The sinking of SS Tubantia

 

SS Tubantia was a luxury liner built for the Dutch in 1913. She was designed for speed and luxury, particularly for service between the Netherlands and South America.

Tubantia was state-of-the-art in that electricity was used for all on-board facilities, even down to personal cigar lighters in every stateroom. Being brightly lit was regarded as a safety feature, in that being easily seen as a civilian ship belonging to a neutral country during wartime would be an additional safety feature.

However, this did not prove to be the case on 16th March 1916, when SS Tubantia was at anchor 58 miles from the Dutch coast and was hit by a torpedo fired by UB-13, a German U-boat. Fortunately, three nearby ships immediately came to her rescue and there were no casualties.

One reason why nobody died as a result of the sinking was that the ship had very few passengers at the time. Despite all the claims of being a safe ship, not many people were willing to take the risk of a voyage at a time when U-boat wolf packs were known to be patrolling in the region.

At first, the German government denied responsibility for the sinking, coming up with the strange claim that Tubantia must have encountered a stray torpedo that had been fired weeks before. However, few people believed this story and eventually Germany did pay reparations to the Netherlands.

The story might have ended there, were it not for the fact that many people started to take particular interest in what might have been on board the ship when it sank. A number of multinational dive teams made repeated dives to the wreck in the years that followed, clearly in the belief that it would be worth their while to do so.

However, all that was found in the way of cargo was a hold full of Dutch cheese. Rumours began that the cheese was hiding a consignment of gold bullion, but there was never any confirmation that this was the case. Needless to say, the cheese was soon well past its sell-by date and not worth the bother of rescuing it.

© John Welford

The name of Pakistan

 

Pakistan was created in 1948 as a Muslim nation carved out of former British India. But where did the name come from? It was coined by a Muslim Indian nationalist named Choudhary Rahmat Ali, in a 1933 pamphlet entitled “Now or Never”.

Ali, who was based in the UK as an academic working at Cambridge University, simply took the names of the five provinces of India that were to be incorporated as the new country. The initial letters of four of them, plus the end of the fifth, could be read as the new name. These were:

Punjab
North West Frontier (Afghan province)
Kashmir
Sindh
Baluchistan

Put together, this made Pakstan, so adding a “i” made sense in terms of producing something more pronounceable. The idea caught on and before long everyone was referring to the putative new country as Pakistan, although its creation was still 15 years into the future.

Ali later claimed that a slightly different derivation was what he had in mind, namely:

Punjab
Afghania (North-West Frontier province)
Kashmir
Iran
Sindh
Tukharistan
Afghanistan
Baluchistan

Ali spent most of his life in England but travelled to Pakistan in 1948, hoping to settle in the country he had named. However, he soon made it clear that he had envisaged a much larger Muslim nation – presumably including Iran and Afghanistan – than Pakistan turned out to be. He also threatened to set up a new Liberation Movement that would have challenged the status quo. Not surprisingly, he was subsequently refused a Pakistani passport and returned to England. He died in 1951, back in Cambridge, but Pakistan continued to bear the name he had conjured up.

© John Welford

Frank and George went to war

 

My family was fortunate in terms of war losses in that no close relative of either of my parents was lost in any 20^th century war. That is not to say that nobody was involved in war service, but they all survived to tell their stories.

My father was too young for World War I and his eyesight was not good enough for World War II. His wartime activity consisted of nights on the roof of his place of work, a branch of Lloyds Bank in Bournemouth, where he stood ready with buckets of sand and water just in case an incendiary bomb should land nearby. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Luftwaffe had more pressing targets than Bournemouth and his services were never called upon.

However, his two older brothers, Frank and George, were very much involved in both World Wars. Frank kept a detailed diary of all his activities during both wars, and also made notes about what George was up to. I have his summary of the diaries in front of me now.

The United Kingdom declared war on Germany on 4^th August 1914, which was only shortly after the family had moved from Poole to Frome – the head of the family was a Primitive Methodist Minister who made many moves during his lifetime. Frank recorded that on that day he had watched a water polo match at Frome baths – the score was Frome 6, Gloucester City 2, and he described it as “very exciting, the standard was very high”. He also noted that he had no idea that the war would involve him in any way.

Frank’s call-up came in July 1916, when he was assigned to the Royal Garrison Artillery and began his military training, most of it taking place on Plymouth Hoe. After spending some time on Spike Island in Cork Harbour – he described it as “wasted a month as library and post orderly” - he undertook further training at Prees Heath in Shropshire and Lydd in Kent, before joining a siege battery and being posted to Belgium.

He began his active service as “Battery Commander’s Assistant” at Ypres in April 1917, but on 2^nd June was wounded in the leg by shell fragments and was sent back to England. It was not until April 1918 that he returned to France, this time to Arras, where his function, based near the Officer’s Mess well behind the front line, was to calculate the range and direction of the guns. As he wrote, “my fighting was done with maps, range tables, slide rules, etc”.

He then advanced with the battery as the front moved forward, until he was laid low with a skin infection caused by lice, leading to a spell in a field hospital. He had just about recovered from this when the Armistice was declared on 11^th November.

