TNA Unclassified 1

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