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Armed to the teeth we now both clambered ashore and found the quay piled high with equipment of every description. Rifles, Bren guns, petrol, bicycles, ammunition, kitbags, coats, belts, gas masks, in fact every conceivable variety of gear. Aircraft were flying low over us and we felt no inclination to delay and examine some of the stuff.
Alongside the same quay & nearer the town was the transport H.M.S.
King Orry, whom we hailed. The O.O.W. was helpful and told us that the quay was broken in a second place shoreward of him and he believed there were no officers to be seen there. On the strengthlof that I decided to remain alongside where we were until the first streak of dawn when one ship would move further up if possible & I would make another attempt to see Capt. T. The time was now about 2 a.m.
Soon after we returned aboard there was some shouting up the quay and
King Orry who had been badly damaged by near-misses proceeded astern
& disappeared out through the harbour entrance. She was one of the
Isle of Man packets in peace time.
Things now were a little quieter and in preparation for an arduous day I decided to take a short rest. Hardly had I sat down and put my feet on the wardroom table, hopefully closing my eyes, when I was awakened - or rather disturbed - by the announcement that people could by heard calling for help, apparently just off the harbour mouth. Both ships immediately slipped & sailed in the direction from which the shouts came, and as they got louded we could faintly discern part of.
the funnel & foremast of King Orry. Both ships launched their boats &
together rescued 14 of her crew including the Captain, who despite his awful experiences & having been the last man to get aboard the boat, stepped aboard the Lord Grey with a cheery "Good evening, thanks.
Drenched in oil & shivering with cold the survivors were suffering from shock, & we dosed them all with rum & changed their clothes for s/o/
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pubs around the harbour in about two minutes, and a seething crowd gathered round the Naval Office near the entrance but this proved to be a pure navy job and they were only taking the minimum number necessary so as to have more room for the troops, only Naval Officers were chosen and a very small proportion of those available at that. The correspondent who had been coming with me, a competent motor boat man himself, had seen there was little chance of our getting away on Saturday and jumped another boat which got across that night so he got his real experience all right, I may say most of the correspondents down there went across at least once.
By Tuesday morning, 4th June, the real operations were over and senior officers were turning up from different places to try and straighten out records, etc., among them the
Commodore from Sheerness who had looked after us thoroughly there. I was coming along to the exit from the Harbour from my wretched house boat to lunch on shore and this Commodore was standing near the entrance talking to a post-Captain whom
I did not know by sight; when I was within 20 yards of them the Commodore happened to look in my direction, promptly
One nice piece of as shifting was done by waing the slight breeze, which was stonger than the tide act against it, to take this hulk across 2/3 rdo of the harbour with oput her within 2 yards of where the was to tie up on the other side.
had some anxious moments half through this evolution, butwas very proud whom it anceeded.
pointed towards me with a very pleasant smile, said loudly and firmly "Constant Nymph". Considering that he had exchanged about 20 words with me a week before when busily engaged over all the possible wants of 20 or 30 motor boats, this officer must have a memory for faces and names that would leave an experienced hotel keeper blushing in despair. As my boat would not move, except by manhandling, and we often had to shift in this manner for one reason and another, and the show seemed to be over, I busied myself in trying to obtain a passage for myself and crew back to Sheerness as & large number of boats had already gone and quite a lot of drifters etc. were laid up in the Harbour, while the crews had their three days Dunkirk leave.
The difference in the town was most marked, naval uniforms were becoming comparatively rare. Unfortunately a lot of the senior officers concerned with the motor boat side seemed to have gone on leave by this time and it was not until Wednesday evening that I could get any useful information. I then found that an officer was supposed to be coming over from Sheerness on Thursday, 6th June, to take a boat named Cairngorm back to Sheerness and it was suggested that I might accompany him if the boat could be found, apparently two officers were looking for her at the moment as nobody knew where she was.
On returning to my boat I found that Cairngorn was lying amongst two or three others just astern of me and had received a nasty bump on the starboard buby which had smashed gerabohed quite a bit of the planking; it proved later on examination that two of the ribs had been broken at the top.
On Thursday morning, 6th June, the expected Officer arrived, and proved to be a very young man just down from
Oxford and waiting to get into the Air Force who had taken this boat to Dunkirk and had then been back to Sheerness for some reason.
The compass had been smashed by a bomb splinter on the other side, but the damage to the hull had apparently been done in harbour while he was away. As the damage was pretty well all above water line we got the navy carpenters to patch it with canvast and battens, obtained a chart, filled up with petrol and got under way about 14.30. My arew, on being given the choice of going back to Sheerness by rail or helping us two to navigate the crock back to Sheerness at once elected to come by sea, three of them never having been to sea before.
The boat was a beauty, a 45 foot twin screw Therneycroft, and