28 | telegraph | nautilusint.org | March 2017
MARITIME HISTORY
My family’s Merchant Navy hero
Tyndareus Pictures: courtesy of Tony Flynn
One hundred years ago, a Liverpool shipmaster, Captain George Flynn, helped to save the lives of more than 1,000 soldiers after his ship hit a mine on its maiden voyage. His grandson, TONY FLYNN, tells the remarkable story…
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Blue Funnel’s SS Tyndareus was built by the Scotts’ Shipbuilding & Engineering Company of Greenock. The 11,347grt vessel was completed in October 1916 for the Ocean Steamship Company at a cost of £2,013,014. Straight after delivery in November that year, the ship was taken up under the Liner Requisition Scheme, and on 6 December sailed from Glasgow, laden with general cargo and bound for the port of Yokohama, Japan. Tyndareus arrived at Liverpool on 7 December, where further cargo was loaded, and sailed from the
port on 20 December. Two days later, the ship arrived at Devonport and embarked 30 officers, 972 men and six dogs of the 25 Battalion Middlesex Rifle Regiment for transport under the command of Lt Col John Ward, the Labour MP for Liverpool. The vessel then set sail from Devonport on 5 January 1917 on her maiden voyage, under the command of Captain George Arthur Hope Flynn. Born on 20 May 1875 onboard his father’s sailing ship while rounding the Cape of Good Hope in the midst of a storm, he had joined the Alfred Holt Line as a junior officer in 1900 and was made master in April 1911.
Tyndareus arrived at Sierra Leone on 17 January 1917 and sailed from there on 23 January, arriving at Table Bay (Cape Town) on 5 February, where fresh provisions and some cargo were loaded before departing for Durban to load bunker coal. On 6 February 1917, at 5.55pm, they sighted Cape L’Agulhas lighthouse and just under an hour later, some 108 miles SE of Cape Town, a violent external explosion occurred on the starboard side of the vessel, close to No 3 bulkhead. Capt Flynn ordered all hands to boat stations and abandon ship, as the explosion had caused a gaping hole and the vessel was sinking rapidly by the head. It was later discovered that the mine was laid by the German raider Wolf. Contemporary accounts describe how the men assembled on the decks in perfect order. As soon as the roll had been called and the order ‘stand easy’ given, someone started singing the marching song Long, Long Trail. Excellent discipline was maintained by Capt Flynn and Lt Col Ward, with Capt Flynn walking up and down the deck and encourage the troops to sing Tipperary — saying ‘Come on lads, nice and loud.’ Despite rough seas and strong winds, Tyndareus was evacuated safely within the space of an hour, with all the men transferring to lifeboats. These were lowered with one slight mishap: one boat which had tipped during its descent had to be righted by a young seaman who jumped overboard. The men were then picked up by two ships which had answered the distress call — Blue Funnel’s Eumaeus and the hospital ship ss Oxfordshire. The naval vessel HMS Hyacinth and a South African tug were sent from Simonstown to give assistance. Hyacinth’s commanding officer considered Tyndareus a danger to navigation and ordered Capt Flynn to beach her. But Flynn ignored the order, and with seven volunteers from his crew — including chief officer Basil Cubley, chief engineer Frank Wregg and carpenter Patrick Joseph King — resolutely took their sinking ship under her own steam to Simons Bay.
In a postcard showing the hole in the ship’s side, Capt Flynn wrote to his wife, Agnus Gertrude: ‘This is a photo of the principal damage. The ship is in the dry dock, the hole is 47ft long and 20ft deep, but is only part of the damage. She is still the only ship that was mined off Africa and saved and did not lose one life, out of 1,030 men and six dogs.’
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Capt Flynn was awarded the DSC by King George V in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace on 13 February 1919. He had already received a Lloyd’s of London medal for meritorious service to the country after an encounter with a German submarine off the coast of Algiers while in command of ss Antilochus, and he went on to be decorated for other acts of heroism during the war. One of these was the rescue of 26 Norwegian seamen after their ship, Manx King, was sunk on 8 July by a German submarine in the Atlantic. Capt Flynn was ordered not to stop his vessel — ss Anchises — as the U-boat was still in the area. Even though it was feared his ship would be a sitting target, Flynn decided to stop the engines and recover the men from lifeboats. On 23 September 1918, Flynn was in command of Anchises when a German submarine was sighted at a distance of five miles. He altered course to bring the submarine astern, speed was increased to the utmost, Anchises opened fire and the submarine was damaged. Tyndareus went on to have a long career , including service as a troop ship in the Second World War, and conversion to a pilgrimage ship in 1949 — running the ‘Hadj’ service until being sent for scrapping in Hong Kong in 1960. g Capt Flynn’s family are seeking Telegraph readers’ help with two questions. Does anyone know what became of his DSC medal? And does anyone know what happened to the inscribed silver that he received for the Manx King rescue? Please send any ideas to the editor at telegraph@nautilusint.org.
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At 5am on 7 February, HMS Hyacinth placed 40 of her crew onboard to assist in working the vessel. At 7.55, HMS Trent came alongside to assist by towing, but both attempts to make a connection were unsuccessful. Tyndareus battled stern-first against the weather, and with some assistance from the tug Ludwig Wiener finally managed to anchor in Simon’s Bay at 4.45pm. Tyndareus was towed stern-first to Simonstown naval base, where she was repaired. And on 12 June 1917, she went back to complete her voyage to China and Japan. In a letter to Richard Holt, the South African governor-general Viscount Buxton wrote: ‘The hole is a terrible one, the bottom, plates and bulkhead twisted and torn. It is a wonderful thing that she was able to float at all and did not sink within a few minutes. … You and your firm, the designer and the builders, are greatly to be congratulated on the result of the great improvements in regard to double bottom, bulkheads, etc, designed for the Tyndareus — these were, I presume, consequent on the loss of the Titanic. There is no doubt whatever … that without these well designed and costly improvements the ship would have gone to the bottom.’ The naval commander-in-chief at Simonstown wrote to the Admiralty to praise the ‘Birkenhead tradition’ of the British Army and the ‘coolness and perseverance of the captain, officers and engineer’s staff’. Following the incident, Col Ward wrote a letter of thanks to Capt Flynn — praising the ‘heroic efforts’ in bringing the ship to safety and the ‘cool and calm’ conduct of the crew.
Captain George Arthur Hope Flynn, Merchant Navy master and First World War hero
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