Читать книгу Very Special Ships - Arthur Nicholson - Страница 13

CHAPTER 4

THE ABDIEL COMPLETES AND PROVES HER WORTH

Home Waters and the Mediterranean, 1941

IT was only fitting that the name ship of the class would be named after the Abdiel of First World War fame, which was named after the faithful seraph in Milton’s Paradise Lost who withstood Satan when he urged the angels to revolt.¹

The Abdiel was built by the venerable J Samuel White & Company, on the River Medina at Cowes on the Isle of Wight. She had the distinction of being the longest and largest ship ever built there. Ordered in December 1938, the Abdiel’s keel was laid on 29 March 1939, just as Hitler was moving into what was left of Czechoslovakia after Munich, making the Second World War inevitable. She was launched on 23 April 1940 and was supposedly commissioned on 7 March 1941,² but was not fully completed until 15 April 1941.³

Her crew was from Devonport,⁴ and 50 per cent of them had never been to sea before.⁵ She was painted up in a medium gray and was given the pennant number M 39. Her motto was Semper Fidelis – ‘Always Faithful’⁶ – and her crest was decidedly not classical, featuring a silver mine with golden wings.

The Abdiel’s first commanding officer was the aforementioned Captain Edward Pleydell-Bouverie, MVO, who had already been with her for months during her fitting-out. He was born on 10 September 1899, the second son of the sixth Earl of Radnor and grew up at Longford Castle in Salisbury. At home with his wife Pearl – Lady Montagu – in Beaulieu in the New Forest of Hampshire, he liked to hunt pheasant and duck.

The Captain had already been to sea under the most trying circumstances early in his career. While still a cadet at Britannia Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, he was sent to sea on the old armoured cruiser Hogue almost immediately after the declaration of war against Germany in August 1914. With a number of reservists, he and his fellow cadets, soon promoted to midshipmen, formed the complements of the sisters Aboukir, Hogue and Cressy, which were patrolling off the coast of Holland when the three were sunk in quick succession on 22 September 1914, by the German U-boat U-9, commanded by Lieutenant Otto Weddigen.⁷ The heavy loss of life, especially among the young midshipmen, shocked Britain. Ned Pleydell-Bouverie survived because, as he later said, his father had insisted he learn how to swim in the River Avon by the castle where he grew up. At first interned in Holland, he and his fellow survivors were quickly repatriated to Britain.

The Abdiel after completion. (Lt Cmdr Ben Warlow, RN)

From that point on, young Pleydell-Bouverie’s career was for the time being less exciting. He experienced the battle of Jutland aboard the battleship Orion and after the war served afloat and ashore. One of his last appointments before the war was as a Commander on the royal yacht Victoria and Albert. Once the Second World War broke out, he was sent to France as a liaison officer to the French admiralty, finally becoming the Naval Attaché. Leaving Paris just ahead of the Germans in June 1940, he made it to Bordeaux and then escaped to Britain in a fishing boat and then a submarine. He was posted to the battlecruiser Hood just before she took part in the tragic attack on the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir on 3 July 1940, to keep it out of the hands of the Germans.

About 5ft 10in tall, the Captain was a heavy smoker and was at times in less than perfect health, being prone to stomach ailments. Lieutenant N H G Austen found him a ‘most charming and friendly man’ and the two got on right away. The Abdiel’s young midshipman, Norman Goodwin, held the Captain in awe and remembered him as a strict disciplinarian by observation and personal experience, though on the whole he thought the Captain treated him well.

The Abdiel’s First Lieutenant was Lieutenant Nigel Hubert George Austen, better known to some as ‘Bunny’. He was the son of a vicar and was born in 1910 at Thirsk, Yorkshire. The ship’s first Torpedo (electrical) and Mine Officer was Lieutenant-Commander Paul Morrison Bushe Chavasse. He had just been awarded a Distinguished Service Cross and had commanded the minelayer Princess Victoria when she was mined and sunk off the Humber in May of 1940. In spite of his bruises, he had been bitten by the ‘minelaying bug’. When he applied for more of it, the Admiralty sent him to the Abdiel.⁸

Captain The Hon Edward Pleydell-Bouverie, MVO, RN. (Robin Pleydell-Bouverie)

Midshipman Goodwin was born in 1923 in Franche, near Kidderminster in Worcestershire. His father was from a line of millers and his mother ran a school from their house. After attending a prep school he decided on a career at sea and at the age of fourteen he joined the officer training ship Conway, an old sailing ship moored off Birkenhead. He did well, attaining the rank of Junior Cadet Captain and upon graduating at the age of seventeen he joined the Royal Navy. He was first posted to the armed merchant cruiser Canton, formerly a P&O liner and his next posting was the Abdiel.

