Campeador V, 126-foot motor yacht built at Philip’s in Dartmouth in 1938, was offered to the Admiralty by the owner, Vernon McAndrew of Dartmouth, and used for sea patrols, commanded by the owner and his friends, all aged between 58 and 67. She was blown up off the Isle of Wight in June 1940. Two of the twenty-two crew survived, but not McAndrew or his friends. Royal Dart Yacht Club
Brookhill, a twenty minute walk from Kingswear, where the crew from the Free French Flotilla stayed during the Second World War and a sailor stood guard at the door beside the cross of Lorraine. This view from the river is from a 1908 postcard, but the house changed little until after the wars (see opposite). Michael Stevens
The Free French spent most of the war in Kingswear, first with the 20th and then the 23rd Flotilla of motor torpedo boats. There were some 200 of them after 1942, under the overall command of English coastal forces. The officers, including Philippe de Gaulle, the son of Charles, were housed at the ‘petit hôtel délicieux’ of Longford, opposite the Royal Dart Hotel, and the crew down the coast road at Brookhill and on HMS Belfort, the base ship on the Dart.
The French remember nights out at sea off the French coast, periods of tense watching and then the roar of engines and deafening explosions, followed by a return to an idyllic sunlit Devon coast.6 Locals still remember Captain Léon Coquerel who escaped with the tugs from le Havre in 1940. In a wild storm in 1942 he went to the rescue of local sailors trying to stabilise a yacht at the Dart harbour mouth and saved the life of one by jumping overboard in raging seas. The 23rd Flotilla Association still meets annually in France, and contacts with Kingswear continue, often through members who, like Coquerel, married local girls.
Kingswear was awarded the Médaille d’Argent by the French Government for its assistance to the Free French in the war. The cross was part of the arms of Lorraine, annexed to Germany for much of the war, a symbol of French patriotism and the Free French. Michael Stevens/Kingswear Historians
Operation Overlord was the biggest event of the war. Although it involved the area intensively for only about seven months, it disrupted many lives and is what people most remember. The Naval College in Dartmouth became one of the headquarters of the USNAAB (US Naval Advanced Amphibious Base) responsible for training US forces for the Normandy invasions – called the U forces in Devon and Cornwall after their target, ‘Utah’ beach. By early 1944, more than 4,000 US navy personnel plus army units, British liaison staff and others were billeted in the Dartmouth area. Apart from the training, the main task was to ready the fleet of ships and landing craft. From the estuary almost up to Stoke Gabriel, 110 landing craft were moored in the Dart, and concrete slipways were constructed to load them at Sandridge, Waddeton and Dartmouth.
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Modern Brookhill, which was home to the Free French Flotilla during WWII. This photograph was taken on 4 June 2012 during the Dartmouth Jubilee Flotilla. The queen sailed past here in July 1939 when, as princess, she spent time with her future husband, Prince Philip. Richard Webb
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