British India Steam Navigation Company Ltd. (Source : B.I. News, January 1964)

IT HAPPENED TO ME

By CAPTAIN R. D. MACFADYEN

ON 5TH MAY, 1942 units of the British Navy, Army and Merchant Navy moved against the Island of Madagascar, which until then had been under the control, of the Vichy Government, and in two days had captured the Northern part of the island, including the important naval base of Diego, Suarez. It is unnecessary to remark that B.I. ships figured amongst those engaged in this first landing, and when, in September of the same year, the remainder of the island was r assaulted, and in due course, captured, the ship in which I was then serving as Chief Officer, m.v. Dumra, was amongst those present.

This assault was mounted in Mombasa. Dumra's function was to carry second echelon troops, and military stores. The latter were all railed down from the military dumps in Nairobi. I was told, in great secrecy, that Dumra would be stored for two ports which, for the sake of Security, were nominated as George and Henry. George would be visited first, Henry second.

When the stores started arriving alongside the first trainload was for George. Since the ship's tween decks were reserved for troop accommodation this meant "half-hatching" the stow, which was just as well as it turned out, for when about a half of the cargo had been loaded I was advised that there had been a mistake, and that the first batch of stores received had been, not for George, but for Henry. Shortly before completion of loading the Sea Transport Officer boarded and told me that there had been another misunderstanding, and that the ship would now discharge at Henry first and George second. That just about cancelled out the first one, so all was (fairly) well.

I never really discovered whether the right units received the right stores, but since the shipments for both ports seemed to be mainly bully, biscuits and small arms and anti-aircraft ammunition it probably did not greatly matter what was written on the outsides of the cases, George (or perhaps Henry) which we visited first, was Majunga, whilst Henry (or perhaps George) was Tamatave.

Dumra was in Majunga only a matter of hours; it was an anchorage port, and anyway I was too busy to go ashore, so I saw nothing of the place. Tamatave, on the other hand, has quays, at one of which Dumra berthed, and the ship was there long enough to permit a quick look around the place, which, although the Royal Navy had had to make a show of force, had not sustained any serious damage. It was quite a nice town with a promenade, a pleasant sandy beach, and a sea-water, open air swimming pool. Lofty palm trees lined the 'Marjna', and a quadruple avenue of Emperor Palms gave shade and elegance to the broad thoroughfare which led from the beach to the railway station, which was, in itself, remarkable in being the terminus of two different-sized railways, one of metre gauge and the other running on Decauville track. Generally speaking the town looked clean and well kept, the streets broad and mostly tarmacadammed, there were nice houses and shops in all quarters. True, most of the buildings were roofed with corrugated iron, but that was, and still is, not uncommon in what were then regarded as 'colonies'. I noticed that in the less well-built parts of the town, where the houses were mainly of the wooden frame and clap-board type, wooden shingle roofing seemed to be popular.

About two days sufficed for us to complete discharge, and after sailing for Diego, where we embarked a number of unfit soldiers, Dumra returned to Mombasa to load further supplies, and troops. In the South part of the island fighting was still in progress.

Dumra was not delayed in Mombasa, and not long afterwards arrived again at Diego Suarez. Diego Suarez is a windy place and we were not at all surprised to find a half gale blowing as we approached. Inside the harbour, however the high cliffs gave a good lee to shipping, and I was quite surprised when, discharge of passengers and cargo completed, we were ordered to remain in port. This we did, lying at anchor in mid harbour. The weather was overcast and wet, and it became pretty plain that a cyclone was somewhere around.


Dumra
© Alex Duncan

On the following morning a party of salvage men boarded, and we sailed. These salvage people were Royal Navy officers and men, and their Commander told me that a corvette had gone ashore at Tamatave in bad weather. They were to have some difficulty in refloating her, but of that they had no idea at the time.

On our passage south from Diego Dumra encountered a swell of such proportions that before we reached Tamatave we knew that the cyclone which we had avoided by waiting in Diego had been of great violence; but even so we were hardly prepared for the scene of devastation which met our eyes as we steamed through the reef and along parallel to the once beautiful Marina. Not a palm-leaf remained on all the thousands of trees which formerly had supplied a green canopy. There were breaches in the stone face of the promenade, and the corvette which was the object of interest of certain of our passengers appeared to be trying to steam across it.

