Nordfeld and the Raleigh, The

DESCRIPTION: The "Nordfeld" and the "Raleigh" are two ships wrecked close together in the Strait of Belle Isle. The singer tells of the scavenging of both ships and remarks that had he or his listeners been there, they would have partaken in the spoils.
AUTHOR: George Williams
EARLIEST DATE: 1929 (Greenleaf/Mansfield-BalladsAndSeaSongsOfNewfoundland)
KEYWORDS: wreck ship
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Aug 1922 - Wreck of the Raleigh
FOUND IN: Canada(Newf)
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Greenleaf/Mansfield-BalladsAndSeaSongsOfNewfoundland 142, "The Nordfeld and the Raleigh" (1 text, 1 tune)
Doyle-OldTimeSongsAndPoetryOfNewfoundland, "The Nordfeld and the Raleigh" (1 text, 1 tune): p. 47 in the 2nd edition
Blondahl-NewfoundlandersSing, p. 64, "The Norfeld and the Raleigh" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #6346
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Old Mayflower" (theme of wreckers) and references there
NOTES [2167 words]: The HMS Raleigh was a new light cruiser on a tour of the United States and Canada when the captain was persuaded to go off course through the Strait of Belle Isle for some good fishing. It wrecked near the Point Amour lighthouse in Labrador. For these and other details, consult David J. Molloy, The First Landfall: Historic Lighthouses of Newfoundland and Labrador (St. John's: Breakwater, 1994), pp. 94-96. Currant Island, the author's home, is on the Newfoundland side just south of the Strait and not particularly close to the events in the ballad. - SH
Although several sources call her a light cruiser, the Raleigh was designed and built with 7.5" guns (Jane's-WWI, p. 56), making her a heavy cruiser (although that term had not come into use when she was built). She was the sixth Royal Navy ship to be named after Walter Raleigh (Smith, p. 177). After World War I, she became part of the British North Atlantic squadron (Galgay/McCarthy, p. 57). This was not an area where there was much action (even by 1920s standards), so she did some touring and showing the flag -- a suitable use for a ship that was a good sea-boat, with high freeboards, good habitability, and good ventilation (Smith, p. 194) but that wasn't a good fighting ship. In 1922, that tour took her to Labrador. On August 8, she departed Hawke's Bay, Newfoundland, to go to Forteau, Labrador (Prim/McCarthy, p. 86; Forteau is in that little tiny corner of southern Labrador just east of the Quebec/Labrador boundary; it's the narrowest part of the Strait of Belle Isle).
Unfortunately, neither Captain Bromley nor any of the ship's officers had sailed the area before (at least according to Prim/McCarthy, p. 87; Rohmer, p. 29 says they knew the area), and none realized how treacherous the waters were, especially for a ship with such a deep draught. Plus it was a foggy day with extremely low visibility. Bromley wasn't even on the bridge for most of this period; a junior officer said he wasn't feeling well. The navigation officer, Leslie Bott, was left in charge of navigating the strait (Rohmer, p. 31), and chose the course that led to her destruction (Rohmer, p. 33).
The crew had little warning when an iceberg appeared off their bow. Desperately they steered around it -- and ended up in shallow water in fog so thick that they could not see or hear the lighthouse just a few hundred yards away (although Smith, p. 190, denies that the grounding was the result of seeing the iceberg). Although the ship slowed to just six knots (so Prim/McCarthy, p. 87) or eight knots (so Rohmer, p. 33 and Smith, p. 190; this seems to be supported by the official report on p. 36 of Rohmer), it was still too fast. She went hard aground about two hundred yards from the Point Amour lighthouse outside the entrance to Forteau's harbor (Prim/McCarthy, p. 87; Rohmer, p. 46, has a stunning photo of the ship and the lighthouse almost next to each other. Smith, p. 182, reports that the name L'Anse Amour was a corruption of "L'Anse aux Mort," "Cove of the Dead," because of the many shipwrecks there, but I suspect that's folklore).
There apparently was no possibility of using her boats to get her afloat; Captain Bromley reported that they all had holes in them (Rohmer, p. 37) -- which sounds as if she had not been properly maintained even before the grounding.
