Jervis Bay, The

DESCRIPTION: "It was a bleak November morning With a convoy underway, When they sighted a German raider From the tops of the Jervis Bay." The little Jervis Bay goes into action against the German. "On her decks lay dead and dying," but the convoy is saved
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1984 (Palmer-OxfordBookOfSeaSongs)
KEYWORDS: navy battle death sailor
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Nov. 5 - 1940 - The sinking of the Jervis Bay
FOUND IN: Britain(England(All))
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Palmer-OxfordBookOfSeaSongs 150, "The Jervis Bay" (1 text, 1 tune)
Tawney-GreyFunnelLines-RoyalNavy 65, "The Jervis Bay" (1 text, tune referenced)
Roud #16876
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Suvla Bay" (tune, according to Tawney-GreyFunnelLines-RoyalNavy)
NOTES [4303 words]: The Jervis Bay was originally a liner -- although not a fast one; her top speed was just 15 knots. She was built in 1922 for the Australian Commonwealth Line, running between Australia and Britain. She went through several owners over the next decade and a half (Paine, p. 273). One of five sisters (Duskin/Segman, p. 60), she was 549 feet long and listed as 13,839 tons (Duskin/Segman, p. 61). She had room for 732 steerage passengers and substantial cargo space (Duskin/Segman, p. 61). Despite the changes in ownership, she mostly did the same work: three round trips per year between Australia and Britain (Duskin/Segman, p. 63).
In 1939, she was taken over by the British government to serve as an armed merchant cruiser; she was fitted with eight 6" guns (Paine, p. 274) -- an armament that would put her at the low end of the light cruiser range, but a light cruiser would have had at least some armor and would have been at least twice as fast. Plus, according to Zetterling/Tamelander, p. 42, the guns were 40 years old, so they can't have been accurate or easy to serve. (Duskin/Segman, p. 63, says that the oldest of the seven guns was from 1895 and had been used in the Boer War! Almost certainly the rifling was ruined, so they wouldn't fire accurately (Edwards, p. 16). Initially guns and gunners were given no protection at all; later they were fitted with light splinter shields. Because they could not be elevated much, their range was short, and there was no fire control for them.) She was simply not fit to serve as a warship -- but the British were so short of escort craft in the early years of World War II that she was one of about fifty vessels converted to be armed merchant cruisers (Duskin/Segman, p. 59).
The refit that made her into a pseudo-warship increased her displacement to 14,164 tons, most of the weight ballast needed to keep her stable after all the changes (Duskin/Segman, p. 61). Although some of her new crew were navy men, a great many were from her civilian crew given positions in the navy reserve (Edwards, p.18, says that 97 of her new crew of 212 had served on her in her days as a liner, and another 36 were merchant seamen from other ships. These transfers included her chief engineer and most of her watch-standing officers, although not her captain or executive officer). Her first commander after the conversion was H. G. Harris, a retired officer called back to service (Duskin/Segman, p. 64).
Her first few weeks of service were not auspicious; she had a series of accidents, including one in which she collided with the ancient escorting destroyer Sabre (Duskin/Segman, p. 65).
Her first voyages in her new role saw her escort convoys to Freetown, Sierra Leone (Duskin/Segman, p. 69). In February 1940, Captain Harris was forced to give up his ship because of illness (Duskin/Segman, p. 70).Thus it was that Edward Stephen Fogarty Fegen (1891-1940), the son of a vice admiral, took over the ship on April 1, 1940 with the acting rank of Captain (Duskin/Segman, pp. 70-71. His permanent rank was Commander; Edwards, p. 84, etc.). He was a veteran of World War I; one of the ships he had served on, the Amphion, had been sunk under him (Duskin/Segman, p. 73). His previous job had been as executive officer of HMS Emerald (Duskin/Segman, pp. 75-76, although they incorrectly call the Emerald a heavy cruiser; according to Whitley, pp. 81-83, she was a light cruiser of World War I vintage of such marginal worth that even the British, whose navy was always too small for its tasks in this period, periodically put her in reserve.) Fegen seems to have been very private, unmarried and with no know close friends (Duskin/Segman, p. 77).
