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Dynomo 185
182
MOTOR YACHT "MARSAYRU"
170
6th.June 1960
SKIPPER.
G.D.OLIVIER.
SIGINEER
C.COGGINS.
CREW
Messrs.FORBES, HUMPHRIES and Leading Seaman BROWN.
I have the honour to report that I took over dommand
of the Motor Yacht "Marsayru" on Wednesday 29th.May 1940.
Before commencing this report I tried to sort things
out a bit but find that my recollection, regarding any particular
date on which incidents occurred, is extremely hazy. I therefore
hope that a general report on our doings will suffice.
We sailed from Sheerness on Friday 31st.May 1940 at
4 A.M., bound for Dunkirk, in company with X217 and 2 other
drifters under the comand of ib.Lieutenant POOL,R.N. We
steamed at 5 knots approximately. About 3 p.m. we name in sight
of the coast, a long line of fires, smoke and explosions as far
as the eye could see. About one hour later we contacted the
Naval forces engaged in evacuating the French soldiers from the
beaches. I had a whaler and sent it to the beach; it was
immediately stormed by about 50 Frenchmen and capsised at once.
My rating, Brown, had a job to prevent himself from being more
or less forcibly drowned. I then withdrew my ship to review
the position. Warps were everywhere, stuff that looked like
42", also smaller ropes which were the devil as I know that
sooner or later we were bound to get our propellers in the way
of one of them. However this did not happen as soon as I had
feared. In our retreat p from the beach we managed to pick
up a very nice naval cutter which we captured and used a little
futther down channel where the French troops appeared to be a
little calmer. We took off many boat-loads for some 5 hours,
loading X217, S.S. "Foam Queen", S.S. "Jaba" and so on. On this
first day we also managed to pull "Foam Queen" (about 2000 tons
I should say) off the mud, into which she had put her nose.
I thought this spoke well for the engines of "Marsayru" and
Mr. Coggins who attended them. Throughout this day and the
days and nights that followed (it's all a complete jumble in
my mind) we were of course under constant fire of various kinds,
but I have the honour to report that the ship was not hit by
anything. On one day - Sunday 2nd.June I think - we were
singled out for attention (we were alone, nearest ship being
about 2½ miles away) by 4 brave Messershimits who dived and
machine-gunned us with much vigour but exceedingly poor aim
for about half an hour. We had a Bren and 2 rifles but did
not use them as the German pilots seemed disinolined to come
nearer than 2000 feet and I had given orders to hold our fire
to 1000 feet range. A pity. After half an hour of this 3
Hurricanes have in sight and we saw no more of the Messerschmits
after that.
Another day we were bombed by a large formation of
Heinkels flying miles up. At least I think it was our little
ship they were after, unless it was one on the horison, in
which case they missed by miles.
During the course of these operations we took off
from the beaches upwards of 400 French soldiers. To our bitter
disappointment we could find no British, others were luckier.
He also mislaid owe ship for a few hours - she was on tow -
having one propeller completely tied up with bits of line and
could not find her though we cast about for a time. However
the other engine knocking hard. The tow rope broke and we
back at Sheerness up yesterday evening having called from Ramsgate
she turned again next day - faithful thing. No arrived
at 1200. An eventful trip. We borught back 2 "prises" - a nice
18ft