Officers and men began joining the Abdiel while the ship was at Cowes fitting out. Lieutenant Austen joined at the end of July and found the Abdiel ‘the usual depressing sight of a ship in that state, a mass of rusty plates with dockyard gear of all imaginable sorts as well as dockyard workers. It all looked too dreary for words’. He and the other officers had all the plans of the ship and ‘each of us spent our time chasing up the first representatives in an effort to get things heaving around and ensuring that the parts of the ship for which we were responsible were as they should be’.

The Abdiel fitting out at Cowes. (Carisbrooke Castle Museum)

As fitting out progressed, the Battle of Britain was at its height, but in spite of frequent air-raid warnings the Luftwaffe did not hinder the work. The weather was wonderful and the Isle of Wight provided a grandstand seat. Lieutenant Austen was almost ashamed to admit that that in the evenings they were able to sit in a garden ‘with a drink in our hands and watch the war in the air go on as almost as though watching a film’.

As the months passed, the Abdiel looked less and less dreary as she neared completion. Finally, she was sufficiently finished to go to sea, first at Spithead. She carried out a full-power trial during which, according to Lieutenant Austen, she exceeded 40 knots. Then on 20 March she sailed to Greenock, where preparations were made for builder’s trials. There ended the best-laid plans.

On 21 March 1941, the German battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were sighted near the French port of Brest, at the end of their raiding operations in the Atlantic and they arrived at Brest the next day.⁹ The two sisters were a menace that had to be contained. On 22 March, he Admiralty ordered the Abdiel to the mine depot at Milford Haven in Wales to pick up mines. She left Greenock at 05.00 and proceeded at 35.5 knots to Millford Haven, dumping her dummy mines on the way. On the voyage she also carried out her first gunnery practice, on a raft with a flag on it, to unimpressive reviews.

After arriving at 14.30, she embarked as many mines as she could from the wooden mining jetty there and sailed to Plymouth. On the way, she was ‘given a welcome’ by an aircraft that announced it was not friendly by dropping its bombs in her wake. The Abdiel did not fire at the aircraft, which Lieutenant Austen thought was ‘not creditable’.

The ship then departed Plymouth to carry out her first minelaying operation, on the night of 23/24 March, off the Little Sole Bank. The destroyers Kipling and Kashmir escorted her as far as the Bishop Rock and then she was on her own, for the first time, in enemy waters. The visibility was good and as the ship approached the laying position, Lieutenant Austen thought ‘we could vaguely see the French coast and we felt remarkably visible ourselves!’¹⁰ For the first time in a fast minelayer, the order to ‘lay mines’ was given and she began to lay her 141 mines. Once the first one went out, ‘it seemed to us tense souls on the bridge to make a great splash and noise and one almost felt we could be heard ashore!’ The lay could not proceed quickly enough for those souls on the bridge, but eventually they heard ‘All mines laid’ and sped back to Plymouth. For this work, the Abdiel received a ‘well done’ signal from the First Sea Lord.¹¹

The Abdiel at speed on trials. (Imperial War Museum FL 18)

Their Lordships were not quite done with her. The Abdiel was ordered to perform the same feat on the night of 28/29 March, this time in company with destroyers commanded by Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten. Lieutenant Austen ‘had a nasty feeling Lord Louis was spoiling for a fight’, which was not at all what the Abdiel was looking for. After sailing, Lieutenant Austen and the ship’s navigator thought they should try to use the taut wire measuring gear. Once the wire parted two or three times, they gave up on it. The Abdiel slipped her escort 25 miles off Brest and proceeded to lay her 150 mines without incident. Upon rejoining the destroyers, Lord Mountbatten signalled to the still-uncommissioned Abdiel that Samuel White & Co. was to be congratulated on their minefield.¹² On this operation, the ship first fired her guns in action, at an enemy aircraft overhead.¹³

The Abdiel was finally formally commissioned on 15 April. She was ordered to proceed to the Tail o’ the Bank on the Clyde to have workmen put right some nagging defects and to carry out her much-anticipated first-of-class trials. The trials were, once again, not to be. As the Captain was conducting a church service on a Sunday morning, two tugs approached the ship and informed her officers that they were to park her at a berth ‘as they were wanted in a hurry’. The church service ended prematurely and off went the Abdiel to the Princess Dock in Glasgow to have her defects corrected, to load equipment and to receive secret orders.