Captain Bromley at once called for volunteers to run a line to shore. The cutter they used capsized in the heavy seas. One officer got a line ashore, but ten men died in the process. They were the only casualties; everyone else made it ashore along the line (Prim/McCarthy, p. 88; Smith, p. 184, has a list of the casualties).
There were other ships in the Raleigh's squadron, and Admiral Pakenham's flagship Calcutta arrived the next day (Rohmer, p. 41), but no immediate arrangements were made for the crew. That put about 700 men ashore at Forteau (population 177) and L'Anse Amour (just a few houses). The men had to subsist for the most part on supplies taken from the ship until arrangements were made to take them home (Galgay/McCarthy, p. 59).
Although the fog didn't last long, the weather -- which is rarely good in Labrador -- stayed bad for many days, further damaging the ship and making it harder to do anything about it (Rohmer, pp. 55-57); it wasn't easy even to get the men on ships to take them home.
Two days after the wreck, a salvage ship, the Royal Strathcona arrived, and divers inspected the wreck, finding a large hole in the bottom (Prim/McCarthy, p. 89). The bilge keel was broken and the much of the ship flooded (Rohmer, p. 58). It was thought that it would take seven weeks to get her in condition to be floated off -- if the weather didn't make things worse. In essence, the ship could have been saved if she were near a decent port, but that condition did not apply. The salvage firm refused a "no cure, no pay" contract; they were not convinced the ship could be saved (Rohmer, p. 59). The Raleigh was eventually declared a total loss; although some equipment was taken off, there was no attempt to re-float the ship (Whitley, p. 80), even though she was still only about five years old.
Admiral Pakenham ordered a court of inquiry, using the captains of the other ships in his squadron, on August 17 (Rohmer, p. 52). Most of the blame went to Captain Bromley and Commander Bott, although they had a little left over for the Officer of the Watch because he didn't entirely understand the chain of command under which he operated (Rohmer, p. 53). The Board was critical also of the way the ship's equipment was managed. On September 12, the Admiralty officially paid off the ship's crew (meaning that they would not attempt to repair her) and ordered Bromley and Bott to be court martialed (Rohmer, pp. 70-71).
Bott's trial came first. Rohmer reprints on pp. 83-85 a list of particulars from the court-martial; it charges Bott with not warning the captain about the problems navigating in the conditions, for not using the sounding machines as much as he should have, for not slowing down enough, for not telling the captain about decreasing visibility, and for not telling the captain to get a visibility report by radio (I *think* that's what the last particular means; the phrasing is a bit strange).
Bott didn't offer much of a defense, except to say that the charts of the area were bad (Rohmer, p. 92; the Admiralty would dispute this point, but I think it's probably true). It was not defense enough; he was "severely" reprimanded (Rohmer, p. 107). That meant his career was over. There might have been further action taken against him, but he retired from the navy, bringing the action against him to an end (Rohmer, p. 109). Bromley's trial followed (Rohmer, p. 117), with Bott's testimony used against his captain as Bromley's had been used against Bott. Like his subordinate, Bromley had little defense except bad charts (Rohmer, p. 131). The court's language in its decision against Bromley seems to me a little less harsh (he was merely "reprimanded"), but it was the end of his sea career, too (Rohmer, pp. 133, 135).
Oddly. neither man was entirely forced out of public service. Bott was allowed to return to duty during World War II (Smith, p. 185), when presumably the Royal Navy needed every man it could get. Bromley didn't serve at sea again, but he was made a Rear Admiral in 1926 and officially placed on the retired list at that rank. He also became the eighth Baronet Bromley and served a bunch of positions in the royal hierarchy (Smith, p. 186) -- which, to me, shows the advantages of rank in inter-war Britain....
The problem after that was to figure out what to do with the ship. The locals were soon given official permission to salvage the ship, and of course they did so eagerly (Galgay/McCarthy, pp. 59-60). Supposedly the locals had started to strip her even before that -- first of food and leftover clothes and such, then of more valuable materials such as metals (Rohmer, p. 148). The Admiralty eventually tried to sell the salvage rights, with the restriction that the ship's big guns had to be returned to Britain. No one was willing to pay for cleaning up the wreck. Eventually the British gave up on trying to get money for the ship and simply paid to have the guns returned (Rohmer, pp. 148-149).
