When I was eleven I started a paper round to earn more money to enable me to go to football matches and generally enjoy the high life in 1960s Wiltshire. My round was in a small village named Winsley which is about two miles distant from Bradford on Avon, my home town.
In the 1960s, both Bradford and Winsley were places where the same families had lived for generations and I met a number of characters who were straight out of Thomas Hardy novels. One of the farmers was like Gabriel Oak a kind resourceful man who often in the summer gave me vegetables for my mother’s kitchen table and always had a kind word for my father. But even then, the dynamics were changing with people moving in from Bath and Bristol and purchasing what are now very desirable properties for a pittance. I remember my Godfather telling me that he purchased his residence in Tory (Bradford on Avon) in 1963 for just £3000.
Recently another cottage on this hillside location went for considerably more and to put it bluntly, the three thousand pounds would not have covered the deposit or the legal costs. At the other end of the social scale, the council estates around the town were enlarged and people not directly associated with Bradford or Winsley moved in. One of these was a chap from Liverpool who I only knew as Ian. Like me, he was mad on football and we often chatted on my round and it was through him that I first heard of the mysterious story of the Empress of Britain a liner that was sunk off of the coast of Ireland during the early part of the war.
Ian was not a seaman but worked at the doks in Liverpool and had been around in 1940 at the same time that the Empress of Britain was sunk. He told me stories about missing gold and about the heroism of men at the time of the attack. Like all kids, his stories went in one ear and out of the other and I soon forgot about the Empress of Britain. That was until a few days before Christmas this year when I spotted a book called Lost Treasure Ships of the Twentieth Century in the book section at the Arcade. It was a relatively new book published in 1999 and out of curiosity I picked it up and for the first time for over forty years, I thought about the Empress of Britain.
But what was more exciting was that I found a mysterious pen and ink drawing enclosed between its pages. At first, I thought that someone had removed a page from another book and had enclosed it in the newer book. But on closer examination I could see it was an original as the paper was watermarked and that the drawing was obviously a first generation copy. It was dated the 27th January 1932, although the artist was unknown. But it was an interesting find so I purchased the book and when I had time, I read it over the Christmas break.
Before I discuss the detail of the drawing I found, I will return to the Empress of Britain which was just ten years old when she was sunk. She was launched on the 11th of June 1930 and after sea trials, began her maiden voyage to Quebec on the 27th May 1931. She was a strong ship as it was planned that she would travel on the treacherous northerly trans-Atlantic routes to Canada. It was thought that she would entice passengers from the popular Southampton-New York route.
The Empress of Britain was designed to carry 1195 passengers although she was later converted to a first-class cruise ship carrying 700 passengers. Although quite large, the Empress of Britain was still sleek enough to use both the Panama and Suez canals. All went well until World War Two changed things forever and this was the beginning of the end for this lovely ship.
In 1939 she was painted grey and stayed in Canada awaiting further orders. She was soon requisitioned for transporting troops and completed a number of voyages around the world without undue incident. But her luck was running out.
In the August of 1940, the Empress of Britain was involved in transporting troops to Suez via Cape Town and returned with a mixture of 224 military personnel and civilian passengers. There was also a crew of 419 to move things along.
One of the reasons that the Empress of Britain was used was that she was one of the fastest ships around and at top speed she could easily outrun any hostile submarines. But like all ships, she was vulnerable to attacks from above and this was her undoing. Although converted, not all the traces of her former luxury had been changed and a number of passengers on this ill-fated voyage considered themselves quite lucky to be travelling on such a splendid ship even though the world was at war.
The Empress of Britain had nearly completed her voyage and was a day or so out of Liverpool when she was spotted by a German Focke-Wulf which began strafing her. The doomed ship was hit by two 500lb bombs and the bomber returned to base unaware of the ship it had bombed.
Although the attack was ferocious, initially there were few casualties but the bombs had started fires which had begun to overwhelm the ship. Also, these fires were mostly in the midsection of the ship which meant that the passengers headed to both the bow and stern sections which caused immense problems when launching the lifeboats. Two or more modern motorised lifeboats were found to be deficient with one taking in water as soon as it was launched and both having severe mechanical problems. An SOS was sent out immediately and soon other ships in the area were on the way to render assistance to the ship and its stricken passengers.
Although the Focke-Wulf was no longer a threat there were submarines to consider and one of these, the U-32 (which was sunk soon afterwards) was soon in the area and although the U-32 had to dive because of flying boats, it soon located The Empress of Britain via hydrophones (passive sonar) and fired three torpedo’s which finally finished off the badly damaged ship.
And this is where the mystery begins as it was noted by the Commander of the U-32, a certain Hans Jenisch, (who survived its later sinking) that without question he saw moving lights on board the Empress of Britain which was very odd as the ship was supposed to have been evacuated. There had been a boarding party of seventeen men put aboard as the initial fires were dying down as the original idea had been to tow the Empress of Britain into port. This boarding party left the ship at 10:50 and after that no-one should have been on board. The U-32 fired its destructive torpedoes shortly before 2:00 am and this was about the time that Hans Jenisch thought he saw lights moving about on the ship. Soon after the Empress of Britain sank nearly taking two tugs with her, but luckily they were able to slip their hawsers in time.
This should have been the end of this tragic story, but it was far from over and a salvage attempt in 1995 which uncovered a male skeleton in the bullion room only added to the mystery. Was this poor man attempting to steal gold from the bullion room in the general confusion of the disaster or was there another explanation?