Not long after Fegen's assumption of command, the Jervis Bay stopped sailing from Freetown; on April 30, 1940, she arrived in Bermuda to serve as an escort in convoys from the Caribbean to Halifax and/or Newfoundland (Duskin/Segman, p. 79). On July 22, having finished the voyage north, she went to Saint John, New Brunswick, for a refit. On September 7, she set out for Halifax to begin North Atlantic convoy work; her first trip began September 9 (Duskin/Segman, p. 80). She ran several escort runs before her final voyage (Duskin/Segman, p. 80).
The Jervis Bay's last voyage was as the escort of a convoy of some three dozen merchant ships with even less combat ability than Jervis Bay (many ships in the convoy had "defensive" weapons, but under the rules of international law, these could only be fitted behind the bridge -- and they were mostly small weapons anyway; Edwards,p.12). It was officially listed as a fast convoy (HX 84; a slow convoy would have an "SC" code instead of "HX"), but its top speed was just nine knots. That means that it took about two week to cross the Atlantic -- and, at this stage of the war, long-range antisubmarine escorts were so few that convoys had escorting destroyers or corvettes for only part of their trip; they had two destroyers as escorts for the first part of the run, but they turned back after a few days, and it would not have more destroyer cover until it was within about three days of Britain (Duskin/Segman, p. 92). The Jervis Bay was there to cover the portion of the convoy route for which no real warship was available (Kemp. p. 16.)
The commodore of the convoy was a retired navy officer, Rear Admiral H. B. Maltby (Duskin/Segman, p. 86; Kranke/Brenneck, p. 51, incorrectly calls him "Mantby" and wrongly states that he went down with the Jervis Bay; in fact Maltby was on another ship and survived). Fegen had apparently served under Maltby in World War I (Edwards, p. 17). On the one hand, it must have been encouraging for Fegen to have an experienced navy man in charge of the ships and navigation; on the other, one wonders how well Maltby understood the civilian captain of his own ship. But if Fegen had a good commodore commanding his convoy, his own crew had been weakened right before the voyage: Fegen lost his executive officer, J. A. P. Blackburn, when the latter was promoted to command his own ship. It was a significant loss for Fegen (Duskin/Segman, p. 89), since Blackburn had trained the crew and knew the ship far better than Fegen. Whether it made any real difference I can't guess, but much of the praise given to Fegen probably reflects at least as much on Blackburn.
In all, Convoy HX 84 consisted of 38 merchant ships. 29 of them sailing from Canada and nine from Bermuda (the latter group having joined the convoy en route). Most of them (25) were British, but 13 bore other flags. The largest was 16,698 tons. Between them, they carried more than 200,000 tons of cargo, including 126.500 tons of petroleum products (most of it, of course, in the tankers -- 11 of them), 42,000 tons of steel, plus food, wood, chemicals, and other odds and ends (Edwards, p. 10; Duskin/Segman, p. 92). They were arranged in nine columns, mostly of four ships each, although columns 3 and 4 had five ships. The Jervis Bay sailed at the front, in a wide alley between columns 4 and 5 (a chart of this is on p. 91 of Duskin/Segman). One ship had engine trouble and fell far behind, so there were 37 ships when disaster hit (Duskin/Segman, pp. 93-94).
The convoy was about halfway between Newfoundland and the British Isles when the events in this song took place (there is a map on p. 125 of Koop/Schmolke; Duskin/Segman, pp. 204-205, gives a map of the German ship's whole voyage). The Admiral Scheer had entered the North Atlantic via the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland and sailed south (Koop/Schmolke, p. 124). As soon as the weather permitted, she set her scout plane searching, and on November 5, it spotted Convoy HX 84 (Duskin/Segman, pp. 95-96. The watch on one merchant vessel reportedly heard an aircraft, but the word does not seem to have passed about).
