The Watercolour
By John Julian
Most boys during the 1960s were proud of their fathers’ service in WWII and I was no exception. I knew mine had been in command of two Captain-class frigates before the end of hostilities and that he had also been CO of the famous sloop HMS STARLING later in 1945, when that ship had been scheduled to join the British Pacific Fleet.
Dad was a New Zealander, and I was proud of that too, but I would also learn what it meant in terms of his reluctance to discuss the war at sea or his part in it. He died aged 59 in late 1970 when I was 14 and, while his death seemed sudden, it turned out that his heart had been troubling him for some time, but he didn’t talk about that either. Looking back to 1970, I can see that he realised he hadn’t long to live and wanted to tell me about his war. One evening during the school holidays, shortly before he died, he showed me a watercolour of a German submarine surrendering to a frigate off Land’s End, late at night on 10 May 1945.
The painting was the work of his Boats Officer, SLT Stock. The submarine was U-1023, a Type VIIC U-Boat launched at Blohm + Voss in Hamburg on 3 May 1944, and the last U-boat to sink an Allied warship - the 335-ton Norwegian minesweeper NYMS 382, which was sunk off Torquay on 7 May 1945 with the loss of 22 men. The submarine’s captain was Kapitanleutnant Heinrich-Andreas Schroeteler, the last man to receive a Knight’s Cross from Admiral Doenitz in person, and he would spend three years in British captivity before returning to Germany in 1948.
[Admiral Doenitz had, on 4 May 1945, ordered his U-boats to cease hostilities and return to base, however many did not get that message. On 7 May the Germans surrendered unconditionally; one requirement was that all U-boats then at sea – over 40 – were to surface, signal their position and proceed to designated Allied ports. It took at least a day before the first did so, and U-1023 was one of nine to do so on the 10th. ]
After the surrender, U-1023 made a well-publicised tour of various British ports, due to its dubious distinction of being the one to sink the last Allied warship. [U-2336 sank two merchant ships on the last night of the war.] U-1023 was opened to the public in ports from London to Liverpool in aid of King George’s Fund for Sailors. On 7 January 1946 she sank at 55.49N, 08.24W, while under tow on her way to be scuttled in Operation Deadlight [the deliberate sinking of most of Germany’s surrendered U-boats].
The frigate in the painting was HMS MOUNSEY (K569), an American-built Captain-class frigate launched at the Boston Navy Yard on 27 November 1943 [the class, 78 strong, were named for Royal Navy captains from the days of fighting sail – see tech specs below]. My father was CO of MOUNSEY between 27 March and 15 June 1945, when he left her for HMS STARLING. Sadly, I was too young in 1970 to understand much of what Dad tried to tell me about how he felt that night off Land’s End 25 years earlier. He tried to tell me how many of the ship’s company reacted to the sight of the U-boat, for MOUNSEY had previously lost 11 of her company when she was torpedoed by U-295 late in 1944 while escorting the Russian convoy JW 61.
But even at age 14 I realised the U-boat’s surrender was a significant point on the long voyage he had started by joining the RNVR(NZ) in Auckland on 13 June 1928, some six months shy of his 18th birthday. My father was born on 28 December 1910 to Tom and Charlotte Julian, in Auckland. The family had a building business with local projects such as the Naval and Family Hotel and the Strand Arcade to its credit and J. T. Julian and Son Ltd would go on to build the Auckland Railway Station and parts of the port. They owned dinghies and bigger boats too, and Dad learned to sail with his brother Trevor. He was educated at King’s College and went on to study civil engineering at the University of Auckland. During this period he was also trained on board (then) HMS WAKAKURA and, by the time of his 20th birthday, he was an acting Petty Officer RNVR, qualified in minesweeping and gunnery.
He left for England at the end of his studies and joined the Associated Portland Cement Company in London. But on 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland, war was declared [on 3 September] and by 13 October, SLT Geoffrey Julian was at sea in a minesweeping trawler based at Hull. One year later, he became a Lieutenant and eighteen months after that [April 1942] he was in command of HM Motor Launch 486, stationed at HMS BENBOW, the RN base in Trinidad, on anti-submarine duty. The ML flotilla, of which he was second in command, had made the stormy winter passage from England to Canada and thence to the Caribbean, refitting en route in New York. [After Germany declared war on the United States, the US East Coast and the Caribbean became the region for the ‘happy time’ for the U-boats – escorts of all sizes were desperately needed throughout the area.]
My father stayed in Trinidad for two years, during which time he was promoted LTCDR RNZNVR [after October 1941, New Zealand officers became RNZN or RNZNVR as appropriate].
He returned to England in 1944 for refresher courses in gunnery and anti-submarine warfare and on 23 May 1944 joined the ‘Z’-class fleet destroyer HMS MYNGS as First Lieutenant. After 3 months’ experience in the destroyer [in essence a pre-command course] he was then posted to the 15th Escort Group and took command of his first frigate HMS DACRES on 1 September 1944.
It was during that last, long, winter of the war, first in DACRES, then in MOUNSEY, he joined the 426 British and Canadian escort ships (and the aircraft of Coastal Command) in countering the final, desperate efforts of the U-Boats in the Western Approaches. [From January to May 1945 U-boats sank 38 Allied merchant ships and 8 warships in UK waters, at a cost of 56 U-boats.]
I look at the watercolour now and again and think of the tall, sometimes austere figure from my childhood with his silver hair, weathered face and distant, pale blue eyes and I can remember the air of authority that surrounded him, particularly at sea, for he was in demand as an ocean-racing skipper long after he left the Navy. I still don’t know how he felt that night or the following morning, as MOUNSEY towed U-1023 into Falmouth. He wasn’t given to elation, but he must have allowed himself some moments of quiet satisfaction. Relief that the war was over could well have been tempered by the thought that his time in the Navy might soon be up (although he would have STARLING for a short time thereafter). He probably wasn’t thinking too far ahead at that point; some people reckon that tempts fate when there’s a war on and, although the fighting was meant to be over, he still had a ship to run. I bet he was tired.
HM SHIPS MOUNSEY & DACRES - Tech Specs
Captain-class frigates (named for Nelson’s Captains from the age of fighting sail – one sister ship was HMS BLIGH) The USN equivalents were the EVARTS-class Destroyer Escorts.
Pennant No: K569 (MOUNSEY) K472 (DACRES)
Displacement: 1085 tons
Dimensions: 289.5ft x 35ft x 10.7ft
Machinery: GM diesel electric 6,000 hp; 2 shafts, 21 knots
Armament:
- 3 x 3” (76mm)
- 2 x 40mm
- 9 x 20mm
- 1 x Hedgehog (ahead throwing ASW weapon)
- Depth Charge rails & throwers; 200 depth charges
Complement: 175
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