Beneath the Barber Pole

DESCRIPTION: "It's away! Outward the swinging fo'c'sle's reel, From the smoking sea's white glare upon the strand." The singer tells of the work of the "merry men beneath the Barber Pole" as they "wallowed outward bound from Newfoundland"
AUTHOR: Words: W. A. Paddon (source: Hopkins-SongsFromTheFrontAndRear)
EARLIEST DATE: 1943 (source: Hopkins-SongsFromTheFrontAndRear)
KEYWORDS: sailor war travel return
FOUND IN: Canada
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Hopkins-SongsFromTheFrontAndRear, pp. 34-35, "Beneath the Barber Pole" (1 text, 1 tune)
ADDITIONAL: James B. Lamb, _The Corvette Navy_, 1979 (I use the 1988 Macmillan Paperbacks edition), p. 60, "(It's away! Outward the swinging fo'c'sles reel") (1 short text, probably an excerpt)
Roud #24979
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The 23rd Flotilla" (subject: the hard life of convoy escorts) and references there
NOTES [1697 words]: The notes in Hopkins-SongsFromTheFrontAndRear say that the Barber Pole Brigade was "officially Escort Group C-5 of the Mid-Ocean Escort Force, and its beat was from St. John's, Newfoundland (Newfiejohn) to Londonderry... Its name came from the red and white striped band that decorated the funnels of the destroyers and corvettes were assigned to it."
Recall that Newfoundland was not part of Canada at this time, so the sailors in the group never made it home; they were always in a semi-foreign land.
Sarty, p. 57, reports that "A major Allied reorganization that began in late January 1942 combined the NEF [Newfoundland Escort Force] and American groups based in Newfoundland into a single Mid-Ocean Escort Force.... [T]he new force was able to escort convoys directly to Northern Ireland, thereby freeing some British escorts from the eastern Atlantic for the mid-ocean an western ocean." On p. 59, Sarty explains that "All thirteen [Canadian] destroyers and sixty-two corvettes on the Atlantic coast were assigned to the MOEF and WLEF [Western Local Escort Force], together with ten of the twenty-two Bangors [minesweepers with some anti-submarine abilities] on the east coast."
Hopkins says that the Barber Pole Brigade started with the destroyers Saguenay (for which see "The Saguenary Song") and Skeena and the corvettes Sackville, Galt, Wetaskiwin, and Agassiz, but that at the time this song was written, the destroyers were Ottawa (the second destroyer of the war to bear that name) and Kootenay and corvettes Arvida, Kitchener, Wetaskiwin, and HMS Dianthus.
According to Whitley, p. 25, Saguenay and Skeena were 1930 members of the British "A" class of destroyers (Canada's shipyards could not build destroyers; it was all the could do to handle the smaller corvettes and "Bangor"-class minesweepers; all Canadian destroyers prior to the war came from Britain), but Kootenay was the former HMS Decoy of the 1931 "D" class, transferred in 1943 (Whitley, p. 102; Worth, p. 110) and Ottawa (II) was the ex-Griffin of the 1935 "G" class (Whitley, p. 107; Worth, p. 110). They were relatively lightweight destroyers -- fast but not especially heavily armed. Both had served in the Mediterranean before going to Canada (Whitley, pp. 102, 109). After their service in the MOEF, both destroyers went to Plymouth to take part in the Normandy landings (McKee/Darlington, p. 172).
The four corvettes were all apparently members of the British "Flower" class, although many were built in Canada (Dianthus launched in Britain in 1940; Arvida in Quebec in 1940; Kitchener in British Columbia in 1941; Lenton, pp. 24, 30, 32; Wetaskiwin not listed ). The "Flowers" weren't that much smaller than true destroyers (about 1000 versus about 1400 tons), but much less capable (one 4-inch gun versus four or more 4.7"; 16 knots versus 36 knots, plus the destroyers had torpedoes). "The 'Flowers' epitomize Britain's mass production of cheap, simple vessels with modest capabilities. It was the quantity of 'Flowers' that made them so important -- decisive, by some accounts -- rather than any quality. Intended for coastal work, the AS [antisubmarine] emergency in the Atlantic forced them into mid-ocean where they displayed their ability to gather seawater, roll excessively, and discomfort their crews" (Worth, p. 125).
Canadian corvettes were also somewhat behind the times: "The corvettes at the heard of the NEF [Newfoundland Escort Force] had the sea-keeping capability an the range to steam across the Atlantic with ease, but they were otherwise poorly prepared for war. The 4-inch main gun retrieved from First World War stocks was standard for all corvettes, but the original British plan called for a 2-pounder gun aft [about 1.5"] and, by 1941, 20 mm oerlikons [light anti-aircraft guns] on the bridge. Canadian corvettes made due with a smattering of .303 Lewis and .50 Browning machine guns as secondary armament, with were of little use against aircraft and totally useless against submarines. British corvettes were fitted with a gyrocompass and could quickly upgrade their asdics [sonar] to modern standards. Canadian corvettes carried magnetic compasses and were therefore limited to the type 123A asdic, obsolete since the early 1930s.... The Royal Navy also quickly modified its corvettes with extended forecastles to make them safer and drier; the RCN waited two full years before commencing a modernization program for its early corvettes" (Milner, p. 91). As Lamb, p. 52, acidly comments of the Canadian corvettes, other than the one 4" gun, the secondary armament "was limited to a Lewis machine gun or two and perhaps a fellow who could throw rocks."