The song is wrong to say that the Jervis Bay encountered a battleship. The Admiral Scheer was the second of the so-called "pocket battleships" -- ships which Germany originally called "armored ships" and later re-classified as cruisers (Worth, p. 51). But they were extremely heavy cruisers (for a description, see "The Sinking of the Graf Spee") -- their secondary armament was as heavy as the Jervis Bay's main armament, and the Admiral Scheer was about ten knots faster, as well.
Captain Krancke discusses the interesting decision he had to make: move to attack as quickly as possible, and fight the convoy in the dark, or wait and attack it in daylight but risk it being reinforced or escaping. He chose the former (Kranke/Brennecke, pp. 36-37). It was probably the right choice based on his limited information, but it would make the ships harder to pursue.
The convoy should have had warning; as the Scheer sailed to intercept HX 84, it encountered a fast banana boat, the Mopan. The Mopan had time to signal, and was under orders to do so, but the captain didn't signal until it was too late. It meant that the Scheer let her crew abandon her before sinking her (Duskin/Segman, pp. 98-100, with a photo of the Mopan being sunk on p. 101; Edwards, pp. 28-31), but it meant that HX 84 had no inkling that the German ship was coming.
The various books give different times for when the Scheer reached the convoy, but this seems to be because it happened in the mid-Atlantic and everyone was logging different time zones. What is certain is that the first ship in the convoy to spot the Scheer located the German vessel about half an hour before sunset -- meaning that it would be full dark in about an hour (Duskin/Segman, p. 108, identifies the spotting as from the Rangitiki; Edwards, p. 36, says it was the Briarwood). It seems to have taken Fegen and Co. more than half an hour to examine the ship themselves, and they initially misidentified it as a British warship. About fifty minutes after the sighting, Fegen caught on and sounded action stations (Duskin/Segman, p. 108). He also sent a blinker message the ship, looking for a recognition signal (Duskin/Segman, p. 111; Edwards, p. 37). Captain Kranke of the Scheer of course didn't know the counter-signal.
The Jervis Bay was actually slightly larger, in terms of tonnage, than the Scheer. But that size just made her bigger target. For the Jervis Bay to fight the Scheer was simply suicide (six inch guns could hurt a pocket battleship, but they couldn't sink her) -- but if someone didn't fight, most of the convoy would be destroyed. Ironically, the Jervis Bay, since it was one of the faster ships, would likely have been one of the few survivors. But that wasn't her job.
Fegen sent off two signals, one a radio message to the British Navy asking for help and one a flag signal telling the convoy to "prepare to scatter" (Duskin/Segman, p. 112; Edwards, p. 39). Then Fegen ordered the Jervis Bay to attack while the convoy scattered. It was hopeless, but by going straight for the Admiral Scheer, and keeping his ship between the Scheer and the convoy, he would buy time.
A little time. Fegen went straight for the Scheer, because he needed to get within the range of his antique weapons, but it also made him an easier target for the Germans (although coming straight on would at least mean that the Germans wouldn't have the whole side of the ship to aim at). He started firing while still beyond the range of his guns, perhaps to get the gunners' thoughts off what was to come (Edwards, p. 41).
The Scheer had no such problems. Most observers thought that they managed their first hit on just their third salvo (Duskin/Segman, p. 115), though Captain Krancke thought it took longer (Kranke/Brennecke, p.47). That first hit was in the bridge area, and Fegen was one of those injured -- his left arm almost torn off, and his leg injured (Kranke/Brennecke, p.49, says that it was his leg, not his arm, that was gone, but I would assume the British accounts were right!). The wounds were clearly mortal, but he had them dressed, propped himself against a wall, and fought on (Duskin/Segman, p. 117; Edwards, pp. 42-44; von der Porten, p. 139, the latter probably derived from Kranke/Brennecke, p. 49). The wireless was out, so the ship could no longer communicate (Duskin/Segman. p. 117). The ship's steering broke down, but the crew worked desperately to control her, and Fegen ordered Jervis Bay onward, apparently trying to ram (Edwards, pp. 42-43).