Those orders required the Abdiel to sail off to the Mediterranean bound for Malta and Alexandria carrying urgently needed aerial mines, 2pdr anti-tank guns and other military equipment, as well as some service passengers.¹⁴ She would be in company with the light cruiser Dido and the 5th Destroyer Flotilla, commanded by Captain Lord Mountbatten in the Kelly, with her sister-ships Kipling, Kelvin, Kashmir, Jackal and Jersey.¹⁵

The Abdiel set sail for Gibraltar on 20 April. On the way, the weather was good, but an enormous swell was running and each wave was of great length. The heavily-laden ship’s hull hogged and sagged as she reached the crest of a wave, resulting in a nasty tear in deck plates on the forecastle. In spite of her damage, the Abdiel got a chance to show what she could do. As Midshipman Goodwin wrote,

Being so new, the rest of the fleet knew little of the capabilities of the Abdiel class. This was demonstrated when, in calm weather, we approached the western entrance to the Straits of Gibraltar. Captain D [Mountbatten], wishing to get into harbour as quickly as possible ordered his destroyers to form line ahead formation and increase speed to 30 knots. Abdiel was told to act independently, presumably on the assumption that she would soon be left behind. I was fortunate to be on the bridge at the time to see and hear what transpired. As soon as the signal was received, the Captain called the Chief Engineer to him. After a brief discussion concerning the state of the engines and the remaining fuel, speed was increased. As we steamed past the Flotilla Leader we sent the signal ‘Will this do?’ We were already tied up and taking in fuel by the time the destroyers came in.¹⁶

With that incident, word of the Abdiel’s capabilities no doubt started getting around the fleet.

The Abdiel and her consorts arrived on the 24th and enjoyed a brief stay in Gibraltar. Orders were received forbidding anyone but naval personnel on deck, but, as the Captain recalled, a ‘considerable addition was made to the Officers and Ship’s Company’, as the ‘passengers entered into the spirit of the game’ and ‘moustaches were shaved off and so on’. The Captain recalled with satisfaction that the ruse was a success, such that when Admiral Somerville came aboard he asked where the passengers had been put.

The ships departed Gibraltar that evening, with Malta as the next port of call. The passage through the Sicilian Channel was delayed for one day due to bad weather and then was made on a brilliant, starlit night. The Captain was surprised that the enemy was silent, as the force, passing within four miles of the island of Pantelleria in line ahead and at 30 knots, presented a wonderful target for shore batteries.

Malta was reached on 28 April. At the time, the island was under heavy bombing and aerial mine attacks and ships were sometimes trapped in the harbour by mines. The Abdiel and the Dido unloaded ‘certain important stores’,¹⁷ and then sailed for Alexandria the day they arrived, just as an air raid on Malta developed, giving the Abdiel ‘a wonderful view of what the Malta A/A barrage could produce’. The same day the supply ship Breconshire and the 14th Destroyer Flotilla sailed for the same destination and Mountbatten’s 5th Flotilla was left at Malta.

On the voyage to Alexandria, the force was attacked by Ju 88 twin-engined bombers, which made shallow diving attacks. One plane put a stick of bombs about 150 yards off the Abdiel’s bow and another missed everyone by at least a half a mile. After dark, the Abdiel and Dido were detached to proceed at high speed for Alexandria.¹⁸ At 16.00 on 30 April, they reached Alexandria,¹⁹ joining the Mediterranean Fleet at a critical moment, shortly after it completed the evacuation of British and Dominion troops from Greece just ahead of the invading Germans and just before start of the battle for Crete. The Abdiel was quickly put to work and on 2 May was sent to Haifa in British-ruled Palestine to load mines.

