Ex-Liner Fights Warship and Saves British Convoy

Indeed at the end of 1940 whilst returning from escorting Convoy HX86, Captain James Alexander Pollard Blackburn, previous Captain of the Jervis Bay, took HMS Voltaire, another armed merchant cruiser, to the site of the sinking of HMS Jervis Bay on his way back to Halifax, Nova Scotia. He brought the Voltaire to a dead slow and he ordered a rifle volley salute to his former ship and shipmates resting on the bottom of the sea.

by Tania Long

The Jervis Bay Goes Down in Flames, Her Guns Barking to the Last;

29 of 38 Merchantmen Escape; Berlin Said Raider Sank Them All

Published 12 November 1940

Sinking and afire from stem to stern but with her guns blazing to the last, the 14,164-ton armed British merchant cruiser Jervis Bay fought a German warship—believed to have been one of the 10,000-ton "pocket battleships," the Admiral Scheer or the Lützow—at dusk last Tuesday, 1,000 miles out in the Atlantic from the American coast, and enabled a convoy of thirty-eight merchantmen, bringing vital supplies from the New World to scatter.

Twenty-nine of the freighters escaped, and twenty-four of these reached a British port today. The fate of the nine other ships in the convoy is uncertain. All may have been sent to the bottom after the destruction of the Jervis Bay. Among the surviving vessels were the 16,698-ton motor liner Rangitiki and the 4,952-ton Cornish City, whose distress signals last week were the first indications that a raider was active in the shipping lanes of the North Atlantic.

The German high command said the entire convoy had been destroyed, but the Jervis Bay, fighting as gallantly as the armed merchant cruiser Rawalpindi had done against the Deutschland (later renamed the Lützow) last winter, sacrificed herself to allow nearly three-fourths of the vessels to escape in the gathering gloom.

Details of the action were told by some of the men who, aboard the freighters in convoy, watched the Jervis Bay steaming out from the line to meet the powerful raider. In peace time the Jervis Bay was an Aberdeen and Commonwealth liner plying between England and Australia, carrying freight and the poorest classes of immigrants.

British and foreign vessels in the convoy, eyewitnesses recounted, followed one another across a calm sea. It had been a perfect day. Just as darkness was gathering the silence was shattered by a distant explosion. Then came the scream of a shell from below the horizon. It fell harmlessly a few yards from a ship.

The shell was followed by another. Soon the silhouette of a warship emerged, and the firing grew more intense. Immediately the order to scatter was given, and, as the ships obeyed, the raider began to concentrate on the Rangitiki, the largest vessel in the convoy.

The raider stood off about seven or eight miles as she poured shell after shell in the direction of the Rangitiki. Suddenly when it seemed that the merchantman could no longer escape the devastating fire, the Jervis Bay steamed straight out in front of her, turned slightly and raced toward the attacking warship.

The crew of the Jervis Bay must have known that she stood little chance against the raider's superior armament, but they manned their guns and blazed away furiously, drawing the fire from the Rangitiki.

As the convoy ships disappeared one by one into the safety of the night, the Jervis Bay fought grimly on. The battle did not last long. The Jervis Bay, battered from stem to stern, began to burn. Soon she was blazing. Still her last remaining gun could be heard barking defiantly between the thunderous explosions of the raider's heavy guns.

Full details of what happened then are not available. The Admiralty said that nearly two hours after the beginning of the engagement an explosion was seen aboard the Jervis Bay. Sixty-five survivors, the Admiralty added, were known to have been aboard a merchant ship.

The Jervis Bay was manned by officers and men of the Royal Naval Reserve. She was commanded by Captain H. S. F. Feegan.

A British captain of one of the convoy ships, interviewed on landing today, said he thought the raider was a pocket battleship and believed her shells were fired from 11-inch guns.