Within fifteen minutes, the Jervis Bay had lost power. Accounts differ on what happened to Fegen (Edwards, p. 45, who does not commit to, or even list, all the stories told); one claims dragged himself to one of the guns when it was no longer possible to command from the ruined bridge (von der Porten, p. 139), another that he apparently fell dead on the deck while trying to find a place to control the ship (Duskin/Segman, p. 128). It was the executive officer who gave the order to abandon ship, but he died in the water (Edwards, pp. 45, though on p. 99 the story sounds a little different; Duskin/Segman, p. 138, says that this was about an hour after the battle began).
The Jervis Bay continued to slow the Scheer down even after she was disabled; she had been packed with empty barrels in a deliberate attempt to keep her afloat even if badly damaged, and these did their job well enough that it took a couple of hours for her to actually sink, and the Germans spent a lot of time worrying about what she was up to rather than chasing the convoy (Duskin/Segman, p. 133). It bought time.
A little time. But even that little time -- von der Porten, p. 139, and Edwards, p. 45, estimate it was 22 minutes -- helped. The convoy had time to scatter, firing off smoke screens as they went (Duskin/Segman, p. 114, although there was much confusion as they tried to make their 40 degree turn to starboard and separate. There were many near-collisions (Duskin/Segman, p. 118), which probably slowed the scattering.
The Jervis Bay's lifeboats had all been ruined in the fight (Duskin/Segman, p. 152). There were a few floats and rafts, but to use them, most of the men had to go into the water -- and it was November in the North Atlantic (Duskin/Segman, pp. 153-155; Edwards, pp. 99-102). Many who survived the attack on the ship must have been killed by the frigid sea. In the end, 190 of the Jervis Bay's 259 crew, including Fegen, were dead (so Paine, p. 274; Zetterling/Tamelander,p. 44, says that there were 65 survivors. Based on the rescue memorandum reproduced on p. 173 of Duskin/Segman, 68 men were rescued but three did not survive. That reduces the discrepancy to one, which might be Fegen. Duskin/Segman, pp.225-231, lists all who served on the ship on her final voyage, with their fates).
Although the Jervis Bay did no direct damage to the Scheer, the fight did cause the German ship some problems. The recoil from one of the 11" salvoes broke the German radar, which made it harder for the convoy to track the ships in the dark (Duskin/Segman, p. 119). There was other minor damage from recoil and maneuvering (e.g. Kranke/Brennecke, p. 65, mentions how unsecured inks in the administrative center had gone flying and caused a multicolored mess!). The storm and all the other problems had so damaged her floatplane that it took a very long time to put back in commission (Kranke/Brennecke, p. 110), affecting her ability to find targets.And the Scheer pumped 335 shells into the Jervis Bay and others -- a third of her total supply (Edwards, p. 47), which if nothing else meant she would have to go home sooner because she was out of ammunition. And the other ships scared the Scheer more than they should have; Captain Krancke thought, falsely, that some of them had six inch guns (Kranke/Brennecke, p.46, which shows that he maintained this view even after the war).
The damage to the Scheer's radar was important in what followed. The Germans had no way to locate ships except by eye -- and most of the British ships were able to make smoke, and it was dark. Kranke and Co. couldn't see much except the Jervis Bay, burning away because the British hadn't removed her wooden furnishings. And the British, in addition to scattering in all directions, tried other tricks -- e.g. a tanker, the Delphinula, managed to fake a fire which caused the Scheer to think she was doomed, and so escaped; Duskin/Segman, p. 139; Edwards, p.59).
Still, the Scheer caught up with the 7900 ton Maidan and sank her with all hands; she was carrying steel and other metals and went down quickly (Duskin/Segman, pp. 141-142; Edwards, p. 63). The next to go was the 5200 ton Trewellard, also carrying metals (metals, being dense, didn't take up much space, so ships carrying them had all their cargo weight in a small area; this made them unstable, hard to maneuver and easy to sink); most of her crew at least managed to abandon ship (Duskin/Segman, pp. 142-143; Edwards, pp. 65-66). The 5225 ton Kenbane Head, a slow mover carrying general cargo, went next (Duskin/Segman, pp. 147-148; Edwards, pp. 67-71).