The Abdiel digs in on the voyage to Alexandria. (National Maritime Museum N 31257)

The Abdiel arrives at Alexandria, 30 April 1941. (National Maritime Museum N 31262)

The C-in-C of the Mediterranean Fleet, Vice Admiral Andrew Browne Cunningham, quickly detected the ship’s Achilles heel. On 3 May, he wrote to the First Sea Lord;

I don’t know if you have realised the low endurance of the Abdiel. She can’t lay mines off Lampedusa [an island between Malta and Tunisia] from Alexandria and must refuel at Malta. So our minelaying there also depends on Malta being open. I suggest, if it’s not too late, that the question of fitting extra fuel tanks in the others be studied and, if successful, one of them be sent to replace her in due course.²⁰

Admiral Cunningham could nevertheless see the Abdiel’s worth; just ten days later, in a meeting that discussed the likely invasion of Crete, he pointed out that he had ‘a fast ship, the Abdiel, which could be used to run guns and other urgent equipment into Crete’.²¹ Cunningham was so enamoured of her speed that one day he signalled her to pass close by at speed, which she did at 35 knots, to have her picture taken. In the coming weeks and months, Admiral Cunningham was able to find some very useful employment for the speedy Abdiel that did not require her to traverse the Mediterranean without refuelling.

On 6 May, the Abdiel went to sea with the Mediterranean Fleet and took station as part of the destroyer screen.²² The Fleet’s sortie was but one part of Operation ‘MD.4’, a complex movement of convoys to Malta and Suda Bay, as well as the running from Gibraltar to Alexandria of the vital ‘Tiger’ convoy of merchant ships to reinforce the British Army in Egypt and warships to reinforce the Mediterranean Fleet.²³ On several occasions, the Fleet was heavily bombed and on board the Abdiel it seemed that she was the only target. She had a load of mines on board at the time and everyone on board ‘felt their position somewhat acutely’. One stick of bombs fell right across her bows, but caused her no damage.²⁴ While the Fleet returned to Alexandria, the Abdiel disembarked her mines at Haifa and then made her way to Alexandria. It had been planned to have her lay mines off Lampedusa the night of 10/11 May, but the operation was cancelled due to the uncertainly of her being able to fuel at Malta.²⁵

The Abdiel’s unique minelaying abilities were nevertheless soon put to work. On 17 May, she once again sailed from Alexandria to Haifa to embark mines,²⁶ and received orders to sail from Alexandria to lay two lines of mines inside and at the entrance to the Gulf of Patras between the islands of Levkas and Cephalonia off the western coast of Greece. On the evening of 19 May she departed Alexandria²⁷ to begin Operation ‘Mat One’ and proceeded to the target area at high speed.

On the outbound voyage, two enemy reconnaissance planes sighted the Abdiel, but by the use of diversionary courses she was able to shake them off. To the Captain, the lay was ‘a most eerie performance’, as the entrance to the Gulf of Patras was very hard to find at night and the first mines had to be laid just a quarter of a mile offshore. As the mine doors were opened, the mining party could be heard to mutter, ‘Lord! The Owners almost put us on the _____ beach’. Lieutenant Austen recalled it as a calm, clear night and ‘one had the feeling that even if those ashore did not see us they must hear the plop as the mines were dropped’ and ‘it seemed impossible that we could not be spotted’. No alarm was raised and beginning at 03.28 on 21 May the Abdiel proceeded to lay her 158 mines.

Once the minelaying was completed, the Abdiel made tracks to the south at full speed and was out of sight of land by dawn. It was intended that she would rendezvous with the Mediterranean Fleet to the southwest of Crete, but the fleet was not at the appointed position and the Abdiel continued on her way alone. Once she turned to the east, she became the object of three air attacks, one of them by thirty bombers that dropped everything they had but missed by a mile and a half. On 22 May she returned safely to Alexandria.²⁸

As it turned out, the waters off Cape Dukato were rich with targets for the Abdiel’s mines. At 05.40, a little more than two hours after the first mine hit the water, they claimed their first victim, the old Italian gunboat Pellegrino Matteucci, which was proceeding alone from Brindisi to Patras at a leisurely 7 knots. Of only 630 tons and armed with 76mm guns,²⁹ she sank immediately, her demise marked by a column of smoke. She went down with forty-one of her crew.

The Matteuci’s smoke was soon sighted by a convoy of three Italian tankers, which was escorted by the armed merchant cruiser Brindisi and the old 1811-ton destroyer Carlo Mirabello, armed with eight 4in guns.³⁰ At 06.30, the Mirabello hit another of the Abdiel’s mines, with more flames and smoke the result. The more substantial Mirabello stayed afloat for a time, but her captain decided to abandon her at 11.20 and she finally foundered at 12.00, about two miles south of the lighthouse at Cape Dukato. She took with her forty-four of her crew.

