HMS Lowestoft F103 Appointment

When at HMS Caledonia in Rosyth an appointment was received to HMS Dryad, Portsmouth for courses prior to my next posting. My first sea appointment was 25 May 1964 to HMS Lowestoft at Gibraltar as the Squadron Instructor Officer with the 23rd Escort Squadron. The squadron leader was HMS Rhyl and another ship whose name cannot be recalled. There were the usual educational duties, such as teaching Maltese stewards English and arithmetic for promotion exams. However the excitement was during submarine detection exercises and mortar live firing when assisting on the bridge and operations room.

Few schoolies have experienced the on-board trepidation of a "slow motion" ship collision.

HMS Lion Forth Road Bridge Incident

As usual when a ship leaves harbour the ship's company line the decks. I was on the starboard wing of the bridge looking forward when the decision to sail was ordered. Not that we could see anything as the Forth was shrouded in thick fog.

Although I witnessed the chain of events the following narrative was penned by Sub Lt John Barrington-Carver

The Squadron was due to sail direct to Stockholm after the bridge opening under a new Captain D. This senior officer had not endeared himself to Captain Power whom he was relieving because the first question he wrote to Captain Power before arriving was - "What is the temperature of your wine cellar?"

The new Capt D had signalled that the 23rd Escort Squadron should proceed to sea in company. This meant waiting to late afternoon until the last ship had taken on water or fuel from lighters. This also meant as anyone knew and commented on at the time that fog would descend at around 1600. The sensible thing therefore would have been for the squadron to have proceeded independently to sea, and rendezvous clear of the coastal fog and the traffic-congested Forth. However, it seems that the new Capt D intended to proudly lead his squadron out of the harbour in line ahead under the admiring eyes of FOF (Home Fleet) and FO (Scotland). This was certainly a "folie de grandeur" as they call it in French or B. stupid in naval parlance - A fact which was not unnoticed in the subsequent court of inquiry.

When the order to weigh and proceed eventually came, the fog was so thick that visibility was down to about 30 yards or so. The last ship (Agincourt?) refused to weigh anchor and sensibly stayed put or she may have joined the Lowie embedded in Lion, or worse still Lowie. The confusion after we had weighed, was added to by constant radio traffic on the tactical net (more than 60 in one minute!) due to all the other movements apart from the squadron's. What level of confusion may be imagined by the fact that, being the same class as the senior ship Rhyl, we were piped in error by another Squadron ship (name not remembered). Obviously not wanting to offend the new Capt D, when in horrendous visibility she saw a Rothesay Class portside, she mistakenly took us to be Rhyl. Adding to the difficulties was the fact that there was some 40,000 tons of new steel above us interfering with the ship's radars. Hence the radar screen clutter was horrendous. Our bridge radar screen was being manned by an ex-merchant officer, Stuart Robertson, who had transferred to the RN as a subby. He had probably had more sea going time than any of Lowie's wardroom.

I remember that he called to the NO saying there was a close contact on a steady bearing right ahead. Unfortunately Lowie's NO instead of taking that information as a fact from such an experienced sea-going officer, thrust him aside and put his head into the radar screen's shroud. Of course his eyes were fog blinded in the sudden dark of the screen and therefore unable to immediately decipher what he saw in all the clutter until it was too late to warn the Captain.

Meantime on the wing of the bridge I was straining to see ahead when I was the first to spot Lion's forward 6 inch turret on the starboard bow. I turned and shouted up to the Captain above me on the open flying bridge "6 inch turret fine on the starboard bow Sir!!". I then shouted down to my ex forecastle lads to "Clear the forecastle and standby for a collision" which they did somewhat smartly as the Lion loomed closer and closer. However the skipper unfortunately did not immediately react and put his binoculars up to check ahead. By the time he eventually saw the Lion after he lowered them, even though he rang down full astern it was too late

With a 2 knot ebb tide carrying us relentlessly towards Lion, it was inevitable that we should be carried onto her. It was lucky we hit her where we did though. Had we just avoided hitting her prow as we did (and thereby cutting off her stowed port anchor with our bull-ring), we would have just passed ahead of her and cut across her single anchor cable which was at fairly short stays. It's possible had that happened that we may have then crossed over the cable, cut Lion adrift and totally B' up our prop shafts as we were going full astern when we hit. As it was we got away with a bent bow as photos testify.

After the huge noise of the crash there was a stunned silence and I have an abiding visual memory of the forecastle PO, a rotund and ruddy complexioned guy, grabbing the maul and rushing alone up to the impact point and energetically attacking every bit of twisted steel he could bring the maul to bear on - to no apparent effect or advantage of course, but nevertheless ten out of ten for activity! My next memory was when secured alongside Lion.

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