TRIBAL WARFARE, The New Book Begins here
Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2021 11:21 am
TRIBAL WARFARE
The story of life in the War at sea in HMS Tartar....1942-1946
The only way i can offer you all this book in is sections by PDF, this includes all the photos as they are placed in the book so i hope you can open and enjoy them here, if you get the chance, and have the inclination, the book is available on Amazon and all good eBook platforms at £7.99 cheap at twice the price!
Tim
INTRODUCTION
THE AUTHOR AND HIS SHIP
Archie Meiklem was a Scot born and raised in Glasgow. The story in this book is how he joined HMSTartar during the Second World War and served in her for the next four years. Tartar was Archie's only ship but this was the defining era of his life as it was for so many men and women who participated in that terrible global conflict. Contrary to wartime regulations Archie kept a detailed diary of his life in Tartar which accounts for most of her short but glorious and brutal career. The men who served in Tribal class destroyers considered themselves, and their ships, to be a breed apart. After the war Archie typed up his diary and it is that typescript that is faithfully reproduced here in this book. I have not changed anything; it is exactly how Archie wrote it. My own father also served in a Tribal class destroyer, his ship was HMS Ashanti which is often mentioned in Archie's book as the Tribals were generally posted together to some of the hottest theatres of action. Archie left the Royal Navy post-war but often attended reunions of his fellow Tribal sailors. It must have been at one of these reunions that he presented his original hand-illustrated typescript neatly bound in a red folder to my father. Unlike Archie my father did not leave the Navy after the war, he remained a serving officer until retirement at the end of 1982 by which time he had risen to be Chief of the Defence Staff of Great Britain and Prime Minister Thatcher's military adviser in her war cabinet for the Falklands conflict. Tragically, Archie did not live long enough to see my father's rise through the ranks of the Royal Navy, he was viciously attacked and beaten in a mugging in 1971 from which he subsequently died, and he was only 49 years old. The perpetrators were an exceptionally violent pair of criminals who were subsequently brought to book for a catalogue of offences for which they are likely to remain in prison for the rest of their lives. My father died in 1999 leaving me with all his papers including Archie's book still in its neat red folder. I have read this book more times than I can remember, I have searched for Archie's family but without success. During my search for living relatives the book has remained in my desk silently nagging me to bring it to print, or at least to print electronically with technology unimaginable when Archie committed his memories to paper. This year, 2020, has seen a great outpouring of nostalgia and frustrated celebration for the 75th anniversary of the end of the European war,
The Tribal class destroyers were a class of ships apart from all other destroyers in the Royal Navy. They were conceived in the middle of the 1930s when Great Britain was lagging far behind in the rearmament's race. The backbone of the British destroyer fleet at that time weighed in at around 1200 tonnes and had four 4.7-inch guns in single mountings as their main armament. The Tribals grossed over 2000 tonnes and had twice that number of guns in twin mountings as well as a quadruple torpedo outfit. By the standards of the day they were big, they were fast and they were very handsome. The men who served in them counted themselves lucky and considered them to be the Rolls-Royce of the fleet. The Admiralty ordered two flotillas of eight ships each of the Tribals, each ship named after a noble and distinguished race of warrior-like people. The Tribals were all completed and ready for service literally on the eve of the declaration of World War II. They were thrust immediately into action in every major theatre. Losses began to mount as the violence of the enemy took its toll. Ultimately by 1943 twelve had already gone to the bottom in action ranging from the Arctic to the Eastern Mediterranean. Only four of the original sixteen Tribals would survive to enjoy the victory of 1945, among these was of course Tartar,
the others being Ashanti, Eskimo and Nubian, all of which find their own places in Archie's story. The Tribals were a successful design for their time especially where concentrated gunnery was called for. The Royal Canadian Navy commissioned four Tribals of their own from British yards, Haida, Huron, Iroquois and Athabaskan, and then went on to build four more in their own shipyards, Micmac, Cayuga, Nootka and a second Athabaskan after the first was sunk in action in the English Channel with the 10th Destroyer Flotilla in 1944 which Archie describes in his narrative. The Australians also built Tribals for the Royal Australian Navy but as they all fought in the Pacific they do not feature in this book.
I think Archie would see this as an appropriate time to give him back his voice about his life at sea. He may be no longer with us, or his splendid ship, but now both will find a new life as stirring and profound memories.