More pickings were on their way. A small but important convoy consisting of two large German transports, the Kybfels of 7764 tons and the Marburg of 7564 tons. They were carrying elements of the Wehrmacht’s 2nd Panzer Division, which had taken part in the invasion of Greece and was on its way from Patras in Greece to Taranto in Italy en route to Germany.³¹ On board the Marburg there was a young Panzergrenadier named Zaloudek, who wrote an account of the day’s events in his diary.³²

The Marburg and Kybfels had left Patras at 09.00 the morning of the 21st. The ships were escorted by two Italian aircraft, which seemed a bit weak to some of the men aboard, but they trusted in their commanders’ judgement. It was a sunny day and soldiers were allowed to sunbathe up on deck as long as they had their life jackets with them. Only a few soldiers were below deck. On the horizon, ships could be seen, with smoke rising from one of them. One of those ships, the Brindisi, sighted the Marburg and Kybfels and made ready to send a signal, ‘You’re heading into danger’.

It was too late. At 14.15 observers in the Marburg saw a huge fountain of water rising next to the Kybfels. She and the Marburg veered to port. An alarm was sounded in Marburg and then there was another explosion. All men were ordered up on deck and told to don their life jackets. In total, there were four explosions. From the Marburg, the Kybfels could be seen slowly disappearing, with men jumping from her deck. The captain of the Marburg soon ordered all men aboard her to jump into the water. Zaloudek jumped and was pleasantly surprised to find the water was warmer than he thought it would be. While she still could, the Marburg lowered at least one boat. As its occupants rowed away, they could see the Marburg down by the bow, with smoke streaming from her fires. Both ships went down, with a total of 121 men.³³ Most who survived the sinkings came ashore on the island of Cephalonia and those who had drowned were buried in Argustoli.

The steamer Marburg sinking after hitting an Abdiel mine. (Franz Steinzer, Die 2. Panzer-Division 1935-1945 [Friedburg: Podzun Pallas Verlag, 1977])

The authors of the German Naval War Diary was not pleased that the ships had not been warned about the mines and described the sinkings as a particularly severe blow. The ships went down with all the 2nd Panzer’s cargo, including sixty-six artillery pieces, ninety-three artillery tractors, fifteen armoured cars and 136 motor vehicles.³⁴ The Wehrmacht high command was at first informed that 122 tanks had been lost in the ships, but soon learned that they had already been transported to Taranto in an earlier convoy.³⁵ The Germans at first believed a British submarine was responsible for the sinking of their ships,³⁶ but they soon realised that mines were the cause.

Much of the lost materiel was not easy to replace, particularly the artillery and their prime movers.³⁷ Perhaps as a result of that, the 2nd Panzer Division missed the opening of Operation ‘Barbarossa’, the invasion of the Soviet Union, on 22 June 1941. Instead, in July the division was sent from Germany to Galicia in Poland and then in August to France. It did not reach the Eastern Front until October of that year, when it joined Army Group Centre. Arriving in time for the onset of the Russian winter, the division participated in the Wehrmacht’s final drive on Moscow. On 5 December, it was stopped just 25 kilometres from Moscow’s defensive perimeter, almost within sight of the Kremlin, and was forced to retreat for the first time in the war.³⁸ The 2nd Panzer Division’s losses to the Abdiel’s mines probably delayed its arrival on the Eastern Front and that delay may have made a difference in the outcome of the offensive against Moscow, if not the war on the Eastern Front. The Royal Navy had not only designed a ship capable of such an operation, but had boldly ordered and executed the operation and was amply awarded for it.

Not many ships can take credit for ‘sinking’ a Panzer Division or rather much of it, but the men of the Abdiel could have if they had known the extent of her success. Lieutenant Austen never learned of the Abdiel’s success, but Lieutenant-Commander Chavasse later heard from the Director of Naval Intelligence that the minefield ‘had been most successful. A German coastal convoy had gone into it and been decimated’.³⁹ It was not a bad payoff for the ship’s first minelay in the Mediterranean.

