Memoirs of GD Fell

The planes always landed from the stern (rear) of the ship and after landing would taxi to an area at the front of the ship, which was sealed off by a barrier, until all the planes had landed. This was for safety reasons, as occasionally the arrestor hook would miss the wires on the deck and the plane would plough into the barrier. On one occasion after six planes had landed and taxied forward to the area in front of the safety barrier, the seventh plane missed the arrestor wires, bounced over the barrier, and ploughed into the six planes which had already landed. Unfortunately, there was loss of life on this occasion.

During the war, whenever the ship sailed, the crew were put on a two watch system as follows :-

Middle Watch        midnight to 0400
Morning Watch     0400 to 0800
Forenoon Watch   0800 to 1200
Afternoon Watch   1200 to 1600
First Dog Watch   1600 to 1800
Last Dog Watch   1800 to 2000
First Watch           2000 to midnight

As well as being on duty for each alternate watch, you had to turn to for dawn and dusk action stations, when all the ship’s company were on standby at their particular stations, ready for action. Mine was always the D.F. office.

As you can imagine, there was not very much time for sleeping if you came off the middle watch and dawn action stations was piped at six o’clock in the morning, particularly as you were back on the normal watch at eight o’clock and you had to get breakfast in between times. Fortunately, I have always been a good sleeper.

During the trials on the 22nd April, the Khedive was in collision with the SS Stuart Queen. How or why the collision occurred I’m afraid I don’t have a clue. It certainly wasn’t my fault though. As a result of this collision, we had to sail round the Pentland Firth to Greenock for repairs to be carried out. Whilst we were at Greenock we were allowed shore leave and I took the opportunity to visit my relatives who lived in Clydebank, in Glasgow.

I saw at first hand the devastation that had been caused by the bombing of the town. There appeared to be only one building standing unscathed. This building was the local cinema, the Plaza I think it was called. My cousins told me that they had been in the cinema the night the town had been blitzed.

After completion of the repairs, we sailed for Scapa Flow to continue the work up to get the ship to the fighting standard required. The aircraft we had on board were Seafires. The Seafire was a Spitfire which had been modified for landing on aircraft carriers.