HMT Windermere

For the next 14 months (26 July 1942 until 11 October 1943) Signalman Brooks served under Skipper Jack Mawer RNR aboard HMT Windermere (FY 207.)

HMT Windermere belonged to the Lake Class of anti-submarine whalers. There were six in the class, originally designed and built as commercial Norwegian whalers but taken over by the Admiralty midway through construction. They were excellent sea boats, fast and very manoeuvrable and could stay at sea in the foulest of weather.

HMT Windermere was built in 1939 by Smith’s Dock Co. Ltd in South Bank and Stockton. Launched on the 21st of July that year, she was commissioned into the Royal Navy on the 8th November. As an anti-submarine vessel, she would act as both convoy escort and as part of an offensive anti-submarine strike force. For a small ship, she had an eventful war.

Her Skipper Jack Mawer had already seen action. Mentioned in dispatches on 11th July 1940 for heroism displayed in the face of the enemy, Mawer survived the sinking of his ship HMT Bradman to bombing by German aircraft during the Allied evacuation of Andalsnes in Norway on 25th April 1940.

Mawer became Skipper of HMS Windermere in July 1941. A month later they were involved in the second of only six U-Boat captures during the war, U-570.

Two months later, on 12th September, Skr. Mawer took Windermere out into the North Atlantic to shepherd Convoy SC 42 back into Liverpool after the sixty-five ship convoy had been attacked over the three nights of the 9th, 10th & 11th September by fifteen U-boats of the Markgraf Wolf Pack. Sixteen merchant ships were sunk for the loss of 2 U-boats, the worst Allied loss that year.

1942 REFIT & SCAPA FLOW

After the month long refit of 2 generators in Greenock, HMT Windermere sailed north to Loch Ewe arriving in Aultbea that evening. For the next 3 weeks, the log is blank until a departure date of 30th September from Iceland. Then another gap of 18 days until an arrival at Scapa Flow on 18th October, returning to Tórshavn in the Faroes for 3 days from the 5th to 8th November 1942.

1943 Christmas in Iceland

From 8th November 1942 to 30th January 1943 Signalman Brooks was stationed in Reykjavik, or Hvitanes to be more precise, a small peninsular of land jutting out into the Hvalfjörður. Just big enough for 250 buildings and a ‘town’ that includes a cinema, workshop, housing, lighting, heating, and everything a small British force needed.  The pier (now ruined – see main photo of HMT Celia) was built to load and offload equipment for the base. The Northern Lights must have been spectacular.

Iceland began the war as neutral but its strategic position in the North Atlantic, crucial to both the Allies and Axis powers would prevent the Icelandic parliament from pursuing a non-belligerent policy. Britain had offered assistance to Iceland after the outbreak of war but the Reykjavik government declined, reaffirming its neutrality. But a strong German diplomatic presence on the island, combined with her strategic importance, unnerved Churchill.

After failing to persuade the Icelandic government to join the Allies, the British invaded on the morning of 10th May 1940. They met no resistance and the freezing waters of the Hvalfjörður became home to the Icelandic Command of the Royal Navy. The landscape around Hvalfjörður is varied and beautiful, with wide areas of flat land ringed by majestic mountains enclosing an anchorage 30 Km long and 5 Km wide. Safe from long-range German aircraft and south-westerly gales, the fjörður became the staging post for the Arctic PQ/QP Convoys to Russia which began with Operation Dervish on 21 August 1941.

The 10th Anti-Submarine Striking Force

Signalman Brooks and HMT Windermere were now part of the 10th Anti-Submarine Striking Force operating under the flag of Rear Admiral F H G Dalrymple-Hamilton, Iceland Command and based in Reykjavik. The force consisted of all four Lake Class anti-submarine whalers; HMT Buttermere, HMT Thirlmere, HMT Wastwater and HMT Windermere.

The New Year heralded the same routines, carried out in the mind-numbing cold. HMT Windermere was back in Loch Ewe on the 15 January, then north to the remote Seyðisfjörður on the east Icelandic coast, an auxiliary base for British & US warships preparing for Arctic Convoy. The wreck of the SS Grillo, a British tanker sunk by German aircraft in 1944 and now one of Iceland’s popular diving wrecks, is a reminder of Seyðisfjörður’s turbulent past.

By the end of March 1943, HMT Windermere was in Scrabster harbour, the base for the ferry operations that transported explosives from the Scottish mainland to the naval base on Scapa Flow.

Just weeks earlier, the Arctic Convoy had reached its nadir in the disastrous Convoy PQ17. Due to the perceived threat from the German battleship Tirpitz, a series of misguided signals sent from The Admiralty to the covering warships ending with the infamous signal ‘Convoy is to scatter’ left the Escort Commander in no doubt that Tirpitz was about to appear over the horizon (in fact she was still anchored in a Fjord in Trondheim.) With the merchant ships now scattered, 24 of the 35 ships that left Hvalfjörður were sunk by U-boats and aircraft.

CONVOY

In September 1943 HMT Windermere was one of four escorts to cover convoy UR 40 (Inc. HMS Angle, HMS Portsdown & HMS Yestor.) Just 2 merchant ships were escorted, the Greek Agia Varvara at 2,433 tons and the Dublin-based Liseta at 2,580 tons. The convoy departed Loch Ewe on 7th September arriving in Reykjavik five days later. The return leg 2 days later ( RU 40) arrived in Loch Ewe with eight merchants and three escorts, HMS Windermere remaining in Reykjavik. The UR series of convoys ran the Loch Ewe to Reykjavik route every week from 1941 throughout the war without cancellation or a single ship loss – 169 convoys escorting 1060 merchant ships in total.

The routine of patrols and escorts for a small ship in very big seas finally took its toll when HMT Windermere was taken in hand by the shipyards of Glasgow and underwent a major refurbishment. Due for completion on Christmas Day 1943, Signalman Brooks had already left HMT Windermere and reappears on the Payment & Victualling records back at HMS Europa, Lowestoft on 11th October. Apart from one day’s allocation to HMS Beaver of the Trawler Relief Pool, my father would serve the next seven months aboard HMT Ephretah.

HMT Windermere survived the war and was sold back to Norway. Renamed SUDERØY VII she fished in the Arctic until 1957 and then laid up at Vibrandsøy in Haugesund before sold again to Honduras as EL CONQUISTADOR in 1961.