Plus the ships were cranked out faster than Canadian crews could be trained: "Most young RCNVR officers were given a rudimentary indoctrination into the navy and then dumped aboard their new ship," and the appointed captain was, on more than one occasion, a drunkard (Milner, pp. 91-92).
"The corvette was seaworthy, but it pitched and backed in a heavy sea like a fiend possessed. Sea water sloshed into mess decks, officers' cabins, wardrooms, everywhere. The vessel was not fast enough to catch a U-boat on the surface, and it was originally equipped with obsolete asdic and a magnetic compass totally unsuited for anti-submarine work. When U-boats started to carry 10.5-centimetre deck guns [4.1 inch guns], the corvette did not even have heavy enough armament to fight it out with them on the surface. It often seemed that the best a corvette could do was to ram a submarine, at great risk to itself" (Bercuson, pp. 24-25). One sailor quipped that corvette crews should get submariners' pay because the "spent so much time underwater" (Milner, p. 97).
Lamb, pp. 23-24, says "The messdecks of a corvette in bad weather are indescribable; it would be difficult to imagine such concentrated misery anywhere else. Into two triangular compartments about 33 feet by 22 feet at their greatest dimensions are crammed some sixty-odd men; each has for his living space -- eating, sleeping, relaxing -- a seat on the cushioned bench which runs around the outer perimeter of each messdeck. There is a box beneath the seat for his clothing, and a metal dirty-box -- something like an old-fashioned hatbox -- holds his personal things in a rack above. The space where he slings his hammock -- carefully selected by the older hands and jealously guarded -- is 18 inches beneath the deck-head, or another hammock.... Crowded in harbour and stuffy, the messdecks at sea are like some vision of Hades. There is absolutely no fresh air; all the ports, open in harbour, are dogged down and blanked over at sea, and in heavy weather even the cowl ventilators from the upper deck have to be sealed off.... With the hammocks slung, there is hardly room anywhere to stand upright, and there is moisture everywhere."
To top it all off, when they had full wartime crews, they didn't have enough food storage to keep fresh food for an entire voyage, so the crews "survived on Nelson's fare of hard tack and pickled beef' (Milner, p. 110).
They didn't even get the best officers; the handful of regulars of the Royal Canadian Navy served in the big ships, while the reserves and the recruits served the corvettes (Bercuson, p. 25; Lamb, p. 7, calls these men the "Corvette Navy"). Mostly, they were the RCNVR, or second-string reserve, for which see "Roll Along, Wavy Navy"). Lamb, p. 11, describes the command structure: "a corvette would be commanded by a Naval Reserve (ex-merchant navy) lieutenant, with a Volunteer Reserve lieutenant as executive officer... and two other officers -- junior lieutenants or sub-lieutenants -- as watch-keepers."
The corvettes were extremely uncomfortable: "crews lived for weeks at a time in cold wet, cramped quarters in ships that tossed and twisted at the first sign of a heavy sea.... With the galley fires constantly doused, a hot mean was a rarity.... This life was debilitating, draining men of their energy and grinding them into a numbing tiredness" (Bercuson, p. 39).
The lack of speed was the result of their simple construction; they were based on a civilian whale-catching vessel, the Southern Pride (Lenton, p. 18) and used the old reciprocating engines (Lamb, p. 2), which were easy to build and which many British reservists knew, but which made them much slower than the turbines that had been standard in warships for more than thirty years. "Named 'corvette,' the French word for 'sloop,' the new escort with its modest 47-man complement was intended only as a stop-gap until something better could be provided" (Lamb, pp. 2-3).
"Right from the beginning, there was something suspect about corvettes in the eyes of right-thinking professional navy men; what was one to make of a man-of-war that looked like a fish trawler and called itself HMS Pansy? For the Admiralty... had designated the new ships as the Flower class" (Lamb, p. 3). It probably didn't help that some of them were actually built on the Great Lakes and sailed down the Saint Laurence to serve at sea (Milner, p. 101), and what proper navy man was going to trust a fresh-water ship?
For another song about life on corvettes, see Hopkins's "Bless 'Em All -- Corvettes" verse under "Bless 'Em All." - RBW
Of the four corvettes, Wetaskiiwin seems to have been busiest; she joined group C-5 in May 1943 (McKee/Darlington, p. 55), having been part of C-3 from May 1942 (McKee/Darlington, p. 53) and was involved in several actions, including sinking U-588 in July 1942; there is a photo of her on p. 54 of McKee/Darlington. But her lack of modern technology had resulted in several failures as an escort (Bercuson, pp. 40-41). She did at least manage to be memorable for her ship's crest, which was a "crowned lady falling on her backside in a puddle" because Wetaskiwin could be mispronounced "wet-ass-queen" (Lamb, p. 5).
Of the others, Arvida had helped rescue the survivors of the first Ottawa when she was lost in September 1942 (McKee/Darlington, p. 73). Based on the data in Lenton and the list of losses in McKee/Darlington, all four survived the war. - RBW
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File: Hopk034

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