No sooner had Dumra berthed than I was approached by the Assistant Sea Transport Officer Lieut. La Boutllier, R.N.R., formerly of Ellerman's Wilson Line, and by now a chum of over a year's standing. He asked if the ship had fresh water to spare, especially for the British Military Hospital. The town water supply had been disrupted, and the hospital was in urgent need. Fortunately, because, prior to the Madagascar landings, Dumra had been engaged in trooping to the waterless ports of Somalia, all of the ship's ballast tanks were fresh, and they were all full. I was thus able, with the co-operation of Mr. Griffin, 2nd Engineer, to rig a fresh water hose line onto the quay and to fill the military water tank trucks which came alongside. Judging by the amount of water that Dumra supplied, not only the hospital but a large part of the town was supplied. Fortunately the town water supply was quickly re-organised, and it was never necessary to judge just how much water I would have to retain for the ship's use and how much I could give to the people ashore.

Landing our military stores that voyage had all to be done by means of the ship's derricks - not a great hardship, of course, but this was necessitated by a rather curious circumstance. It was not unknown for cyclones to pass close to Tamatave, and for that reason the quay cranes, of a type similar to those to be found in any port before the war - having four 25-ft. tall legs and mounted on wheels by which the cranes could travel the length of the quay on railway lines - had been fitted with digging, to stay the cranes against violent gusts of wind. These wire stays, which were set up with the largest rigging screws that I can remember having seen, were shackled to bolts set in the quay pavement, and these in turn were secured to blocks of concrete weighing about 15 tons or more each, embedded in the gravel filling of the stone and concrete quay. Unfortunately the sea-wall, which formed the back of the quay, had been damaged in the storm, water had driven in - and out through a further breach, taking much of the gravel with it. The concrete anchors of the cranes were thus left hanging on the ends of the rigging, and the cranes themselves were left immobile.

When, with the assistance of the British Occupying Forces, the City Council of Tamatave had restored some sort of order I was able to go ashore and see some of the damage which the cyclone had inflicted. It was a thousand times worse than that inflicted by the Royal Navy. Of the avenues of Emperor Palms not one had retained its top. Throughout the town houses had been completely demolished. One remarkable feature of the damage was the manner in which the corrugated iron roofed houses of the comparatively wealthy people had been opened to the sky, whilst the shingled roofs of the humbler dwellings had suffered comparatively little damage, where the house itself had remained intact. Some of these frame and clap-board houses had sustained queer damage. One which I saw had been lifted out of its own compound into that of the neighbour opposite, whilst another, a three storey house, had been twisted, the lower front windows facing, as it were, East, whilst those in the top floor faced Northeast. I came on a working party engaged in removing a palm tree bole which had fallen across an army pick-up truck, dropping neatly into the narrow space between the driver's cabin and the hooded after part. The railway station had been completely unroofed and otherwise severely damaged. Formerly a rather handsome building it was now a waterlogged wreck. Rather unwisely, I think the railway engineers had built their terminus in a shallow depression into which as soon as the cyclonic rains had choked the town drains, all surface water gravitated. Nearby there was a palm tree bole through which a sheet of flying corrugated iron had passed part way, being now held suspended over the heads of passing pedestrians.

On our return voyage to Diego our passengers included the 'Number One' of the stranded corvette and some of the crew.

For Number One's story to be understood it is necessary to have an idea of the local geography. Tamatave stands at the southern end of a wide bay which, from my memories of twenty years ago is named Baie de Ste. Marie, and measures about twenty miles from North to South but only a matter of ten from the coastline to the coral reef which bounds it on the seaward side. This reef is broken near its Northern end and also at its Southern, and this Southern breach is the entrance to Tamatave Harbour. Immediately South of the breach the reef has been built up into a sea wall, on the West side of which is the main quay. This quay runs approximately North, and at its Southern end there is a stacking yard paved with cobble stones which also forms the Southern boundary of the port area. On the quay there stands a two or more storey cargo transit shed which extends the whole length of the quay.

The main quay has berthage for two deep sea steamers. Across a two hundred foot channel lies the West Quay. On the East side of this is one deep sea berth; on the West side is berthage for small steamers and other craft, and, like the Main Quay, there is a two storey godown. The two quays are joined at their roots by the stacking ground.

At the approach of the cyclone the corvette was lying at the main quay. Steam for main engines had been ordered and Number One took a party of seamen onto the quay and, with great exertions, shackled the ship's anchor cable onto the ring of one of the heavy weather mooring springs.