By the time the Abdiel returned to Alexandria, the battle for Crete had begun and her latent talents would soon become useful. The Germans had launched an airborne invasion of the island on 20 May and the fighting was fierce. At first, Crete’s defenders inflicted severe casualties on the Germans paratroopers and their Ju 52 transport planes took heavy losses. Then the surviving paratroopers captured the vital Maleme airfield and the Germans began to bring in reinforcements by air.

While the fighting took place ashore, the Mediterranean Fleet turned back efforts to bring in reinforcements by sea and escorted reinforcement to the island. Almost completely unprotected by the RAF, the Royal Navy had to operate in waters close to Luftwaffe bases. As its ships endured long hours of bombing attacks, they often ran low on anti-aircraft ammunition and losses mounted. On 22 May the battleship Warspite was badly damaged by a bomb and the light cruisers Gloucester and Fiji were sunk. On 23 May bombers sank the Kelly and Kashmir from Lord Mountbatten’s 5th Destroyer Flotilla. The Mediterranean Fleet was in the fight of its life.

On the evening of 23 May, the Abdiel sailed from Alexandria for Suda Bay in Crete with 50 tons of ammunition and stores and 195 men from ‘A’ Battalion of ‘Layforce’, which consisted of two battalions of ‘Special Service’ or commando troops commanded by Colonel Robert Laycock.⁴⁰ The next day, she passed through the Kaso Strait in the evening in a thick fog, during which the ship was sighted by one enemy aircraft, which immediately made off on being fired at. A BBC report that ‘massive reinforcements were on their way to Crete’ caused some amusement on the Abdiel.⁴¹

No further incident occurred until arrival at Suda Bay at 23.30 on the 24th. The bay contained many beached and burning wrecks and there was also quite a lot of bombing and gunfire in the surrounding district. Troops and stores were disembarked alongside the small pier and a number of evacuees embarked, including four Greek cabinet ministers, sixty walking wounded and several POWs, including a young Luftwaffe pilot.

At 02.00 on the 25th the Abdiel sailed from Suda Bay at 34 knots to rendezvous with a cruiser squadron to the west of Crete. After sailing, a signal was received informing her that the cruisers would not be there and that the ship would have to make her way home by herself. The POWs were aboard were very nervous, knowing that the ship would be passing very close to German bomber bases, and were convinced the ship would be sunk.

The Abdiel experienced heavy weather passing through the Kithera Channel and speed had to be reduced to a mere 28 knots. As a result, the ship was far from being out of sight of land by dawn. A reconnaissance plane sighted her, leading the Captain to expect a heavy air attack. Instead, she was only attacked by four aircraft, which went after her one after the other. The POWs could have relaxed, as the ship was not hit, but she was near-missed, such that the men in the Transmitting Station below decks could hear bomb splinters striking the hull. The Abdiel safely reached Alexandria that same evening.

There would be no rest for the weary. Orders were immediately received to take on another load for Suda Bay, in this case troops and stores that destroyers had been unable to land in Crete because of bad weather. The Abdiel sailed from Alexandria at 06.00 on the 26th in company with the destroyers Hero and Nizam, with the remaining 750 men of Layforce,⁴² including Colonel Laycock, his intelligence officer and famous novelist Captain Evelyn Waugh,⁴³ and about 50 tons of stores. The ships were warned to expect a large number of wounded for evacuation and suitable arrangements had to be made.

The passage to Suda Bay on a brilliant day with maximum visibility was, surprisingly, made without incident. Captain Waugh wrote in his diary that ‘we were shown no hospitality; the ship’s officers were tired out’, but he got a large cabin to himself ‘and spent the day in great comfort and contentment’.⁴⁴ At about 18.00, the ship’s crew all blew up their life belts somewhat tightly on receiving a signal from the Commander-in-Chief saying that intercepted enemy messages indicated that the heaviest scale of dive-bombing and torpedo attacks could be expected just before dusk.

On arrival in Suda Bay at about 23.00 on the night of 26/27 May, it became apparent that a very confused situation existed. Instead of empty lighters for the commandos and full ones with wounded, nothing but ones full of the whole of the Naval Base came alongside and even they were slow to do so. While Laycock and his staff were waiting in the Captain’s cabin to disembark, a terrified naval officer in a greatcoat and shorts came in to tell them how horrible things were ashore. It was reported that the Germans were about a mile and a half up the road from the town.

