Remembrance Day: Falmouth man's memories of WWII onboard an armed steam trawler

Tom Ellis, aged 92, of Conway Road, Falmouth, remembers that day well.

“I thought at the time that it was a posh sounding name for a naval ship,” he told me.

Little did he know she was a small converted trawler that was to be his home for the next two years.

Tom said: “I wanted to go on destroyers. Arriving in Portsmouth docks I spotted four destroyers moored alongside. I asked which one was Kingston Turquoise. A sailor pointed to this small trawler tied up astern.”

Born in the small village of Aston, near Sheffield, Tom, along with three close friends, decided to volunteer to join the Royal Navy in the event of war.

In May 1941, young Tom received his call-up papers. After initial training as a signaller, known in naval parlance as a “bunting tosser” he was drafted to the armed steam trawler. Crewed by some former fishermen she spent her time patrolling the Channel, off the Isle of Wight, looking for U-boats using her sonar equipment.

“If we had a contact we would fire off a depth charge.” said Tom.

Kingston Turquoise was assigned to the Royal Naval Patrol Service (RNPS), also known as Harry Tate’s Navy, a name given by the Royal Navy to poke fun at the trawlers and drifters of the unit in World War II.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill wrote to the Fourth Sea Lord in 1939: “I am told that the RNPS /Minesweepers men have no badge. If this is so it must be remedied at once. “ The finished design took the form of a shield upon which a sinking shark, speared by a marlin spike, was set against a background made up of a fishing net with two trapped enemy mines. This was flanked by two examples of the nautical knot and at the top the naval crown. Beneath the silver badge was a scroll bearing the letters M/S-A/S (Minesweeping Anti-Submarine).

Never before had one section of the Royal Navy been similarly honoured.

The RNPS suffered more than 250 lost vessels, more than any other branch of the Royal Navy.

Lord St Levan, who died this year, won a DSC whilst serving with the RNPS.

A modest, quintessential, Yorkshireman, Tom is very proud to wear the exclusive silver badge denoting his service with Harry Tate’s navy.

Tom’s next draft in 1943 saw him off to the USA to bring a new, wooden minesweeper BYMS 2041 back to the UK.

He and his shipmates boarded a cutter at Gourock that took them out to the liner Queen Mary. Later, Winston Churchill joined the Cunard leviathan at anchor, travelling under his code name of Colonel Warden. Churchill was on his way to the United States to meet President Roosevelt.

Tom said: “ We sailed from the Clyde with the Queen Mary travelling at top speed on zig-zag courses to avoid the U-boat menace. My job was to keep a lookout at night. Coming off the 12-4 watch one night I saw Winston Churchill on the promenade deck. He nodded and I nodded. I was chuffed.”

D-Day on June 6 1944 saw Tom in action off the Normandy beaches aboard the same minesweeper.

Recalling that historic day, Tom said: “Dawn came very slowly. This was the big one. What an amazing sight. To port, to starboard and astern an astonishing flotilla of ships of all shapes and sizes. What happened during the coming days is very hard for me to describe.

“We were minesweeping off the Sword Beach. Hunt class destroyers were bombarding the German gun emplacements. Shells from the battleship HMS Warspite further offshore whistled overhead. The noise was deafening. Scores of landing craft carrying thousands of very, very brave men headed towards the beaches. Some, as we know, paid the ultimate sacrifice for their king and country and, of course, our enduring freedom.”

From the now iconic beaches of Normandy, BYMS 2041 headed back to her base at Harwich before embarking with other ships on one of the most arduous and dangerous minesweeping operations of the war – clearing mines from 80 miles of the River Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp, in Belgium.

In April 1945 Tom was Mentioned in Dispatches for his great gallantry and endurance for the role he played in clearing the estuary of the Scheldt of mines during the period of October to November 1944.

After the war, Tom and his family eventually moved to Falmouth. Apart from working on the construction of the Queen Elizabeth dry-dock in 1959 Tom managed to get a job as an ordinary seaman with the MFVs (Motor Fishing Vessels) operating out of the Submarine Pier with the Torpedo Trails Unit which eventually became the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment.

A spell operating out of Plymouth saw Tom working on ammunition carriers dumping ordnance in the Hurd Deep in mid Channel The fleet tenders, Heaver, Headcorn and Clovelly, later replaced the MFVs.

Tom took charge of all three vessels that were based at Falmouth Wharves in 1977.

Tom and his wife Betty have been married for 67 years. They have four children – Roger, Norman, Elizabeth and Sally.

Retired for 30 years, Tom always remembers those who never returned from war.

Every year he has remembrance crosses placed in the memorial garden to honour fallen comrades but in particular to remember his uncle, Thomas Ellis, after whom he is named, who was killed in World War I in France during April 1918 at the age of 19.

His cousin Jean was killed in an air raid at Great Yarmouth and his friend, stoker Stanley Surgey, was lost when the destroyer HMS Aldenham blew up in the Adriatic with the loss of 130 lives.