bank was mistaken for a British ship by U-43 and torpedoed and sunk west of the Canaries (with 394 killed and only one survivor).
The crew spent
a pleasant five months in South Africa while their ship was under
repair. They "enjoyed all the advantages of a peace time visit to a
truly beautiful country plus the special welcome reserved for service
men by those South African whites who were on the whole still
sentimental about Britain and Royalty and keen to demonstrate that
loyalty" (Ted Coleman). Don Preece and Jabe Skelhorne were two of those whose final months were made the happier by the generous hospitality they received in South Africa.
described Simonstown as "quite a pleasing rural community, a few little
shops, a small cinema and a pub or two. The main street included a row
of attractive colonial style buildings more or less opposite the
Dockyard. Admiralty House stood fair and square at the end of the
dockyard complex furthest west from the main gate." He gave an amusing
description of Just Nuisance, a great Dane officially adopted by the Navy and owner of a regular bed in the Fleet Club in Cape Town.
Charles Eastop and fifty of his colleagues on HMS Hecla left their ship at Simonstown:-
“While she was
being repaired fifty or so of her communications staff, wireless and
signals, were sent to Mombasa to form a temporary staff for C in C
Eastern Fleet who was about to pull out of Ceylon and establish a new
base at Mombasa. The intention was for us to return to Hecla
on completion of repairs but we were never recalled and consequently
Admiralty not knowing the circumstances reported us all missing. Of
course we knew nothing of this until some weeks later when somehow the
news got thro’ to us and arrangements were made for each of us to send
news urgently to our families to say ‘we are safe and well’. It was a
great shock to us all to hear such sad news and know that we had lost
so many old shipmates – in fact I have never seen a complete list of
those who were lost.”
now with Capt George Vivian Barnett Faulkner RN (1897-1962) as its CO, was given secret orders
to support the Anglo-American invasion of North Africa, Operation Torch. Also aboard was Capt S.H.T. Arliss DSC RN, Commodore (D), Eastern Fleet Destroyer Flotilla.
"In October 1942 Hecla
was deemed to be operational again. We left Simonstown and proceeded
about 100 miles north to Saldanha Bay where we 'hid out' for a week. On
the way into the Bay our navigator missed the boom entrance and took
the boom with us. We sailed back to Cape Town to provision and after a
brief stop over proceeded north en route to Gibraltar to participate,
as a destroyer repair ship in the North African landing." Les Proctor.
George Male thought Hecla
was only sixty percent seaworthy and they were heading back home for
further repairs and the crew stocked up with bananas, unobtainable in
England, during a brief stop over in Freetown. They left Freetown on
the 4 November as part of Convoy CF.7A bound for Liverpool and the last
known photographs of Hecla were taken by Tom Davis, a young rating on the destroyer escort, HMS Active.
HMS Hecla left Freetown in west Africa as part of Convoy CF.7A and was photographed by Tom Davis. the ships writer on HMS Active
Courtesy of Steve Davis, the stepson of Tom Davis
The two destroyer depot ships, HMS Hecla and Vindictive, were joined by the destroyer escorts, HMS Venomous and HMS Marne,
near the Canaries on the 8 November and detached for Gibraltar to
support the ships taking the troops to the invasion beaches at Algiers as part of
At eleven minutes past
11pm on the 11 November the first torpedo hit Hecla ...
Caution - this web site only contains details received since publication of the old edition which is out of print You should read A Hard Fought Ship for the full account of the loss of HMS Hecla A new edition of A Hard Fought Ship will be published in 2016
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