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Life on a Whaler
during World War 2
Bill Smith's Story
Brought up on the
Shetland Isles I was a butcher?s boy but wanted more
from life. At 16, in Leith, concealing my age I joined
the crew of a Christian Salveson Norwegian whaler. I had
a medical, the Doctor was a drunk and did not do it
properly, but I was fit anyway. These were desperate
days when Britain needed every ounce of whale meat,
every drop of whale-oil, for, it was the start of World
War 2.
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Winston
Churchill later wrote that the only thing that
really frightened him during the war was the
U-boats. After the Battle of Britain, we could
not be invaded, but, the U-boats could starve us
into surrender. Britain was unprepared for war
and merchant ships were defenceless against the
U-boats. |
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The Battle of the
Atlantic, which we almost lost, was the most important
battle of the European Theatre. Navy escorts were
ineffective little sloops which herded us into convoys.
Later, the Navy and RAF got the upper hand over the
U-boats, but the U-boat commanders said it was ?the
Happy Time? when I first went to sea. They sank many of
our ships and killed thousands of our merchant seamen.
They almost killed me and I am lucky to be alive.
My bed was a gunny sack
I stuffed with straw ? we called it ?The Donkey?s
Breakfast? We would sail out of Liverpool, assemble into
convoys escorted by the sloops. When in the open sea
steamed alone to the Dutch West Indies to refuel and go
on to the Antarctic. In Curacao or Aruba we had run-ins
with tough Dutch police, but, we were a pretty tough
bunch ourselves. We were away for 6 months at a time,
and, would sail back via Freetown in Sierra Leone where
we refuelled, convoyed and went on to Liverpool. Once, a
crew member was swimming round the ship in the warm
African sea as another was almost pulled off the side
whilst line-fishing. It was a huge shark, the same size
as the one in that ridiculous ?Jaws? movie, but a lot
meaner and tougher. We were a hungry crew. The only
decent food we seemed to get was whale meat. We hauled
the shark on board and it too went to help the war
effort! Nothing could be wasted then.
The ship?s winches used
to haul whales aboard were bigger than a four-bed-roomed
house. The steel cables were two inches thick. The old
sweats on the crew kidded me that once I saw the blood
and gore of whaling I would not be able to take it. They
said a young boy like me would not stand the hard
dangerous work, noise, slippery deck and the twelve hour
shifts. This rough kidding prepared me for what was to
come. I found I could cope with the back-breaking work.
I had seen blood and gore in an abattoir and found I
could handle that too. If the crew had not given me all
that kidding maybe it would have been harder to cope.
However, nothing could prepare us for being torpedoed.
As we went through the ?roaring forties? I could not
believe how high were the waves. These are world?s
stormiest seas.
I will go on to tell of
the whaling and about being torpedoed. No-one could ever
properly describe how tough and terrifying it was to be,
but I shall try.
After steaming 10,000 miles we arrived in South Georgia,
where Sir Ernest Shackleton fetched up 1916 after his
epic journey. Whaling was not for the delicate.
?Catcher? ships harpooned the whales then injected them
with compressed air to keep them afloat.
Factory Ships upon which
I served would haul them in and process them. This was
called ?flensing? which meant hacking them to pieces.
Many a time we were covered from head to toe with blood,
oil, and worse. I once saw a man knocked clean off his
feet by a jet of blood that squirted out of a dead
whale. Once I felt I was drowning when suddenly drenched
in gallons of
spermaceti oil from the head of sperm whale.
I must say it was a
harsh and cruel business. However, back home people were
going hungry and the whale oil was used for many vital
things. We hunted Fin Whales, Sperm Whales and Blue
Whales. Sometimes we used dead whales as fenders between
the ships. This meant slinging the whale?s body
alongside so as to prevent the ships grinding together
in the waves. These would go rotten and stink.
We wore knee high leather boots and, to the top of our
thighs we had canvas covers. Work was exhausting and
dangerous with continual pressure to cut corners. I saw
broken limbs, knocked out teeth, and men knocked
unconscious. I still have a scar where a broken harpoon
piece tore a huge gash in my wrist when I held down the
whale whilst a Norwegian cut into it with a razor sharp
flensing knife shaped like a big hockey stick.
