Tiree to honour the dead of HMS Sturdy

70 years after she ran on to rocks on the Isle of Tiree on 30th October 1940, the island is honouring the memory of the five sailors from the broken British destroyer, HMS Sturdy, who died in the surf so recently enjoyed by the wavesailor competitors in the 2010 Skykon Tiree Wave Classic.

Tiree has built a memorial at the beach in Sandaig where the ship grounded. The memorial is to  be dedicated at 2.00pm in a service on Saturday 30th October 2010. Commodore Charles Stevenson, CBE, (Naval Regional Commander, Scotland and Northern Ireland), relatives of the crew and island families who cared for the surviving seamen will be at the dedication ceremony and will hear there the Tiree pipe band play in tribute.

There will then be a short wreath-laying service at Soroby Cemetery, where those carried from the sea are buried.

HMS Sturdy’s story – and particularly that of her last days, is a powerful and complex one.

Launched in June 1919 her build was completed in 1920 and she was equipped as an occasional minelayer. She served for a while in the operational fleet before being mothballed and later brought back into service in 1939 just before World War II broke out.

She was prepared for duty in Hong Kong but was diverted en route to join an anti-smuggling flotilla in the Mediterranean.

In 1940 she was deployed in Atlantic convoy defence and on 18th October 1940 she joined Convoy HX73 from Halifax, Nova Scotia to the UK, sailing between 18th and 23rd October.

This was a convoy of 49 merchant ships, escorted by two destroyers (Whitehall and Sturdy), four corvettes (Hibiscus, Heliotrope, Coreopsis and Arabis), the minesweeper Jason, 3 anti-submarine trawlers (Lady Elsa, Blackfly and Angle).

The convoy was spotted early on, on 19th October, by U-47, commanded by the most famous of the U-boat commanders, Gunther Prien and with another of the major U-boat aces  – Joachim Scheppke in U-100, in the same wolfpack.

In total, 12 of the 49 ships were sunk and 2 damaged, with Prien in U-47 accounting for four of the sinkings and the two damaged ships; Scheppke in U-100 sinking three ships; Engelbert Endrass in U-46 and Heinrich Liebe in U-38 sinking two each; and Heinrich Bleichrodt sinking one.

Five of the ships were sunk and one damaged on 19th October; with seven sunk and another damaged on the following day.

Ten days later, after helping to shepherd 75% of Convoy HX73 safely through such a highly skilled and determined wolfpack and after doing escort duty again (Convoy OL 009),  Sturdy was off on night passage to meet an incoming convoy. This was a slow one from Halifax again -  Convoy SC 008.

Weather conditions were dreadful and Sturdy was driven well off course in a full gale and ran onto rocks off Sandaig on the west coast of Tiree. The ship broke in two.

The young son of the Sturdy’s Engineer, EJA Gibson – who survived the wrecking and was hospitalised with a broken knee in Oban’s Cottage Hospital – was sent to Tiree during this time, to recover his father’s belongings. Now a retired Royal Navy Lieutenant Commander himself, MJ Gibson remembers that the bow of the Sturdy was on the grass on the shore while the stern was 4o yards offshore – so severe was the storm.

Note: The five sailors who died when HMS Sturdy ran on to the rocks off the west of Tiree on 30th October 1940 were Able Seaman PR Cornford; Stoker 1st Class TW Cowler; Able Seaman F Greenshields; Ordinary Seaman JH Rivett; and Leading Stoker A Trahearn.

The photograph of HMS Sturdy above was scanned from a 1936 publication by Andy Dingley and is now out of copyright.