No Roses Grow on a Sailor’s Grave – The Jim Mackenzie Story

The 1911 Census found Jim on board the steamship Heron, berthed at Weaver’s Wharf, North Dock, Swansea, when his rank was Mess Room Steward. By 1915, Jim is still aboard Heron and by this time, is shown as the Ship’s Cook. It was not uncommon for crew members to serve aboard the same vessel for voyage after voyage, for if the seaman was good at his job and conducted himself well, the Ship’s Master would ask these men to form the nucleus of a trusted and competent crew. We can therefore assume from his long service with the company that Jim was both well liked and a decent Ship’s Cook.

Despite his nomadic life in the Merchant Navy, Jim kept his roots in Charlton and surely must have kept in contact with his friends at the Football Club during his periods of leave. In the 1911 Census, the family had moved to 93 East Street but by the time the 1913 Electoral Register was printed, the family had moved again to a newer and larger home at 57 Delafield Road, adjacent to Charlton Railway Station and ironically a short walk from Charlton Athletic’s future home at The Valley.

The Heron was the second of the company’s vessels to bear the name and was an iron hulled steamship of 879 gross register tons delivered to the company in 1889 by Gourlay Brothers of Dundee, so coincidentally the Heron had the same birthplace as her Ship’s Cook and was just a year older. She was engaged on one of the GSN’s regular routes from London and other UK ports to Oporto, carrying general cargo as well as having provision for some passengers. Sadly, no photograph of the vessel seems to have survived the passage of time. The third Heron was built in 1920 and although she was a larger vessel than her predecessor, her general layout was quite similar.

The First World War saw the emergence of a new form of warfare at sea in the form of the submarine. At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, the submarine had been damned by many and the views of Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson RN, who described submarines as “Underhand, unfair and damned un-English” was typical for the time. Attitudes changed and by the outbreak of the War in 1914, submarines had been adopted by both the Royal and Imperial German Navies as an integral part of their respective fleets.

Early actions favoured the Germans, culminating in September 1914 with the loss of the British cruisers Aboukir, Hogue and Cressy with heavy loss of life. The repercussions the following year of the torpedoing of the liner Lusitania, including the deaths of 128 American civilians (at that time citizens of a neutral country), caused the Germans to scale back their submarine operations for fear of further alienating public opinion in the United States and thus drawing them into the war. The submarine flotilla was duly withdrawn from the commerce war and was given strict instructions to attack enemy warships only.
However, on 31st January 1917, with the war beginning to go against Germany and the effect of the Allied blockade having a disastrous effect on food supplies, the Kaiser ordered that unrestricted submarine warfare should be recommenced with immediate effect. As a countermeasure, the British reluctantly instigated a convoy system, initially only on the shorter supply routes to France and across the North Sea but later extended to cover the Transatlantic and Gibraltar routes as well.

The exigencies of war meant that there were frequent alterations to loading schedules and diversions to convoy assembly points. Thus on 27th September 1917, the Heron, having loaded a cargo of coal at Newcastle, topped up with general cargo in London, sailed from Falmouth bound for Oporto as part of Convoy O.F. 6 and was not carrying any passengers. The convoy comprised some forty ships, including another GSN vessel, Drake. On this occasion, the convoy appears to have been unescorted by any Royal Navy ship, although many of the merchantmen would have had a defensive armament of a single 3 inch gun and of course, there was the ‘safety in numbers’ aspect of a large convoy of ships that in theory would force the U-Boat to remain beneath the surface and use torpedoes - not always a reliable weapon in 1917 - rather than attempting to surface and sink the ships by gunfire.

On the night of 30th September whilst crossing the Bay of Biscay, the Heron’s company sister ship, Drake, was sunk by the gunfire of U-90, under the command of 34 year old Kapitanleutnant Walter Remy. The U-90 had only been commissioned on 2nd August 1917 but Remy was an experienced commander, having previously commanded the U-24 and who was already responsible for sinking over 31,000 tons of Allied shipping when he took command of his new U-Boat at the Kaiserliche Werft, Danzig. The U-90 was quite a large submarine for the time and displacing 998 tons, was actually slightly heavier than the Heron. She was armed with six 50 centimetre torpedo tubes, four at the bow and two astern and carried sixteen torpedoes. She was also armed with a 10.5 centimetre gun, with 240 rounds for surface attacks.

The entire crew of the Drake were able to take to the ship’s boats and were eventually picked up the following morning but two hours after her sinking, a single torpedo fired from U-90 slammed into the side of the Heron adjacent to the engine room with disastrous results. The impact of a heavyweight torpedo upon the small and elderly iron built coaster must have been devastating, as the Heron with her cargo of coal, sank like a stone.

Siv_in_Norfolk said:

Superb!

More more more

As Clive says, more to come.

The current memorial put up by the museum with the help and donations of fans

Tramp said:

Brilliant bit of research, will remember Jim and Messrs Nightingale and Chick on November 11th.

Did we lose anyone during the Second World War?

Yes, Geoff Reynolds

As we approach the centenary of the Armistice worth reminding ourselves of our of those who lost his life.

RIP

RIP