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HMS WAKEFUL

                   photograph courtesy of John Waters

Click on the links within this brief outline for first hand accounts by the men who served on HMS Wakeful and for a more detailed chronolgy see www.naval-history.net

HMS Wakeful was the first Royal Navy warship to carry that name. She was completed in December 1917 and saw service with the Grand Fleet in the final months of ther Great War and was present in November 1918 when the German High Sea Fleet entered Scapa Flow to surrender. Wakeful was part of the British Baltic Intervention Force and on the 24 December 1918 left Tallinn in Estonia with Vendetta and Vortigern and captured a Bolshevik destroyer bombarding a lighthouse. On Christmas Day Wakeful with the cruisers HMS Calypso and Caradoc forced another Bolshevic destroyer to surrender. These two Bolshevik destroyers, renamed  Wambola and Lennuk, formed the nucleus of the Estonian Navy.

HMS Wakeful was in reserve for most of the interwar years but was recommissioned in 1939 and was present at the Royal Review of the Reserve Fleet in Weymouth Bay in August. On the outbreak of war she joined the 17th Destroyer Flotilla at Plymouth as a convoy escort in the Western Approaches and the English Channel until May 1940 when she was transferred to Dover Command and supported the evacuation of troops from Dunkirk. On the 27 May she embarked 630 troops from Dunkirk for Dover and was damaged above the waterline in an air attack. She returned to Dunkirk on the 28 May, embarked 640 troops on the 29 May and was was attacked off the Belgium coast by E-boats based at Antwerp which emerged from the mist while Wakeful was returning to Dover. She was torpedoed twice, once in the boiler room and split in two with the bow sinking immediately (ADM 358/3640). Only one soldier and 25 crew members survived and HMS Grafton was also sunk whiler attempting to rescue survivors. A complete list of the ship's Company and her passengers including the names of those who survived the sinking and those killed can be seen on the linked page.

One of sixteen W Class destroyers built under the War Emergency Programme in 1943-4 was named HMS Wakeful and served in the Home Fleet, transferring to the Eastern Fleet in 1944, and then the Pacific Fleet. She was converted to a Type 15 Frigate sfter the war and was scrapped in 1971. For further details of the reuse of V & W Class names by ships built under this programmne see the linked article by Frank Donald.

Officers

This short list of officers who served on HMS Wakeful have entries on the unithistories.com web site. Further names from the Navy List will be added later.

The loss of HMS Wakeful
One of the greatest naval disasters of the War

Lt. Cdr. Ralph Lindsay Fisher, RN was appointed CO of HMS Wakeful in December 1939 and his ship was lost at Dunkirk on the 29 May with 640 troops aboard. One soldier and 25 crew members survived. This description of the disaster was written by her CO, Lt Cdr Fisher RN, who retired as a Rear Admiral in 1957 and wrote Salt Horse, A Naval Life, a self published autobiography in the late 70s, which contained this vivid description of the loss of Wakeful.

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"We anchored off Braye Sanatorium, unable to get nearer than about a quarter of a mile from the beach on which long queues of soldiers were waiting. It was comforting to be in company with plenty of friendly vessels including, next door to us, the new destroyer Jaguar with much better ant-aircraft armaments than Wakeful. However, there was low cloud and rain that afternoon and bombing attacks were few and ineffective but getting the troops onboard was painfully slow. Our boat would row into the beach only to be swamped by eager troops and immovably grounded. There were other boats about but they tended to be abandoned by soldiers who had finished with them and let them driift away. During some eight hours we got about 640 troops onboard and sailed after dark. Wisely - or perhaps unwisely as it turned out - I had insisted that all troops should be stowed as low as possible so as to preserve stability in case we should have to manoeuvre at high speed to avoid bombs. At fifteen men to the ton 600 men constituted a serious top weight consideration in a ship the size of Wakeful. Accordingly they were stuffed into engine room, boiler rooms and store rooms. The route this time was by Zuydcootte Pass, where I felt our propellers hitting the sand and then up to Kwinte Buoy where one would turn west for Dover. So as not to reveal ourselves to aircraft by a bright wake we went at only 12 knots until we neared the Kwinte Buoy where any enemy might be lurking and then increased to 20 knots with a wide zigzag. Phosphorescence was very bright.

Grafton (Cdr Charles Robinson) was torpedoed by U-62 at 0250 shortly followed by a second torpedo. She had 800 troops aboard including survivors from Wakeful but could not be saved. Only one of the ten soldiers on Wakeful survived this second sinking, Stanley Patrick. Fisher had several staff appointments in the Mediterranean but was given command of HMS Musketeer in October 1943. His official report on the loss of HMS Wakeful can be seen in the National Archives at Kew, ADM  199/789.

The names of those Killed or Missing Presumed Killed (MPK)

John Waters who served in HMS Wakeful before she was torpedoed by E-boats and sank with heavy loss of life during the Dunkirk evacuation on the 29 May 1940 died on Su nday 14 October at the age of 97. I interviewed him at the reunion of the V & W Destroyer Association at Harrogate in 2015 and these notes are based on that interview and many other converations at annual reunions. John was only in Wakeful for a few months as he broke both his wrists descending the focsle ladder in a heavy sea three months before she was torpedoed. This accident almost certainly saved his life.

He went on to serve in HMS Warspite at Narvik in Norway and at the Battle of Matapan in the Mediterranean and was left severely deaf after Warspite was bombed off Crete. He volunteered for Combined Operations and served in LST 9 at the landings in Sicily and Salerno. After the success of the Normandy Landings he was part of  Naval Party 1730 which followed the troops to Hamburg towards the end of the war and stayed at the Four Seasons Hotel, the Vier Jahreszeiten, still the best hotel in Hamburg. He describes his experience below and in the interview which can be listened to online via a link below.

John Waters was born on the 5 March 1921 at Easington Lane, ten miles South of Sunderland in Co Durham. His father was a miner but when John left school at 14 he was determined not to follow him down the pitts. Since there was no work in Co Durham he moved to Leicester and started an apprenticeship as a bricklayer. He was bored and at eighteen joined the Navy and was sent to  Chatham for shore training, passed out as an OD and was posted to HMS Wakeful at Devonport, Plymouth, in September.

HMS Warspite
Courtesy of John Waters

Landing Ship Tank, LST 9
Courtesy of John Waters

Bill Forster recorded an interview with John Waters at the V & W Association reunion at Harrogate in 2015
You can click on the link to listen to John describe his wartime service in HMS Wakeful, HMS Warspite and LST 9
be patient - it takes a couple of minutes before the file opens and John starts speaking

BETWEEN THE WARS

Conditions on V & W Class destroyers were so bad in rough weather that the men who served on them were paid hard-lying money. These stories by veterans who served on HMS Wakeful were published in Hard Lying, the magazine of the V & W Destroyer Association and republished in 2005 by the Chairman of the Association, Clifford ("Stormy") Fairweather, in the book of the same name which is now out of print. They are reproduced here by kind permission of Clifford Fairweather. Copyright remains with the authors and photographers who are credited where known.