The skin was about ⅝
inch thick and below was a six inch layer of blubber.
The blubber was rendered down in ?kettles? and the fleet
stunk to high heaven. The bones were cut to pieces with
a huge axe.
Sometimes whilst the
whale was hauled up with the winch the cutters dug in
the flensing knife. This was fast but dangerous. One
slip and that knife would have gone right through the
person holding it. Injured men were shoved to one side
to be treated. One man with both legs broken was
immediately rushed to hospital in the Falkland Islands
in a catcher across the roughest sea in the world.
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Anyone who did
not work at breakneck speed was cursed and
harassed. People could become lonely and
depressed. There was no time to listen to
anyone?s problems. A Norwegian nicknamed
?Smiler? was found dead having killed himself
because his wife had been collaborating with the
Germans who occupied his country.
When not working
we were dog-tired and ravenous. We ate the tough
whale meat, but it was high in protein and very
nourishing. I had a box brownie camera and when
the weather was too rough for whaling I jammed
myself between a ventilator and a hatch and
photographed the catcher-ships. When developed
these showed the unbelievable angles to which
the ships were taken by the waves. Someone stole
those photographs. |
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On the home stretch visits to Freetown and Liverpool
helped us forget our harsh lives. However, in Liverpool
the bombing was so bad we thought we were safer at sea.
This was quite wrong as I shall describe.
On one trip we were just
off the Mull of Kintyre heading out to go whaling. It
had just got dark, I was below. There was a huge bang
and the alarm bells sounded. A nimble 17 year-old, I
vaulted over my bunk and belted up to the deck. The
companion ways were full of panicking men. As I opened
the hatch door the internal lights automatically
switched off leaving me blinded in the darkness. I
stumbled along the deck luckily remembering to duck low
beneath a lifeboat. The bang was from another torpedoed
ship and I saw it burning.
Even today I can still
see the vivid colours of a sudden explosion close to me.
A giant hand seemed to lift me in the air. I slammed
into the funnel as the ship listed. I got to the side,
but did not jump because the kapok lifejacket could have
broken my neck as I hit the water. A voice shouted ?Get
in there?s only three of us?. I stepped into thin air
over the side because their lifeboat swung suddenly
swung away, someone grabbed me by my hair and hauled me
in and I tumbled to the bottom. A maddened crewman
lunged at me and I shoved him off. Only one davit was
manned so the boat tilted, luckily someone manned the
other but we splashed in stern first and scooped up
gallons of water.
My face was smashed by
the swinging lifeboat and bled. Someone took charge and
told me to man the bow as he rowed to the side. He
bawled that if I must obey when ordered to push off.
Scores of crew scrabbled down the rope ladder and
tumbled aboard. We became overloaded and I pushed off as
ordered and cursed by those we had to leave. We rowed
away and took the steering oar from a Norwegian who had
gone mad. We wrapped the swimmers? arms into our boat
ratlines. One man seemed to sit on the surface, but was
actually perched on the bow of an upended lifeboat. We
approached a ship, but it broke in two and we rowed away
to avoid the suction. A U-boat watched us so it could
sink any ship that stopped to help, but, after an hour
the ?SS Industrious? saved us. They dare not stop, but
threw down a rope and dragged us. Cautiously, I waited
till last in case our rescuers were torpedoed. The crew
calmly tended the scores of survivors on deck. A man
screamed in agony, somehow his false teeth were jammed
right down his throat. A crewman reached in and yanked
them out. This was not funny like it sounds. I huddled
on the deck and when it was light we arrived in Larne.
Miraculously only one crewman died.
We were hurried along as
other survivors were coming along. On a railway station
bench I slept and an Irish girl woke me saying ?look,
he?s just a lad?. On the train I came across a friend
with terrible bruises who did not want to make a fuss
so, I got him to hospital. Ferried to Liverpool and
trained to Edinburgh we were put in a hotel. Only 24
hours ago I had been in my cabin, and, we had not eaten.
I was the only English speaker in my group. The
receptionist gave me a pack of Capstan and the
Norwegians shouted for cigarettes.
I was home for
four weeks then re-called. I continued whaling for
the rest of the war and will not forget my crewmates
and the brave men of SS Industrious. |
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Life
on a Whaler during World War 2
