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  • Image: Glowworm Prepares to Ram June 26, 2015

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Image: Glowworm Prepares to Ram

    The chance event that led to this extraordinary WW2 picture was a sailor, an ableseaman Ricky, being washed overboard in heavy seas from his ship HMS Glowworm. Glowworm under its captain Gerard Roope had been, 5 April 1940, one of four destroyer escorts of HMS Renown rallying out from Scapa Flow to prevent Hitler’s invasion […]

    Enemy Gives Medal for Ship Sinking June 17, 2015

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Enemy Gives Medal for Ship Sinking

    There are very occasional instances of enemy officials reporting on the gallantry and heroism of opposite numbers. Captain Roope of the HMS Glowworm was, for example, given his Victoria cross in part because of the testimony of a German captain, Heye, whose ship had been rammed by Roope in 1940. However, there is one instance […]

    Teetotallers Unlucky at Sea March 27, 2015

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Teetotallers Unlucky at Sea

    In 1914, a month into the First World War, a British ship the Fisgard II was lost in a gale (not through enemy action) in the English Channel. Sixteen of the sixty four abroad were drowned. There followed an inquest and inquiries and, as sometimes happens, the crew began to make sense of things in […]

    Sunk Three Times in an Hour November 21, 2014

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Sunk Three Times in an Hour

    Beachcombing’s grandfather was sunk three times in the last World War. But the three times in question were spread out over seven years… Imagine, instead, being sunk three times in just under an hour, not only that, we are not talking about lonely frigates or minesweepers, these were three British battleships: HMS Cressy, Aboukir and […]

    Last Casualty of the Great War? April 22, 2014

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Last Casualty of the Great War?

    The last death in the Great War took place, as is often the case with such conflagarations, long after most of those involved had put down their weapons. 21 June 1919, the German High Fleet had illegally scuttled itself at Scapa Flow in Orkney, the island group to the north of Britain. The aftermath was […]

    Gordon Selby: The Luckiest Survivor of WW2? April 2, 2014

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Gordon Selby: The Luckiest Survivor of WW2?

    Long, long ago I did an article on the unluckiest individuals in history. But spurred on by the Gannet Club I’ve started to think in terms of the luckiest and I’ve come across an absolute winner, Gordon Selby, a much decorated son of a Wiltshire farrier. GS (obit 2007) was twenty when the Second World […]

    The Most Exciting School Trip in History: 21 June 1919 February 19, 2014

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    The Most Exciting School Trip in History: 21 June 1919

    School trips are often fairly maudlin affairs: go to a local zoo, don’t pet the lions; walk through a city park, buddy up as you pass the homeless people; polish the sun-washed floors of the local museum with fifty infant feet… But one school trip that any of us would have wanted to be on […]

    The Royal Navy and Dogs of War January 29, 2014

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    The Royal Navy and Dogs of War

    Military services are closed societies with their own rules, sensible, silly and bizarre by turn. Few of these military cliques have, however, the traditions to rival the UK’s senior service, the Royal Navy. The Royal Navy, indeed, had everything from the banal (piping officers aboard), to the curious (the different toasts on different nights of […]

    Spitfires and Radars in 1944 November 12, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Spitfires and Radars in 1944

    Beachcombing has a terrible record of not respecting anniversaries. But today, in part to subvert all the 11.11.11 nonsense (has the meteor already gone by?) and in part to assuage his own guilt at not having a red poppy in his lapel (the price of living in Italy) he thought he would remember, through an […]

    Naval Blunders August 20, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient, Contemporary, Medieval, Modern
    Naval Blunders

    Beachcombing has been having a bit of a naval season and it was in celebration of this that he picked up Naval Blunders by Geoffrey Regan. Now, of course, books on blunders in history are commonplace. But this is arguably the best of all those with which Beach is familiar, in part because of the […]

    Taxis in the Mid Atlantic August 19, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Taxis in the Mid Atlantic

    Haunting scene from the Battle of the Atlantic