According to Evelyn Waugh, ‘No light could be shown on deck and there was confusion between the wounded and runaways and our troops waiting in the dusk to disembark’. Somehow, in all the chaos the three ships disembarked the commandos but only some of their stores. In the haste of the moment, some items, such as valuable wireless sets, had to be thrown overboard. The ships embarked 930 walking wounded and other unneeded men,⁴⁵ about 500 of them in the Abdiel, all in the space of an hour and then the three ships sailed at full speed for Alexandria.

At dawn on 27 May, when the Abdiel was just turning the northeastern corner of Crete, the first enemy aircraft appeared, in the form of three large bombers. From this time on until about 10.30 to 11.00, the three ships were under almost continuing bombing attack by a variety of aircraft, including one large-scale dive-bombing attack that was concentrated on the Hero. No hull damage was done to any ship, but the Hero had her main circulators put out of action, with the result that she could only steam at full speed and keep herself going by the scoop effect through the circulator inlets. Alexandria was finally reached at 19.00 the same day.

The Abdiel had landed the last reinforcements to be sent in to Crete.⁴⁶ On the 26th the Germans had broken though the main defensive line and the defence of the island had begun to collapse. General Freyberg had to convince General Wavell in Cairo and Wavell had to convince a reluctant Winston Churchill that the battle was lost and that evacuation was necessary. The order to evacuate troops from Crete was finally given and began to proceed. Evacuation would be difficult, as the port at Suda Bay had been lost, leaving only Heraklion and the small port at Sphakia on the south coast of Crete. The Abdiel was kept at short notice until she could play her part.

On 30 May the Abdiel received orders to sail with the light cruiser Phoebe, flying the flag of Admiral King, on the 31st for one last evacuation, this one from Sphakia. The two ships, to which were added three destroyers, the Kimberley, Jackal and Hotspur,⁴⁷ sailed at 06.00 on the 31st. The passage to Sphakia was made mostly without incident, save for three air attacks between 18.25 and 19.05 in which none of the bombs fell very close and one Ju 88 may have been damaged.⁴⁸

The ships reached Sphakia shortly before midnight. The Abdiel was at full Action Stations because it was not known if it was still in British hands until English voices were heard coming over the water.⁴⁹ In moments, the first landing craft came alongside. The evacuation continued from about 11.20 until about 02.30 on 1 June, at which time the force had to sail in order to obtain the benefit of the fighter protection that had been ordered.

The ships together had embarked 4050 men, including just twenty-seven men from Layforce.⁵⁰ The Abdiel alone had embarked 1200 men. Many of the passengers were New Zealanders, including a number of Maori soldiers of 28 Battalion, whose mood was one of resentment at having to give up the fight. Midshipman Goodwin noticed that some of the Maoris had strange things attached to their belts, which on closer examination turned out to be the ears of the enemy they had killed in combat, according to Maori custom.⁵¹ Lieutenant-Commander Chavasse greatly admired one Maori officer who had had both his arms broken, but had gotten himself from Suda Bay over the hills to Sphakia.⁵²

One of the Abdiel’s Maori evacuees was Second Lieutenant Rangi France Logan. Born in Hastings on the North Island on 3 July 1916, he held the rank of Command Sergeant Major in D Company when the Battalion was sent to England in 1940 to defend Britain from a German invasion. While in Britain, he was one of the first two Maoris to be sent to Sandhurst for training and passed out with an ‘A Outstanding’.⁵³ After hard fighting in the Maleme sector in the opening days of the battle for Crete, Lieutenant Logan and his men began an exhausting retreat, over the White Mountains and along the Askifou Plain until they reached the high ground above Sphakia. There, they could finally rest and find something to eat and drink for the first time in days. Armed with just a captured Luger, Lieutenant Logan helped form the rearguard at Sphakia, barring the way to the Germans as well as to Allied stragglers. At nightfall on the 31st, the order came for Logan and his men to move to the beach to be embarked. Lieutenant Logan recalled, ‘I suppose every man had the urge to get ahead and make sure he got into a boat, but there was no such move from any of the men. If anyone felt the urge to do so, the urge for self-preservation, he kept in under control.’

Finally, after all of his men had boarded a boat, it was Lieutenant Logan’s turn to leave.