The Scheer's fourth victim was the 10000 ton Beaverford, carrying food, metals, chemicals, and wood. Edwards, p. 80, claims that this ship took over as the protector of convoy, and claims on p. 81 that "For more than four hours the Beaverford held the Scheer at bay." (It sounds as if Edwards got his idea from a 1944 newspaper article that claimed the Beaverford fought for fully five hours; reprinted on pp. 82-83 of Edwards.) This simply cannot be right; the Scheer wasn't in the area that long! Presumably this arises from time zone confusion that plagues the whole saga. Kranke/Brennecke, pp. 57-58, mentions sinking the Beaverford -- one of the few ships it mentions by name -- but the engagement sounds very brief, and on p. 57 says that the whole battle was only three hours old when the Beaverford went down, so the fight with the Beaverford must have taken less than that! Kranke/Brennecke, p. 56, says, and Edwards and Duskin/Segman, p 149, agree, that the Scheer had so much trouble finishing her off that eventually the Germans torpedoed her. But our only knowledge of what happened aboard the Beaverford came from her radio reports; there were no survivors. And the chart of the Scheer's track on p. 145 of Duskin/Segman shows that the Beaverford went down just an hour after the Kenbane Head; there simply wasn't time for a four hour fight.
Still, Krancke seems to have thought that he had spent enough time in the area after sinking the Beaverford; he didn't want to stick around until the British caught up to him (Edwards, p. 85), It had been about three and a half hours (I think) since the first distress calls had gone out, meaning that any battleship within about 75 miles, or a cruiser within 100, could show up at any moment. And he couldn't fight a battleship, and even a cruiser could hurt him badly or track him, as the case of the Graf Spee had shown. As it turned out, there were no British ships within hundreds of miles, but Krancke couldn't know that, and without radar, he might not spot an enemy until shells were falling on him. And the British certainly started hunting him quickly; by midnight, the battlecruisers Hood and Repulse (the two ships best equipped to deal with pocket battleships) and many other ships were raising steam (Duskin/Segman, p. 177. Unfortunately, they hurried to sea so quickly that they hadn't fully fueled and soon had to turn back, and there was confusion about where they were sent and should be set; Duskin/Segman, p. 179)
So Krancke prepared to leave the area -- and, on his way away, encountered the 5000 ton Fresno City, carrying grain, and sank her fairly routinely, then left the area to rendezvous with his supply ship (Duskin/Segman, pp. 150-151; Edwards, pp. 87-89).
In all, the British lost five ships totaling about 33,000 tons (Koop/Schmolke, p. 125), plus of course the Jervis Bay. Others, like the tanker San Demetrio (Duskin/Segman, p. 143-146), were damaged in passing but not destroyed (her crew abandoned her but some were washed back to where she was and managed to bring her to port in a story almost as epic as the Jervis Bay's; Duskin/Segman, pp. 185-199). The Germans thought they had sunk nine ships totaling 86,000 tons (Edwards, p.93-95). The Germans error on ships isn't too extreme -- they thought they had sunk two tankers which actually survived, and apparently thought they had another freighter; the error on tonnage is much worse, but of course they were estimating by eye in the dark.
Fegen was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross (Paine, p. 274; Edwards, p. 84, prints the text of the citation. Duskin/Segman, p. 210, says that King George VI himself suggested the award, and on pp. 212-213, lists other awards given to members of the crew).
Even his opponent paid him high praise, writing, "he had the authentic Nelson touch. He was a man with such authority over his men that they were prepared to follow him to certain death in a hopeless fight and carry out his orders to the last" (Kranke/Brennecke, p. 49).
