Snapshot: A lucky escape under U-boat attack

My father, Bruce Carter Gibson, was a merchant seaman engineer during the second world war. Most of his trips were to South America, to bring back much needed food to Britain. These voyages were mostly unescorted – perhaps the merchant vessels were considered adequately armed with one deck gun and a radio.

This year, with the help of an archivist, we discovered a confidential survivor’s report of an attack on my father’s ship, MV Dunster Grange, off the Isles of Scilly in May 1940, on the unescorted return trip from Montevideo to Liverpool, carrying 5,000 tones of meat.

Written by Captain RL Smiles, master of the Dunster Grange, the report details the U-boat firing a torpedo and then surfacing to fire eight shells, some of which were direct hits to the bridge and to the engine room, putting three cylinders out of commission. The captain writes that as soon as the ship slowed, he realised their position was hopeless and issued instructions to lower the lifeboats to the rail and get the nine passengers and 75 crew prepared.

With the ship more or less dead in the water, the engineers were busy replacing the pipes, and the gun crew readying the one gun onboard. The report reveals that the gun crew have had no night-time training, nor used heavy shells before, so that the first shell jammed and had to be rammed out before a new shell was loaded and fired towards the flash seen from the U-boat gun. Remarkably, it was accurate enough to see off the U-boat.

The engineers were able to replace a 4ft x 10ft pipe within 20 minutes, allowing the ship to regain power, although I do not know if my father was involved in that directly or the other issues going on in the engine room at that time, but all the crew must have been working flat out. The crew were incredibly lucky to survive as the commander of U-boat 37 was a highly decorated ace, recipient of the Knight’s Cross, who had sunk every ship he had come into contact with, both merchant and Royal Navy vessels.

Altogether, 30,248 merchant seamen lost their lives during the war, a death rate higher proportionately than in any of the armed forces.

Certainly, all those onboard the Dunster Grange were lucky to have survived this attack. My father had only recently met my mother and they went on to live full lives, having three children, including me. I submitted the report to the medal office and received four medals to which my father was entitled but had never claimed, including the Atlantic and Pacific Stars.

He said little about the war and his experience of it, but that the job had to be done.

Bruce Ruthven Gibson

Playlist: Getting the parties started at Grandad’s

Simon Says by the 1910 Fruitgum Company

“I’d like to play a game, / That is so much fun, / It’s not so very hard to do”

As soon as I hear “Simple Simon says put your hands on your head”, I am back in my De’s (Grandad’s) living room on New Year’s Day in the early 1970s. It was our family’s favourite song to get the party started. Although any excuse would do!

De’s house was the gathering place for my mum, dad, aunties, uncles and cousins to meet up. My mum comes from a big family so there was always lots of chatter and laughter. Whenever someone told a story they would get up and do all the actions to illustrate it.

De had a coal fire so it was always warm and cosy, even if it was freezing outside. He sat in his armchair and happily watched everyone dancing. He smoked a pipe and I was fascinated by his cleaning ritual with the bendy coloured pipe cleaners all laid out on the arm rest.

Once Simon Says had got the party going, other records would follow such as Sugar, Sugar by the Archies.

Later there would be a sing-along with everyone taking a turn singing old folk songs such as A Warship Had Landed. I would put my hand over my ears at this one as it was so sad.

De drove us home as he didn’t drink. The road we travelled was dark and rural. There was one big bump that made you feel as if you were on a rollercoaster. As we approached, us kids would shriek “Go faster, De!” and he would always oblige to give us the thrill we wanted.

I’ve been to many New Year parties but none can match those family get-togethers at De’s. You can keep your Gangnam Style moves – much more fun to dance along to Simon Says!

Sharon Haston

We love to eat: Sand pie pudding to remind us of summer

Ingredients
175g butter
At least 3 tbsp golden syrup
175g caster sugar
3 eggs
175g self-raising flour
Beach flag (if possible)

Grease a one-litre pudding basin with butter. Spoon syrup into the basin. Beat butter and sugar until fluffy, add eggs gradually, then fold in flour. (Or whisk butter, sugar, eggs and flour for two minutes in food mixer.) Spoon the mixture into the basin. In the centre of a double layer of baking parchment, make a pleat to allow the pudding to rise and place on top of the basin. Cover with pleated foil and secure with string tied around lip of basin. Place in pan of enough simmering water to reach half way up the side of the basin. Simmer for 90-120 mins, topping up water if needed. Turn out on to a dish.

All winter, memories of summer holidays – sun, sea and sand – were ever present in our house, in the shape of my favourite pudding. In an era when kids didn’t hang around at home and couldn’t wait to go “out the front” to play, my sister and I were off with neighbouring friends. We were out and about in our own world of 1960s suburban bliss: playing fields, the golf course, allotments, a railway embankment, street corners – all the more exciting if they went beyond boundaries defined by parents.

If it was after 12pm on a Sunday, and one daring member of the gang wanted to push on a bit further, it was a collective, “Nooo!” with pudding promised.

In our house, there were murmurs of bliss when Mum brought out a fat jug of custard and a basin on a plate. She’d run a knife round the edge of a fluffy sponge and turn it upside down. As she lifted the basin, the steam evaporated, to reveal a perfect, golden, syrupy image of summer on a raw winter’s day.

“Sand pie pudding,” we cheered, remembering our sandy buckets, as she tapped the basin and scraped out the last grainy bits of treacly syrup. Once, she stuck a flag on the top that had been lurking in the back of a drawer since the previous summer.

Margaret Adkins

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