In time I came to the water’s edge and this was the last boat, loaded deeper into the water, the dark shape of the boat getting nearer; I reached out my hands, stifling a little feeling of panic – if the boat should move out now – and then my hands were on it. I grasped the gunwale, nothing could make me let go now; I pulled myself out of the water and my boys pulled me into the boat – oh, the relief and then the boat was grounded because of the excessive load, so several of us got into the water again to push. It didn’t take much effort and the boat was clear and we hastened to clamber aboard again. As the boat moved quietly away from the shore to the waiting ships, the evacuation of Crete was almost over; I was the last NZ’er to leave Crete in the official evacuation.

Lieutenant-Commander Paul Chavasse, a chief petty officer and a rating examine the taut wire measuring gear. (Robin Pleydell-Bouverie)

‘In no time at all’, he recalled, he and his men had boarded the Abdiel via the stern doors. Once in the bowels of the ship, Logan and his men ‘gathered around huge chests containing cheese and biscuits; we just ate and ate, nothing to say, but thankful to be there’.⁵⁴

Other New Zealanders aboard the ship were just as grateful for the ride. Lieutenant Alex Atchison of the 2nd New Zealand Division’s Cavalry Regiment wrote, ‘The ship’s crew gave us biscuits and hot cocoa. It seemed the best meal we had ever had. Afterwards the Officers brought us whiskey and offered us their beds. Everyone was so tired that I am sure that those who slept on the floor [sic: deck] were just as happy as the ones with beds’.⁵⁵ Private Charles Pankhurst of 23 Battalion wrote, ‘The sailors fed us and treated us very well’ and ‘We were in the space where mines were usually kept and, as we were very crowded, it was a hot as a furnace. But it would not have mattered to us if the ship had been a slave trader so glad were we to be off Crete.’⁵⁶ Some of the famished passengers got a bit carried away and helped themselves to store crates containing tomato puree. The result was predictable. With so many passengers, the ship’s sanitary arrangements were overwhelmed and she would later need a considerable hosing-down.

On the voyage, Rangi Logan observed that the Abdiel was tucked in behind the two destroyers; being faster, she would zig-zag and settle in behind one destroyer and then zig-zag and settle in behind the other. ‘Anxious eyes would scan the skies behind us, looking for sign of enemy bombers’ and the passage back to Alexandria was made under almost continuous red warning. Nevertheless, except for one ‘halfhearted attempt at intervention’ that hit nothing but got a hot reception from the anti-aircraft gunners, the passage was without incident.

Unfortunately, it was not so for two venerable anti-aircraft cruisers, Coventry and Calcutta, that Admiral Cunningham sent from Alexandria to shepherd them in. Ignoring the Abdiel’s troop-laden band, a Ju 88 attacked up-sun at 09.45 and put two bombs into the Calcutta’s engineering spaces. She sank in just five minutes, with two officers and 116 ratings,⁵⁷ the Royal Navy’s last loss in the painful battle for Crete.

As Alexandria came into sight, Major Dyer of 28 Battalion told his men, ‘Let’s tidy ourselves as best we can, smarten ourselves up and march off the ship like the good soldiers we are.’ His men went to work with a will and did what they could. The force arrived at Alexandria at 17.00 and Midshipman Goodwin recalled the Abdiel’s arrival. ‘Once we knew which side we were going to at the landing wharf, all troops were cleared to the other side. This gave us quite a list, which quickly prompted an anxious signal from the C-in-C, Admiral Cunningham, asking if we had suffered any damage’, but he was assured there was none.⁵⁸ Once the men had disembarked, waiting trucks took them away to camps.

Admiral Cunningham signalled, ‘I congratulate you all on a very successful effort on the night of 31/5’.⁵⁹ The evacuation of Crete was finally over. By this time, the Abdiel was one of only five or six ships in the Mediterranean Fleet left unscathed. In the previous forty-two days, she had been at sea for thirty-six of them and had sailed about 17,000 miles.⁶⁰ The Abdiel had played a vital part in the battle for Crete, though certainly not in a role she was designed for.

The month of June was relatively quiet for the Abdiel, as she was not needed in the Syrian Campaign and all that came her way was working-up, drills and exercises, a boiler clean and various odd jobs. Perhaps at this point she was repainted into an unusual scheme of light gray overall with very dark gray or black geometric shapes on her funnels and superstructure and on her hull extending from the waterline to the uppermost row of scuttles.

On 21 June, the Abdiel was joined by her sister-ship Latona, so she finally had a companion that could keep up with her. The Latona had sailed from England all the way around the Cape of Good Hope, an adventure in itself. More adventures would follow for both ships.