Page 52 - All About History - Issue 54-17

Little Ships, Great Escape

ritain was on the brink in spring 1940.
The Nazi war machine had swept through
Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg and
was making gains in France fast. The
B British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and their
French counterparts began a hasty retreat close
to the coastal town of Dunkirk where thousands
would fight to the death to give their comrades the
best chance of escape.
It seemed all was lost and the BEF consigned to
total defeat, but they didn’t count on the armada of
A flotilla of small boats, each heavily French troops evacuated from
the ‘little ships’: some 700 vessels that, along with loaded with evacuated troops Dunkirk arrive in Britain
the Royal Navy and backed up by the army and
RAF, rescued more than 338,000 stranded soldiers.
The heroism of this motley crew of pleasure
ships, fishing vessels, lifeboats and yachts, their
brave captains repeating arduous journeys night
after night, is enshrined in legend today and was
a ray of hope for Britain’s civilians as they stared
into the abyss of a war that would consume the
continent for five more years.
Christened Operation Dynamo, the mission was
the brainchild of Vice-Admiral Bertram Ramsay,
the Royal Navy’s Commander-in-Chief Dover.
He envisaged the rescue of 45,000 men, with
Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s estimate a
more cautious 30,000. With sturdy armour, anti-
aircraft weapons and a larger capacity to ship more
soldiers at once, the navy’s destroyers would seem
the obvious fit for the rescue mission. But although
these ships could move alongside Dunkirk’s vast
jetties (or ‘moles’) that led out to sea, they couldn’t
access the shallows of the beaches. This is where
some civilian assistance was needed.
An urgent call was put out via the BBC and
newspapers for as many vessel owners as possible
to come forward, but the nature of the mission
Allied troops line up on the beach
was shrouded in secrecy so many had no idea at Dunkirk to await evacuation
what they would face. Contrary to expectations,
hundreds responded, offering private yachts,
ferries, paddle steamers, hospital ships and barges, sloops, trawlers, motorboats, fishing boats, tugs, back and continued the journey, arriving at the
including the 15-metre Count Dracula, which Dutch skoots. Under the splendid sun, they port at about noon on 27 May. Many of the crew
had seen action with the Imperial German Navy seemed like craft of peace journeying upon a gay were not so lucky, with 23 killed and 60 wounded.
during World War I. occasion but suddenly, we knew where we were, Still, other little ships went forth to Dunkirk,
Britain’s people responded in true patriotic for someone said: ‘There they are, the bastards.’” where they witnessed thousands of exhausted
fashion, but the commanders were under no This tranquil picture was not a lasting reality soldiers lining the moles and wading in the
illusions about the for the boats, which shallows, easy pickings for the bombers.
challenges. “Nothing encountered perils 15-year-old sea cadet Reg Vine was one of the
but a miracle can save “Those able to escape into like mines and the youngest rescuers present. “We had just been told
the BEF now,” were the the sea were picked off by Goodwin Sands on we were evacuating some troops. That was all.
grave words of General their way to Dunkirk. Just evacuation of British troops,” the veteran said
Alan Brooke. German machine-gunners in Then, at the harbour, in an interview with journalist and author Sinclair
Embarking from low-flying aircraft” there would be the McKay. “I was told on the way there, ‘You look
Ramsgate in Kent, the unceasing fear of the after one lifeboat when you get there and Paddy
little ships began their Stuka dive bombers. will look after the other one’.
mission on 26 May, unknowing of the dangers that The first little ship to traverse the course was “Right-o, I thought, lifeboats. When we got
would greet them. Journalist Robert Harling, who the Isle of Man steamer Mona’s Isle, which set sail near the coast and you could hear the banging
went along on the initial voyage, was appreciating from Dover at 9pm. She arrived at Dunkirk shortly and the crashing and the screaming and hollering
the marriage of the River Thames and the night after midnight and picked up 1,429 men — but the and God knows what – bodies and bits floating
sky when, upon leaving the estuary, the rising sun risks became clear as she sailed towards England. in the sea – well, I was as sick as a bloody dog.
illuminated an odd sight. Having already been assailed by German I couldn’t help it.
“We were moving up the coast with a stranger artillery, Mona’s Isle was machine-gunned by “When I was a kid, I had been taken to a
miscellany of craft than was ever seen in the most fighters on its way back to Dover. Petty Officer LB slaughterhouse by an uncle who showed me the
hybrid amateur regatta,” he wrote. “Destroyers, Kearley-Pope was shot multiple times, but he fired killed pigs and bullocks and cut them all up. I saw
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