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SS MOPAN
On the 28th of November 1940, a convoy of
38 merchant ships left Halifax Nova
Scotia, laden with food, fuel and other vital supplies
bound for Britain. It was planned for the convoy to meet
up with a British escort force half way across the
Atlantic, but until then its only protection was the
Armed Merchant Cruiser Jervis Bay, a 14,000 ton
converted liner armed with seven obsolete 6-inch guns
bolted to her unarmored decks.
A day earlier, the German Pocket
Battleship Admiral Scheer had sailed from Kiel with
orders to attack and destroy enemy shipping as part of
the plan to starve Britain into surrender. The
Admiral Scheer carried six eleven-inch guns, eight six-inch guns, plus a battery of torpedoes and had a top
speed of over 28 knots. Her commander, Captain Krancke
received intelligence of the convoy and launched the
ship’s Arado seaplane to locate it.
On the 5th of November the convoy was
sighted and Krancke raced to intercept. Suddenly
his lookouts sighted a lone ship on a course directly
between Krancke and the convoy. This vessel was
the SS Mopan, a banana boat of 8,000 tons.
To steer a course around it and thus
avoid detection would cost the battleship valuable time.
Krancke was also aware that somewhere nearby was a
British escort force waiting to meet the convoy and the
longer he delayed his attack the greater the chance of
meeting the enemy warships.
Krancke took a bold decision, he signaled
the Mopan to halt and under no circumstances to use its
radio. To his surprise they immediately complied,
clearly not relishing the prospect of either being blown
out of the water or being left to freeze to death in
open boats. The crew were taken prisoners and the
ship was fired upon to sink.
The Mopen sank too slowly and that
irritated the German commander. It was now late
afternoon and Krancke ordered full speed ahead.
At 17.30 hours, a salvo of eleven-inch
shells were fired and with a speed of 2,000 feet per
second crashed around the HMS Jervis Bay.
The convoy started to scatter and the Jervis Bay to make
full speed ahead towards the enemy, dropping a trail of
smoke floats as it went. Captain Fegan must have known
that his ship stood little chance of even getting into
shooting range against such a mighty opponent. He
would also have known that in the likely event of his
ship being sunk, the enemy would not and the convoy
could not, stop to pick up survivors, leaving them to
starve or freeze. He knew his duty and, win or lose, he
could perhaps delay the Scheer long enough for the
convoy to disperse.
Fegan ordered his six-inch guns to open
fire knowing that he was not yet in range. Seeing
his rapid move, Krancke ordered all his guns to bear on
the Jervis Bay. By the third salvo they had found
their range and the huge 670 pound shells tore through
the thin skin of the old liner. The next salvo destroyed
the foredeck, the bridge was next and with its
destruction, the total loss of the gunnery control
system.
Fegan’s ship ploughed on, but a shell
then struck one of the forward guns killing the crew,
then the bridge took another direct hit killing those
stationed there and ripping off Fegan’s left arm.
Despite his wounds he remained at his post restoring
morale and inspiring his crew. The next shell hit
the bridge and Fegan was killed. The ship was now
a mass of flames from bow to stern, but ploughed on, her
remaining guns still firing. The closer the two ships
came, the greater the damage caused by the German guns
until a shell struck on the waterline and the ship
shuddered to a stop, rolled on her side and began to
sink. The order to abandon ship was given and the
remaining sailors leapt into the water as the ship sank
bow first into the cold Atlantic, taking 187 of her
gallant crew with her.
Fegan’s gallant action, even though
causing no damage to the raider, gained vital time for
the convoy to disperse in the darkness. The German
ship had also expended 335 valuable shells in the
attack, thus reducing her attack capability.
After the sinking, Scheer went on in the
darkness to catch up with the convoy and began shelling.
She set the tanker San Demetrio on fire and then turned
on the merchant freighter Beaverford which was armed
with a single four inch gun. The freighter,
knowing that she was as good as dead, her commander,
Captain Pettigrew bravely resolved to delay the enemy as
long as was possible and moved about in the darkness,
firing at the warship. Captain Krancke was unsure what
force he was facing and held back from the pursuit for
the next five hours, before roaring in and sinking
Beaverford with the loss of all hands. The raider
then overhauled the convoy and sank seven of the ships,
damaging others and causing the loss of 253 lives.
Without doubt, Fegan’s and Pettigrew’s actions saved
the convoy from annihilation as witnessed by a previous
convoy attacked by a sister ship of Scheer’s that had
sunk eleven merchant ships in an hour.
The action had a profound effect on the
survivors of the convoy and one, the Swedish ship
Stureholm, knowing that some of Fegan’s crew were adrift
in the freezing water, elected to go back and search for
survivors, a brave act considering the proximity of the
raider. They managed to rescue 65 of Fegan’s crew
and some others were picked up over the next few days.
Meanwhile, the San Demetrio had been hit
with several shells that destroyed her poop and setting
fire to the upper deck and bridge. Fortunately her
cargo of 12,000 tons of aviation fuel did not explode
immediately, but her commander, Captain Waite fearing
that the ship would go up any minute, gave the order to
abandon ship. Seeing this, the Scheer presumed the
ship was going down and turned it’s attentions to the
convoy.
The tankers crew had managed to launch
two lifeboats; one contained the captain and twenty four
crewmen and the other with Second Officer Hawkins, Chief
Engineer Pollard and fourteen others. Both boats drifted
in the night and Captain Waite’s was fortunate to be
picked up and he and his men were eventually landed in
Newfoundland. After drifting for twenty four
hours, the second boat sighted a burning ship and as
they drew closer, realized it was their own tanker. They
attempted to board the blazing vessel, but the heat was
too fierce and the weather too rough so they remained in
the boat for another night.
The next day, after another freezing
night in the boat, they again attempted boarding and
this time were successful. They managed to put out the
fires and rig up a rudimentary steering system and, with
no workable navigation system, calculated their position
by the stars, they headed east.
It took them seven days, braving weather
and U Boats and finally arrived off Ireland from where
they were escorted to the mouth of the Clyde, docking on
the 16th of November with all but 200 tons of her cargo
intact and with just one fatality, John Boyle, a seaman
who had been injured while abandoning ship during the
initial shelling and although in great pain, insisted on
helping his shipmates by propping himself up in the
engine room to monitor the gauges. He died before
reaching home. Seaman Boyle was awarded the Kings
Commendation for Brave Conduct and Second Officer
Hawkins was awarded the OBE. Captain Fogarty Fegan was
posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for his gallant
action.
Interestingly the crew of the San
Demetrio were able to claim salvage money from the
ship’s insurers. Hawkins was also presented with
the ship’s tattered Red Ensign as a memento.
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