Fegen's Service Record

1922 Jan: promoted to Lt Cmdr Seniority 15/10/21, serving in HMS WHITLEY

1922 Dec: appointed to HMS SOMME

1924 Jan: appointed to HMS VOLUNTEER

1925 Jun: appointed to HMS COLOSSUS Accommodation ship, 20,000 tons, Boys training ship.

1926 Jul: appointed to HMS FORRES as Lt/Cmdr in command

1927 Nov: on S O T C (Senior Officer`s Technical Course) at Portsmouth

1927 Dec: appointed to R. A. N. - (RANC at Captains Point, Jervis Bay) on Naval staff

1928 Jan: believed promoted to Cmdr on 20/1/28

1929 Dec: still at R A N

1932/1934: HMS OSPREY

1934: on S O W C (Senior Office`s War Course ) at R.N. College at Greenwich from 15/10/34 to February 1935

1935 Mar: HMS DAUNTLESS to June 1935

1935 Aug: HM Dockyard, Chatham to August 1938. HMS CURLEW - Reserve Fleet, and HMS DRAGON - Reserve Fleet

1939 Jul: HMS EMERALD, Cruiser, 7,550 tons, Reserve Fleet at the Nore (Incidentally, the Capt of HMS EMERALD was Capt A.W.S.Agar, VC, DSO.)

1940: appointed Acting Capt of AMC HMS JERVIS BAY in Feb 1940; 49 when killed in action.

 

Click on image to view larger version.

This photo was published in the Telegraph-Journal, local Saint John newspaper, in November 1940. The complete accompanying text is also provided below. As well, names in Red denote Killed, while Green denotes Missing, Presumed Killed.

Identity of officers, pictured above, of HMS Jervis Bay, British armed merchant cruiser, sunk in a gallant battle with a German pocket battleship in the North Atlantic on November 5, while defending her convoy of 38 ships, was established last night by Paymaster Lieut. J.G. Sargeant and Sub-Lieutenant Guy Byam-Corstiaens, two of the survivors of the hero ship, who arrived here yesterday to remain with friends in Saint John and Rothesay prior to returning overseas. When the above picture was previously published in the Telegraph-Journal, on November 14, only partial identification was available and for the benefit of those who are treasuring the picture, it is being re-published with complete identification, as follows:

Back row - left to right - Gunner E.R. Stannard, Lieut. Richard Shackleton, Surgeon-Lieut. H.St.J. Hiley, Paymaster Lieut. A.W. Stott, Lieut. Hugh Williamson (chief radio officer), Lieut. A.H.W. Bartle, Lieut. Norman E. Wood, Lieut. Walter Hill, Lieut.-Commdr. George L. Roe, Lieut. H.G.B. Moss, Paymaster Lieut. J.G. Sargeant.

Middle row - left to right - Paymaster Commdr. E.W. White, Lieut. Commdr. K.M. Morrison, Commdr. J.A.P. Blackburn, D.S.C., Capt. E.S. Fogarty Fegen, V.C., Engineer Commdr. J.H.G. Chappell, Lieut. Commdr. A.W. Driscoll.

Front row - left to right - Wireless Operator Donald Curry, Midshn. Owens, Midshn. Ronald A.G. Butler, Midshn. C.C.T. Latch, Midshn. W.B. Thistleton.

Other senior officers of the vessel, including Surgeon Lieut. Commdr. T.G. Evans, Lieut. Dudlet J.H. Bigg, and Sub-Lt. Guy Byam-Corstiaens are not shown in the picture.

Surgeon-Lieutenant Hiley was relieved by Surgeon-Lieutenant-Commander Evans, who rejoined the ship shortly before she sailed, in her last convoy. He had been a patient in hospital in an East Coast Canadian port for a few weeks.

Remembrance Day ceremony at the HMS Jervis Bay memorial at Albouy's Point, in the City of Hamilton, Bermuda, including personnel from the Royal Naval Association Bermuda Branch, HMS Malabar, and the Sea Cadet Corps, c. 1990.