So that was Frank’s war – as he said later, the first German person he ever saw in his life was five years after the war had ended!

George’s war was a very different affair. He had joined the Royal Fusiliers in September 1915 and was wounded, albeit not seriously, early in 1916 and again in the summer of 1917. However, in April 1918 he took a machine gun bullet in the chest and was not found for several hours. He was unconscious for two weeks and only recovered shortly before the Armistice.

Both brothers served in the Second World War. Frank was in the Home Guard at Weymouth, but George – once again – was much more directly involved in the action.

As a reservist, and despite being 42 at the time, he was called up in August 1939, having been promised “home duties only”. That promise lasted until March 1941, when, shortly after getting married, he was sent to Egypt and taken by submarine to Malta. When the Siege of Malta ended, early in 1943, he was posted to GHQ in Cairo where he stayed until June 1945 when he eventually left for home and was able to see his 4-year-old daughter for the first time.

So what was George actually doing in Malta and Cairo? He never said much about it, which suggests that he was involved in some sort of undercover work that swore him to secrecy.

And, in the meantime, his younger brother Gordon, my father, was doing his bit on the roof of the Charminster Road, Bournemouth, branch of Lloyds Bank. He did not have a lot to say about it either – probably because there was not much to tell.

© John Welford

The Defenestration of Prague, 1618

 

This incident, with a somewhat remarkable title, was one of the causes of the bloody and destructive Thirty Years War that tore Europe apart between 1618 and 1648.

“Defenestration” simply means “throwing out of the window”, and that is precisely what happened to three unfortunate men at Prague Castle, Bohemia, on 23^rd May 1618. They were Count Vilem Slavata, Count Jaroslav Bořita and Philip Fabricius. The first two were regents representing Ferdinand, the new King of Bohemia, and the third was their secretary.

Catholics and Protestants had been in conflict across Europe for many years, occasioned by the Papacy and Catholic monarchs trying to impose their religious views on the Protestant communities and states within Europe. One of the most ardent Catholic monarchs had been Philip II of Spain, whose avowed aim was to eliminate Protestantism, particularly in the Low Countries that were part of his empire. He had also, in 1588, sent an Armada up the English Channel with the aim of conquering England and re-converting the country to the Catholic faith.

In France, persecution of the Protestant Huguenots had culminated in the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572 which lasted for several weeks and left thousands dead.

A peace of sorts was achieved after the Edict of Nantes was promulgated in 1598 by the French King Henry IV, but the underlying problems still remained in Europe, especially as the loose alliance known as the Holy Roman Empire that covered much of central Europe was ruled by the Catholic Habsburgs but contained many Protestants within its borders, including in Bohemia.

Emperor Matthias had been happy to grant his Protestant subjects the right to worship as they wished. He did this this by ratifying the “Letter of Majesty” that had been signed by his predecessor Rudolf II which guaranteed freedom of worship and certain other rights to Protestants, but his successor Ferdinand was an ardent Catholic who felt himself to be under no such obligation to honour these pledges. The result was a re-igniting of the dispute that had existed in Bohemia since the first stirring of the Protestant Reformation in the 15^th century.

Ferdinand’s regents met a group of Protestant nobles in an upper room of Prague Castle. The nobles wanted to be assured that Ferdinand would not remove the previously granted religious freedoms, but the regents refused to give this assurance. The reaction of the Protestants was to seize the nobles and their secretary and throw them out of the window. The fall of some 20 metres would probably have killed them had it not been for the pile of dung stacked at the foot of the castle wall that broke their fall. The three men were injured but able to recover and tell Ferdinand what had happened.

The Protestants then attempted to depose Ferdinand as King of Bohemia (which he had been as well as Holy Roman Emperor) and replace him with a suitable Protestant alternative, namely Frederick. This did not work out well – when battle was joined between the Protestants and Catholics at White Mountain in 1620 the Bohemians were crushed with heavy losses and forced to accept Catholicism.

However, this did not mean the end of hostilities. The conflict spread and involved other powers, notably Protestant King Adolphus of Sweden, as well as France and Spain, both these nations having their own political and strategic motives. It did not take long for virtually every country in in Europe to be involved in the war.

Some of the battles fought during the thirty years of the war were on a huge scale, with the losses being proportionally vast. Terrible atrocities were committed with enormous areas of land being laid waste, from which it would take decades to recover.

Both sides were eventually worn down and ready to make peace. This took the form of the Peace of Westphalia that was concluded in 1648. This established a new balance of power and general recognition that the religious complexion of Europe would be mixed for the foreseeable future.

© John Welford

HMS Endeavour: Captain Cook's ship

 

Endeavour was the ship on which Captain James Cook made his first voyage of exploration from 1768 to 1771.

The ship was only 100 feet in length and carried a crew of 100 sailors. It was specially selected for the voyage on account of being sturdy and flat-bottomed, the expectation being that it might well have to be beached on remote unpopulated islands.

