland Flying Boat circled and the landed a short distance away. The crew of the Sunderland, dropped anchor and then swam over to us with the greeting, in a very posh voice “got any tea?”. They were helped aboard and the pilot turned out to be Flt.Lt.Letford who , in the same Sunderland, had been heroically involved in the incident with AMETHYST. Our Skipper had been one of the personnel, flown down by from the Yangste by Flt.Lt. Letford. As you can imagine the reunion was something else. There was not much tea drunk that afternoon, but, nevertheless the flying boat did manage to take off again some time later.

July 30/31 saw the heroic breakout by AMETHYST and on her return to a tumultuous welcome to Hong Kong. Our Amethyst crew members left 1069 to rejoin their ship and eventually return to the UK. Meanwhile new crew members joined us,including our new Skipper Lt.Eddis, ex navigating officer of HMS ALACRITY and Coxswain P.O. ‘Shorty” Debenham, also John Inskip joined at a later date. The Skipper of MFV 1044 was Lt. Mike Fawcett and 1156 was Lt. Braithwaite. It was around this time that 1069 became involved with “Beach Reconnaisance”

‘Beach Reconnaisance” is apparently a Naval Exercise which involves the deployment of small naval craft carrying suitable trained Royal Naval Marines, equipped with canoes and highly sophisticated measuring devices (long painted sticks and tape measures etc)backed up by Royal Navy Personnel with vast quantities of “charts for the use of”, plus one leading seaman trained in the expert use of a large lump of lead attached to a length of rope with various markings attached thereto. The aim of the exercise was to tour the coastline of the Islands, checking the accuracy of said charts and the suitability of beaches as possible landing sites. Sad to say, whilst carrying out these duties MFV 1069 had the grave misfortune to find the sea bottom. A little too close for comfort and in three occasions in a three day period went aground.

The most memorable of these was when the Skipper was on the bridge, Yours Truly was on the wheel and our new Killick was taking soundings with his rope and lump of lead . I think his reports went along these lines “four fathoms Sir”, “Three fathoms Sir”. ‘two fathoms Sir” followed by a crunching sound as we grounded……the fraught was 5.5/9.5ft. It was even more unfortunate that we struck just at the turn of the tide.

We were forced to remain there for almost 24 hours awaiting the second high tide, during which time the ship gradually keeled over. With the aid of the Marines we waded ashore and cut baulkd of timber in order to shore up the ship so she wouldn’t end up on her side and take in water as the tide came in. I believe that it was on this occasion that the Skipper instructed Telegraphist “Lamb” Redman to signal Commodore Hong Kong “Anchored in Tolo Harbour”.

After most of us had spent the night on board a police tug with a few hands left on 1069 to ensure the props didn’t float away when the tide came in during the night. The following morning it was all hands to the plough to get us a float again, this involved putting out a kedge anchor a stern taking it out by dinghy stringing out all our manila Hawes plus our 6 inch grass rope all tied end to end and joining up with hawsers from the tug who was we  unable to get any closer because of a deep draft. Then with the tug tugging on our capstone hauling in on the kedge we put our engine full astern  and it last floated free. just to add to our mis  fortune as we got clear our propeller fouled which necessitated drastic action to cut it free, a brilliant invention of a bucket diving belt didn’t work too well to say the least so we were forced to make a slow journey back to Hong Kong for the proper removal of the offending bits of rope by divers.

It was shortly after this incident that 1044 1069 and 1156 hadtheir conversions carried out this entailed first the removal of the huge forward mast and having a steel plate fitted on the fo’c’sle supported by stancions in the mess deck  below. The single bofors  mounting was then installed suitably supported in order to prevent it ending down in the mess deck when fired they followed the complete paint ship and in the case of 1069 her call sign  being painted  on  the bow Y07 and so she became licensed to kill years before James Bond was thought about. Our armament included a number of Bren  guns and these were fitted with a sort of swivel pin which was positioned into a socket plate mounted on the gun, giving a very substantial mounting for use when we went to action stations my own action station was to man  a Bren on the starboard  position.  On boarding parties. I carried a Lanchester.

At last fully booted and suited , we really looked the part when entering or leaving harbour. We were brought down to size when we were dispatched to investigate reports of “Troops landing on a beach on Lantau”. We duly steamed sedately to the bay in question to find a landing craft close to the beach and troop ashore, close by though was a Chinese Nationalist destroyer. Which signalled “turn back or else”. We did as requested.

Our Skipper had a little idea to make us more ship shape and Bristol fashion. The first was Brightework Station” he would scratch a little paint off anything that brass or copper and that bit of metal was added to the tally of items that had to be polished before entering harbour. My tally included the Binnacle on the bridge and the Steaming lights.The other idea was when he came onboard one day with “Bosuns Call” he’d got hold of somewhere. I happened to turn out to be No 1 Callboy. I thus became “Bosuns Mate”.

Sport played a big part in the early days of the Flotilla and my own was rugby, regrettably though there were not many players within the Flotilla. In fact when playing in the Hong Kong sevens with other armed forces, if one boat was at sea, we struggled to make a team. However a few of us found ourselves playing for the Flotilla, HMS Tamar and for the A and B teams of the Royal Navy, Hong Kong. With the arrival of the ML’s our numbers increased and on 5^th November 1949 the following members of the Flotilla represented the A and B teams, Lt Murray, Lt Binks, Lt Fawcett, Lt.Eddis and myself, not bad 6 out of 30 players. Not bad when you consider that the two teams included players from HMS TAMAR,BLACK SWAN,CARDIGAN BAY,CHARITY COMUS,MOUNTS BAY and ST.BRIDES BAY,.

It was in April 1950 that I went to see a little more of the Far East aboard the carrier UNICORN starting with a ‘show the flag’ cruise to Japan and ultimately to be involved in the Korean War. The deployment included seven return journeys between Singapore  and Japeanese or Korean waters. 

I eventually took passage home on the carrier THESUES when she left Hong Kong in May 1951 to return to the U.K. having completed my two year tour old duty …….very memorable, especially the time spent in the Flotilla 

Vincent Hart