That Fegen was brave is obvious. I'm not so sure he was smart. If he had recognized his fix sooner, he could have maneuvered more effectively, and perhaps forced the Germans to split their fire. The pocket battleships were not good at this, because of the way their gun directors were laid out; this had been one of the Graf Spee's problems in her final battle. Much of Edwards's book is devoted to a claim that one of the convoy ships, the Beaverford, although armed with little more than popguns, fought off the Scheer for hours before being sunk. Most if not all of the other ships of the convoy also had a "defensive" 4" gun on their sterns (Edwards, p. 56). If the Jervis Bay and the Beaverford had coordinated, perhaps with some of the other ships, might the Scheer have been held even longer? It's certainly possible.
It doesn't matter to Fegen's legend, of course.
Ironically, although losses to convoy HX84 were relatively light, the fear of the Scheer caused a panic in the British government, which began frantically postponing and rerouting convoys (Duskin/Segman, p. 180). The delays this imposed may have caused more problems than the mere losses from HX84.
The survivors of the Jervis Bay were rescued by the Swedish freighter Stureholm (Zetterling/Tamelander, p. 44), which was another member of HX84 but which, rather than fleeing, decided it had to come to the rescue, carefully watching the Scheer to avoid being attacked (Edwards, pp. 102-103). It a long and dangerous process given the number of survivors and the size of the Swedish ship (the crew of which was too small even to have a doctor or any sort of medical person -- even though many of the survivors needed one; Duskin/Segman, p. 170. She was only 4575 tons). It took about ten hours for everyone to be rescued (Duskin/Segman, p. 174) -- tough for men exposed to the elements of the North Atlantic! They were in bad enough shape that the Strureholm decided to take them back to Halifax (Duskin/Segman, p. 174).
Two other ships, the Gloucester City and Mount Tagetus, rescued survivors from other ships in the convoy -- 101 in all, apart from those saved on the Jervis Bay; 168 merchant sailors were lost (Duskin/Segman, pp. 184, 216-219).
The heroism of the Jervis Bay evidently became quite well-known; Tawney says he found five versions of this song, making it among the best-known songs in his collection.
This wasn't the end of the Scheer's cruise; the pocket battleships had very long range, plus she had a supply ship with both fuel and ammunition. She in fact made it all the way to Madagascar (there is a map on p. 43 of Zetterling/Tamelander). She caught her next victim. the Port Hobart, on November 24 (Edwards. pp. 96-97), but there would be no more dramas like that of Convoy HX84; she mostly caught single ships. There were ten all told (Duskin/Segman, p. 201). From start to finish, the Scheer's voyage lasted 161 days (Duskin/Segman, p. 203)
Theodor Krancke, who commanded the Scheer (Becker, p. 204), was promoted to admiral not long after -- although he was given the unenviable assignment of being the navy's liaison to Hitler, which is not a job I would want! (Particularly since Krancke seems to have been a relatively humane man; he treated the crews of enemy ships well even when they weren't Europeans; see, e.g., Kranke/Brennecke, pp. 97-99 -- though on p. 103 he talks about the Indians' "subservience" to white men). He also was awarded the Knight's Cross (Duskin/Segman, p. 202). The entire crew was given the Iron Cross (Duskin/Segman, p. 206). But the Scheer would never again go on a significant voyage as a result of German caution about risking their ships after the loss of the Bismark. She was sunk at her moorings in Kiel by an Allied bombing raid on April 9, 1945 (Duskin/Segman, pp. 208-209; Paine, p. 5).
The song doesn't have many details, but what there are are mostly accurate: the Jervis Bay was "only a merchant cruiser"; she fought the Scheer; she was commanded by Captain Fegen; the convoy was ordered to scatter. The song is wrong in calling the Scheer a battleship, but this is an understandable shorthand for the (misleading) designation of the Germans cruisers of this type as "pocket battleships." And the Jervis Bay did steam out to attack the Scheer, leaving her position in the middle of the convoy to interpose herself between the other ships and the Scheer. On the other hand, the song is flatly wrong in saying that British shells hit the German. And many versions misdate the event to September rather than November, although Tawney printed a version that had the month right. - RBW
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