Endeavour started life as the Earl of Pembroke, launched in 1764 as a coal carrying merchant ship. It was purchased by the Royal Navy and renamed HM Bark Endeavour. It could not be called HMS Endeavour at that time, due to there already being a naval vessel of that name.

Cook’s voyage began from Plymouth on 8th August 1768, and sailed around Cape Horn into the Pacific Ocean. The voyage had a threefold aim, firstly to observe a transit of Venus across the Sun in 1769, secondly to find and chart islands in the South Pacific, and then to explore the possibility of there being a continent to the west of the Pacific Ocean. After sailing round both the North and South Islands of New Zealand, Endeavour did indeed reach the east coast of Australia, but only after suffering serious damage by running aground on the Great Barrier Reef and having to be refloated.

It was only after Endeavour reached Batavia in the Dutch East Indies that the extent of the damage could be fully appreciated. The ship had been taking on water but some of the planks in the hull were only 1/8 of an inch (3mm) from being completely breached.

After repairs, Endeavour then completed her round-the-world voyage, returning to Plymouth in 1771.

Cook did not sail on Endeavour for his second and third voyages, and the ship was decommissioned by the Royal Navy, being sold to a private buyer in 1775 and renamed Lord Sandwich. There was a brief return to naval service for the ship during the American War of Independence when she became a transport and store ship.

The last known location of Endeavour was off the coast of Rhode Island when she was scuttled in 1778. It is now believed that the wreck has been found and divers expect to find evidence to confirm this.

The name Endeavour was remembered in much later times, being used for the command module of the Apollo 15 lunar mission in 1971 and the fifth and final space shuttle, which was first launched in May 1992.

© John Welford

Nonsuch Palace, London

 

Nonsuch Palace was a magnificent edifice built in 1538 by King Henry VIII as a hunting palace and guest house for foreign visitors. However, there is nothing to see today at the site in south-west London apart from a large area of public open space (Nonsuch Park) and a more recent building. Indeed, the Palace had completely disappeared by the end of the 17^th century.

It was situated on the site of the village and church of Cuddington, which was cleared to make room for it. Merton Priory had been the patron of the church; the priory having been dissolved by King Henry, its stones were used as foundations for the Palace.

The name ‘Nonesuch’, as given in early records, indicates the desire by Henry to have a building without compare and it was, in fact, a Tudor extravaganza. It consisted of two-storey buildings ranged round two interconnecting open courtyards. Although only 150 yards long, it was lavishly decorated in the Renaissance style.

The workmen were mostly Italian and included Nicolas Belin of Modena, who had worked at Fontainebleau. His chief work at Nonsuch was a series of stucco reliefs, framed in elaborately carved slate, which went all round the walls of the inner court and along the south front. The south front had towers at each end topped by onion-shaped cupolas and ornamented with fanciful weather vanes. The gardens were formal and contained many statues.

Henry’s daughter Mary, who became Queen in 1553, was not greatly interested in Nonsuch Palace and exchanged it with Henry Fitzalan, 12^th Earl of Arundel, for estates in Suffolk. Queen Elizabeth I had a higher regard for the Palace and was happy to stay there many times.

By 1603 Nonsuch was back in Royal hands and King James I gave it to his Queen, Anne of Denmark. It was used as a royal hunting lodge both by James and his son King Charles I. King Charles II gave it to his mistress Barbara Villers, who in 1682 sold it to Lord Berkeley, and it was he who ordered its demolition and used some of its stone for his own house at Epsom.

The site was excavated in 1959-60 when the ground plan was revealed including the site of Cuddington church. Fragments of carved and gilded slate and stone were found, and much domestic refuse such as pottery, glass, pewter and bone. The site was filled in and is now under grass.

The main building that can be seen in the park today is the Mansion House, a 17^th-century farmhouse that was rebuilt in the Georgian Gothic style in 1804.

© John Welford

The Battle of Sluys, 1340

 

In 1337, King Edward III of England laid claim to the French throne, thus starting the lengthy series of conflicts known as the Hundred Years War. This was the first major contact between the two sides, a naval battle fought off the coast of Flanders.

In June 1340 at English fleet of 210 ships crossed the English Channel to meet a combined fleet of 190 French and Genoese ships that was drawn up in the inlet of Sluys in Flanders.

The French placed their fleet in a defensive position, lashing their anchored ships together with cables to create a floating platform on which to fight. The Genoese commander kept his galleys free behind the French lines. In response, the English placed single ships filled with knights and swordsmen between two ships packed with longbowmen. Naval battles at that time were fought aboard the ships’ decks.

Battle started at around noon on 24^th June and continued for most of the day and night.

Both sides used grappling hooks to hold an enemy ship fast while it was boarded, but it was the English who eventually got the better of the battle. This was because the English ships were free to attack the anchored French ships as and when required, and also because their longbows could produce more rapid and accurate fire than the crossbows of their opponents.

The result was a disaster for the French, with their commanders killed and 170 ships captured or sunk. Only the Genoese managed to inflict any damage on the English fleet, capturing two of their ships.

England’s victory ended the threat of a French naval invasion and brought England dominance of the channel.

© John Welford