You may have noted that I mentioned GOLD for the first time as this appears to be the key to the whole mystery and maybe the moving lights that Hans Jenisch observed. Gold, whatever the situation, is the blood of men as things need to be paid for whether in peace or in war. Many ships (some of which were sunk) carried gold and we today only hear about the ones that came to grief. The Empress of Britain was no different and she, in a way fell victim to her own modernity. She was a very fast ship and as I have noted before could outrun submarines without a problem so she was ideally suited to pick up a shipment of gold at Capetown.
There was large amounts of gold elsewhere notably in Sydney, but that at the time was being uselessly stockpiled due to the lack of suitable shipping. South Africa was a major producer of gold and it was imperative that the gold be moved to North America to aid our dwindling credit lines. Although now the idea seems quite obvious, with hindsight it was a smart move by the authorities. That was until the poor ship was attacked off of the coast of Ireland.
Let us skip forward to January 1949 and an article that appeared in our beloved Daily Mail. It noted that a salvage attempt was to be made on the Empress of Britain to recover the gold that was thought be on board. Strangely enough, this story was not followed up (was the newspaper gagged I ask) and the matter faded.
Again, lets skip forward another thirty-six years to 1985 when a member of The Shipping Policy Unit of The Department of Transport wrote a rather revealing letter to a would be salvager in which it noted that the gold had already been recovered. It referred to two files, War Risk Insurance file 935 and War Risk Insurance file 938 which it was noted had later been destroyed.
The sophisticated 1995 salvage operation found nothing in the bullion room save for a male skeleton and to me there is no reason to doubt the 1985 letter. Various theories are around and my guess is far from unique. I believe that the bullion was removed in between the initial attack by the Focke-Wulf and the subsequent attack by the U-32. This would account for the moving lights that Hans Jenisch observed at the time and would go some way as to explaining the skeleton in the bullion room. The moving lights observed were obviously the salvage units retrieving the
gold and the male skeleton is likely to have been a member of the salvage unit who was trapped in the bullion room at the time of the second attack. Quite why the authorities decided to destroy War Risk Insurance files 935 and 938 is open to question. Maybe it was down to the general weeding out of redundant files, although I doubt this due to the importance of the event. Or was there a great British cover up? But I am not here to discuss this and one can draw their own conclusions. I will leave any investigations to Mulder and Scully.
But I will call on my friends from the X Files to help me find out more about the pen and ink drawing that I found in the book I purchased. As you will see from the illustration which I have included, the drawing has an almost a Sturm und Drang feel to it.
It is a very strong drawing with a partially hidden British soldier seen in profile behind what appears to be Edwin Lutyens Cenotaph in Whitehall.
Although the memorial was unveiled on the 11th of November 1920 and the drawing I found was dated the 27th of January 1932 the thought behind it is identical. The remembrance of those who gave their lives for King and Country during World War One.
Quite why it was created in 1932 will always be a mystery. Perhaps it was drawn by the son or daughter of a casualty of the war as soon as they came of age, who knows? It is certainly a very competent drawing, very simple and this is its overriding strength.
The soldier’s profile is exaggerated and is heavily shadowed, his chin juts forward in defiance and although unseen, his eyes are fixed firmly on the aggressor. My own thoughts are that the soldier is saying that you may destroy me physically but you will never break my (our) spirit. We may only be a small northerly island, but we are the cradle of democracy and freedom and no matter what you do, we will always fight your aggression. Other (larger) countries might fall under your control but we will not be broken.
If my thoughts are correct, how true this would have seemed just over seven years later when large parts of Europe fell under the jackboot only for Britain to stand firm at great cost to itself. It is an intensely emotional drawing for under the rigid profile of the Unknown Soldier there is a mother’s son. Kipling’s poem My Boy Jack goes some way to expressing the feeling of loss as much as poems by Wilfred Owen and his contemporaries.
“Have you news of my boy Jack?” Not this tide. “When d’you think that he’ll come back?” Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
“Has any one else had word of him?” Not this tide. For what is sunk will hardly swim, Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
“Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?” None this tide, Nor any tide, Except he did not shame his kind — Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.
Then hold your head up all the more, This tide, And every tide; Because he was the son you bore, And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!
I feel quite proud to have discovered this simple drawing in the book I found at random in the Arcade shortly before Christmas. It has given me the opportunity to preserve it and save it for future generations to view. At present I am considering framing it but I might consider other options, but the main thing is that I have the opportunity to ensure its safety as it is a unique piece. Unless contacted I will never know who the artist was and why it was drawn some sixteen years after the war.
That is in a way the beauty of walking around the Arcade, you never know what you are going to find. I found a book about treasure hunting which had roots in my childhood and my meetings with an ex-docker late of Liverpool.
I learnt more about the mysteries of the Empress of Britain which was one of the most interesting areas of research I have been engaged in and I was able to look through a window in history, into a time more raw when the spectre of loss was felt more acutely than it is today.
Normally I finish my articles with the jolly conclusion Happy Hunting but on this occasion please stand still for a minute and remember the poor souls who perished on the Empress of Britain and obviously, the dead of both wars.
When I was eleven I started a paper round to earn more money to enable me to go to football matches and generally enjoy the high life in 1960s Wiltshire. My round was in a small village named Winsley which is about two miles distant from Bradford on Avon, my home town.
