A Lone, Slow Ship The SS Parracombe Attempts a Mission to Malta
T
he fall of France in June 1940 resulted in the loss to the Allied cause of the greater part of the French fleet; more important, it altered the strategic situation in the Mediterranean, a situation made even graver for the Allies when in that same month Italy entered the war on the German side. Despite the fact that Britain still held Gibraltar at one end and controlled Alexandria and the Suez Canal at the other, the Mediterranean was no longer dominated by the Royal Navy. Lying abo ut halfway between the Britishcontrolled ends of that sea lay the isolated outpost of Malta. The island's position made it of vital strategic importance, sitting almost astride the Axis supply routes to North Africa. From the British point of view the island had to be held at all costs, and ships carrying aircraft, munitions, oil, food and everything else a beleaguered fortress needs had to get through. Throughout the many months of the siege of Malta, during which the island became an exceedingly sharp thorn in what Churchill later called "the soft underbelly
by Peter Elphick of the Axis," getting those supplies through proved to be extremely difficult and hazardous. The 980-mile route from Gibraltar and the 820-mile one from Alexandria were within reach of German and Italian aircraft based eith er in Sardinia and Sicily to the north, or in Libya to the south, not to mention the forays that were made from the Italian island of Pantelleria, which was actually on the route from the west. Sections of the western route were also in range of motor torpedo-boats based at Cagliari, Sardinia and Augusta, Sici ly, and as the military front in North Africa pushed first one way and then the other, torpedoboats could from time to time also threaten the eastern route. On top of all that, in the background and so always to be taken into consideration by British naval planners, was the threat posed by the Italian Navy lurking in its homeland bases. It was all very well for British wartime propaganda to denigrate the Italians, but no one knew better than the Royal Navy's commander in the Mediterranean, Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, that the Italian fleet was
The western Mediterranean (Map courtesy The Perry-Castaneda Library Map Collection, University of Texas at Austin) 8 .
North A!lantic
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SEA HISTORY 92, SPRING 2000
equipped with faster battleships armed with longer-ranged 15 " guns than the British. The Royal Navy had its work cut out in keeping both routes open, especially the more important of the two, that from Gibraltar. (Supplies coming from the other direction had first to be sent ro und the Cape of Good Hope, adding weeks to the journey.) As the Axis increased its pressure and Malta's situation grew more and more perilous, the British tried every conceivable way to get supplies through, even resorting to sending in small quantities by submarine. Merchant ships in some of the most heavily protected convoys of the war made the run. A famous convoy, codenamed Operation "Pedestal," in August 1942, included the saga of the tanker Ohio (an American ship but manned by Britons) which, on fire and seriously damaged and with Royal Navy ships lashed to port and starboard, managed to reach the island in its darkest hour. At other times single fast merchant ships were used to run the gauntlet, relying on speed and the very fact they were alone to get them through . Of much lesser renown was the attempt to reach the island made by a slow blockade-running steamer belonging to Stanhope Shipping Company. She was called the Parracombe. Parracombe was built in Hartlepool in 1928 and took her name from a pretry village on the edge of Exmoor in Devon. Maybe the ship had once been considered attractive-looking herself, but no one would have used any complimentary adjective to describe her appearance as she lay in Imperial Dock, Leith, in April 1941 . By then the better days of the 10.5-knot, 4,700-ton coal-burning vessel had long since passed her by. Rusry and salt-streaked, she had recently returned from a winter voyage to St. Jo hn's, Newfoundland, and there had not been time for much in the way of maintenance or for sprucing her up. On top of that, on 19 March, she had sustained minor damage when a mine exploded close to her off Southend. She had bunkered recently and was covered in coal dust. All in all Parracombe looked expendable, though that was not the reason why she had been selected by the Admiralty to attempt the dangerous task ahead. 29