I wish I remember...

The 20 years old wireless officer Alan Comes, from the merchant navy, was one of the few survivors when his ship was sunk by a U-boat, just after the war begun.

A couple of weeks later he sent a letter to his cousin in Australia where he tells about his nightmare and also his loss of memory that resulted of this misadventure.

He was a crewmember of the “Darino”, a small Merchant ship sunk on the 19th November 1939, a couple of hours after steaming out from Oporto, in Portugal.

The U-boat U-41, commanded by Gustav-Adolf Mugler, made several attacks before hitting the ship that took 16 of the 27 sailors with her into the bottom of the sea, including the commander William James Ethelbert Colgan.

Picture from a wreked ship published in the portuguese newspaper "Século Ilustrado", September 30, 1939.

(Arquivo Histórico de Portimão)

Alan’s letter was published on February3, 1940 in “The Australian Women’s Weekly”…


MY Dear Cousin Dorothy,


This is about to be the hardest letter I've ever written in my life.

You see, it's like this everyone tells me that I've been to Australia and have therefore seen you, Uncle Mick and Auntie Tone, but the tragedy is that I can't remember anything about it at all.


I've lost a portion of my memory, and if all I have heard from other people about my trip to Australia is true, then I've lost the best portion of my life.


Anyway, I'll begin by thanking you very much indeed for the letter and Christmas wishes, and will now in turn hope that you all have the happiest of Christmases and the merriest of New Years.


You mention in your letter that I sent you a brooch. Mother has also talked about it, but I'm afraid I can't even remember what it looked like, or sending it.


The war has come home to me with a nasty experience.


My ship the Darino was torpedoed three weeks today at 3 o'clock on a pitch black Sunday morning returning from Oporto in Portugal to Liverpool (19th November). We were 300 miles from the nearest land (Cape Finisterre) and more or less in the Bay of Biscay.


The submarine gave us no warning. There were 27 of the crew altogether, but only ll of us survived.


The torpedo hit by No. 3 hatch on the after end of the ship, practically blowing us in two. We were only a little ship of 800 tons. The after mast broke off, and smashed the wireless room to pieces, just missing me.


I had been asleep when the torpedo hit us, so was only in pyjamas.


We had two lifeboats, but they were smashed to atoms.


I had to fight my way out of my cabin as the sandbags on the top had trapped me in.
The dynamo must have been blown up, as all this was happening in the pitch darkness.


I managed to pick up my Jacket coat, but could not find a life-jacket. I rushed round to the wireless room, but it was a hopeless wreck, and the screams of the poor fellows trapped below were sending me crazy.


All this was happening in three minutes because the next second I was washed clean overboard and down. My watch, which I've still got, stopped exactly at 3, and the torpedo hit us at three minutes to the hour.


Suddenly out of the water a big black shape rose. I thought it was the poor Darino coming up owing to the boilers bursting, but it was the U-boat. I had forgotten all about it.


At first I thought they were going to machine-gun us in the water, but instead they shouted to us to swim towards them as quickly as possible and they would save us.


So they took us on board, but I don't remember much of that as I was nearly unconscious. Anyway, the Germans treated us very well, wrapped us in blankets, and slept on the iron deck so that we could have their bunks.


When we counted up there were only ll of us. The captain and my pal, the third mate, were killed, and the engineers, too, all of them, and the cook, steward, cabin boy, and firemen also, making a total of 16 dead.


The chief mate and second mate were saved.


The commander of the submarine asked us three officers to dine with him, and they gave us exceptionally good food, fresh butter, too.


About ll a.m. the submarine dived and the Germans took action stations; it was a British convoy passing over us!


Any second we expected to be blown up by depth charges, as our own men above would not know there were survivors in the submarine.


Thank God the destroyers did not hear us with their listening gear, or I would not be writing this now. But, believe me, we were absolutely terrified, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.


Eventually we were transferred to a neutral ship named Caterina Gerolimich, an Italian one.


The Germans gave us each two packets of cigarettes, and they also gave me a pair of trousers.


The Italians treated us wonderfully, too.


We had a nightmare of a journey to Dover on the Italian ship, as she had no charts of the mined area and she wandered in and out of minefields. We expected to go sky-high at any minute.


So here I am, pretty well intact except for a slight shell-shock, loss of memory, and a slightly damaged hip.


I can't sleep very well, and daren't shave myself, so please will you excuse my writing as I'm not very steady about the hands.


Sincerely,
Alan


Carlos Guerreiro

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To know more about other shipwreked click HERE

To know more about the Darino click HERE

Proud saviours from the “Sines”

By Carlos Guerreiro

The picture was published on the 23 March edition of the Portuguese newspaper “Século Ilustrado”, with some other pictures and a very simple note: “The crew from the steamer Sines that saved 71 shipwreked men from one American ship torpedoed in the Atlantic”.

It was a small note in a conflict that brought to the Portuguese ports hundreds of shipwrecked men from all nationalities. It was not by chance that, already in April 1940, a delegation of the “British Seaman Institute”, was created in Lisbon, in order to support those arrived in the Lisbon port but also, and especially, to support those that came to Portugal, brought by different kinds of ships, after seeing their own sunk.

In fact the 71 men saved by the Sines never arrived in Lisbon, as they were delivered in the port of Horta (Azores), one island much nearer from the place where they were torpedoed by the German submarine U-172, about 450 miles west from the islands.

They belonged to the “Keystone” a 5.5 Ton ship that was part of a convoy with 45 ships (named UGS-6) that started from the USA (on 12 March) on the way to Gibraltar (Arrived on 19 March).

The “Keystone” was the first victim of this convoy from a U-boat pack that was patrolling the area in the vicinity of the Azores. The ship had problems from the start in the engine room and, after a while, he was alone, away from the rest of the ships. When the first torpedo hit her –at 22.28 hours of the 13th – she was already 50 miles behind.

The first explosion killed two of the crew and left the ship incapacitated. After the rest of the men left, the “Keystone” was hit by another torpedo that broke her in two.

She would not be the only victim of this confrontation. Between 13 and 18 March the U-Boats would claim three more ships and damage another, continually escaping the eight American destroyers that were escorting the convoy.

The crew of the “Sines” found the survivors seven hours after the sinking and made their duty as seamen, taking them on board.

They would not be the first or the only Portuguese crew to do it during the war… but they certainly deserve the proud look in the picture.

To know more about convoy UGS-6 click here.

To know more about the “Keystone” click here.

Sources: www.uboat.net / Século Ilustrado - Arquivo Municipal de Portimão / War Diaries 1942-1945 – NARA – Footnote.com