The next stage of the story is almost comic. The Raleigh continued to sit on the rocks, disarmed but otherwise looking mostly intact. The British Navy considered it embarrassing to have the ship sitting there; officials griped that "the wreck is MOST CONSPICUOUS" (Rohmer, p. 155). So they decided to blow it up! On July 1, 1926, official approval was given (Rohmer, p. 161;Galgay/McCarthy, p. 60) -- and it was decided to do it without cleaning up the hazardous materials still on board, because of the expense. "That decision was to have environmental consequences even when this book was written" (Rohmer, p. 162. The book was published in 2003). The job was assigned to Captain Andrew Cunningham of the Calcutta (later a famous admiral in World War II), who apparently described it in his book A Sailor's Odyssey (Rohmer, p. 169).
Cunninham, in one sense, did his job: he pushed enough ordinance into the ship to ruin her hull and upper works, so that she no longer looked like a navy ship. But he didn't remove her wreckage -- and all the live shells and cordite were left in the wreck (Rohmer, p. 173). At least one child apparently died after running across unexploded ammunition (Rohmer, pp. 176-177; Smith, pp. 192-193, says that a total of four locals were killed over the years), although it sounds as if what killed the child was small arms ammunition that would have been hard to clean up anyway. In 1994, Canada (which by then governed Labrador) was being told that something needed to be done (Rohmer, p. 179 -- although it sounds as if Rohmer was doing most of the telling). The decision to destroy the ammunition was made in 2002, with the first explosions taking place in 2003 (Rohmer, p. 195, 207). I don't know if that is the end of the Raleigh's story, but it seems likely.
Andrieux, p. 94, has a photo of the Raleigh on the rocks. Smith has two in his photo section, both from 1922, as well as several of her sister Effingham (which, curiously, also was lost as a result of going aground, although not until World War II). Rohmer has many pictures of Raleigh, from throughout her history, but the printing is incredibly poor.
Part of the reason the British gave up on the ship was probably the extent of the damage, and the location of the wreck can't have helped, but the British would likely have tried harder if the Raleigh had been more useful. The five-ship class to which she belonged (usually called the Hawkins or Frobisher class) had been designed to chase a particular type of German raider, which of course didn't exist any more after World War I (Whitley, p. 77). They indirectly led to the development of what came to be called "heavy cruisers," but they themselves were problematic (Worth, p. 99). One was converted into an aircraft carrier while building, and the others were rebuilt so heavily in the 1920s and 1930s that they in effect became other types of ships (Whitley, p. 79). They were among the oldest cruisers to serve in the British Navy in World War II, but they performed a "secondary role" (Worth, p. 99; according to Smith, p. 197, the Effingham, one of the sisters, had her 7.5" guns replaced by 6" weapons, turning her into probably the worst light cruiser in the Royal Navy). Probably most people in the Admiralty were just as glad to get Raleigh off their hands. It's just coincidence that she went down in an area where people were such vigilant scavengers.
To emphasize just how un-useful the Raleigh was, it's worth comparing her with the next class of British heavy cruisers, the Kents (data based on comparing the data in Whitley and Worth). The Kents did require a few more men, 784 versus 690 -- 14% more crew. But they had a weight of broadside that was 71% greater (2048 pounds per salvo versus 1200). They had 33% more torpedo tubes (eight versus six), and the torpedoes could be fired more easily. The Kents were a little faster (31.5 knots versus 30). The Kents had 73% more cruising range than the Hawkins class's 5400 nautical miles, and they were more fuel efficient -- 2.92 nautical miles per ton of fuel versus 2.08. If the British had been smart, they'd have sold off the remaining Hawkinses to anyone who would buy them....
I find no mention of the story that the Raleigh went off-course to go fishing.
Unlike the Raleigh, the Nordfeld doesn't seem to have attracted any attention from historians, presumably because she was "just another wreck," of which Labrador had had an abundance. The Raleigh was, I suspect, the largest ship ever wrecked off the Labrador to that time, having three times the tonnage of the largest of the coastal steamers, the Stephano. - RBW
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