Before the war Tamatave was visited regularly by large vessels of the Messageries Maritime line, and, in view of the frequency of tropical storms in the area, the quays had been fitted with mooring springs of great strength and power. These were not the coir rope springs with which most of us are familiar, great, steel- eyed strops of two parts of rope, each part twelve inches in thickness, but contraptions consisting of coiled steel springs in about 6-in. by 4-in metal thickness and something like three feet in diameter of the coil, all set in a heavy steel framework and anchored by correspondingly strong studded link cable attached to concrete blocks buried somewhere ashore. Thus, lying port side to the quay, and with all possible moorings secured, the corvette was ready to meet the storm's fury with discretion. The storm seems to have approached a point slightly North of the port heading on a South:; westerly course. The first wind experienced by the corvette's crew apparently blew over the top of the high transit shed and down into her funnel. In the stokehold burning oil was blown out of the furnaces, some stokers were injured, and after the stray fire had been extinguished, it was found to be impossible to rekindle the furnaces, the burning oil being repeatedly blown out into the stokehold. It was thus impossible to raise steam.

On deck, as the storm centre approached, the wind suddenly came out of the South with a bang; blowing across the stacking ground it hurled away everything it encountered, and funnelling down the channel between the two lines of transit sheds, struck the corvette so violently that she made a sternboard and parted first the mooring cable, then all other forward moorings. Her captain, whom I did not have the pleasure of meeting, must have been a man of instant decisions, for at that moment he sized up the situation, saw nothing favourable in remaining aboard, and ordered ‘Abandon Ship’. This operation was carried out without further delay, and without loss of life. The ship, lying back, her after moorings all leading forward, remained alongside just long enough for the injured to be passed ashore, the remaining seamen running aft as the ship's bow blew off from the quay and jumping across the widening gulf, and the 'Owner' and his Number One jumping from the stern, amid twanging and parting mooring wires.

From the shelter of a door of the godown the shipless seamen saw their ship blow broadside out of the channel between the quays. Then the wind changed to west, and the wind- dazed men sighted their ship through the murk and flying spray blowing out to sea through the breach in the reef.

It was some hours before the corvette's company were able to leave their refuge and make their way through a wrecked port area to the office of S.R.N.O., but the captain duly made his report to the effect that he had seen his ship going crewless to sea.

When the gale cleared and the raging waters calmed it was found that the ocean had returned its prize. The corvette, somewhat damaged, but still serviceable, sat on the beach, many feet above high tide level, and with her bow against the broken stonework of the promenade!

But how did she find her way back through the breach in the reef?

Hail and Farewell

(Source: B.I. News, January 1952)

Captain R. D. Macfadyen, of the s.s. Urlana, has sent us the following details of his father's career, the late Captain Donald Macfadyen, who retired from the Company's service in 1915.

Born in Campbeltown, Argyll, in the year 1859, Donald Macfadyen commenced his sea-going career as an apprentice in the "Loch" Line of Glasgow at the age of fourteen. He served for sometime as Second Mate in the beautiful little full-rigged ship County of Lancaster. After this service, Captain Macfadyen joined the B.I. Company, where he was generally known as "Danny" and, shortly after being promoted to Command, he married Miss Edith A. Forbes, of Aberdeen. The ceremony took place in the Anglican Cathedral at Madras, in 1897. At that time landings were still made by surf boat on to the beach.

For some years Captain Macfadyen commanded the "crack" mail steamer Bangala, and during this period he and Mrs. Macfadyen lived first in Rangoon, and later at Calcutta. Captain Macfadyen always regarded the Bangala as the "sweetest" ship he ever sailed in.


Bangala
© P & O Collection

He retired from the Company's service in 1915 and, whilst awaiting an appointment in the Naval Transport Service, joined the 5th Essex ,Volunteer Regt., where he attained the rank of Lance- corporal, and won a silver spoon in a musketry competition. Shortly afterwards he was given a Commission in the R.N.R., with the rank of Lieutenant and was pushed to the Naval Transport Department. After a short period at Southampton, he was transferred to Dunkirk, where he remained until the Department was closed down in 1919. During this period he was promoted to the rank of Lieut. Commander, and was mentioned in Despatches. The Certificate of Mention, signed by Mr. Winston Churchill, was one of his treasures and hung on the wall in his sitting room.

Captain Macfadyen claimed to have commanded the first of the Company's ships, probably the very first steam vessel, to enter Mombasa Harbour, and also to have been in the first vessel to visit Zanzibar which was fitted with electric light.

For some seventeen years Captain Macfadyen, had his home in Wanstead, where several other B.I. men had, and have, their homes, but in 1927 he bought a new house at Egham, in Surrey, where he lived until his death.

Until New Year 1951, Captain Macfadyen maintained good health, although his sight had been failing slowly for some time, but he able to enjoy a short walk only eight days before his death. Considering his great age -92- was extraordinarily active. He died on April, 1951, after a short illness.