S/S Tobruk in trip to Murmansk

[greendragon]

s/s Tobruk was one of a standard Empire type merchant ship built by William Grey &Co at West Hartlepool, launched as Empire Builder.
It was not "donated" as it is seen here or there by the British Gvt to replace loses of the PL merchant navy but bought by the PL Gvt for 164 000 pounds.
The name was changed to Tobruk to commemorate Polish troops who fought in defense of this fortress.
Her maiden voyage was to be Murmansk.
The crew consisted of 34 Polish and 13 British seamen. Their names known from the GAL Company pay lists still present in Polish archives.
Unfortunately the names of the DEMS gunners are unknown.
The ship was loaded to the full of capacity with tanks, aircraft and other war materials. A cherry on the cake (???) was load of 4000 tons of various explosives located in the hold No3, topped with aviation fuel in cans.
In fog, gale, snow blizzards the merchant lost contact with the convoy PQ13 and was going to Murmansk alone.
On the 29th of March late afternoon the lone ship was spotted by the German Luftwaffe Ju88 bombers and that started two hours fighting - a lone heavy merchant ship vs six German a/c.
Tobruk was armed with 4in gun on the poop deck, an Oerlikon , two Hotchkiss HMG and two Levis MG.
Weather was in favor of the ship because it was solid lining of clouds 350 meters above sea level and this prevented Germans to launch coordinated attack.
Instead, a single a/c having seen a gap in the clouds dove through it and had a singlehanded go on the target.
The Tobruk "artillery" was manned by four DEMS soldiers; two manned the Oerlikon and one each at Hotchkiss HMG.
They were bunch of good shots despite as being described as "young soldiers".
Crew members fired Levis MG.
The Oerlikon was mounted on the "monkey island" and had a perfect position for sighting and 360deg arc of fire.
The ship maneuvered with speed change (sometimes reaching 11ks , three more than her nominal speed) and rapid (hm, as far as it was possible for the merchant of 10 000 DWT ) change of course and had great deal of luck with her.
The young DEMS gunners had their field day shooting down one bomber which was seen crashing in sea some half a mile from the ship. Another was one was also hit and was observed flying but damaged and when disappeared behind the hills a pile of smoke was sighted. Later Russian Army confirmed a German a/c crashing on the shore.
Two times the Oerlikon jammed and with a help of a strong Polish matelot the gun was made operational quick.
All the German a/c strafed heavily the ship but the only victim was young British, trimmer William Hackett whose buttocks were cut by fragment or bullet.
He was less scared of his wound rather than with possible nasty bullying by his mates because of the location of his wound .
After two hours of fighting the Germans left the scene scoring one hit with as assessed 500kg bomb which was dropped from low level strafing run, did not stabilized itself while going down , hit a derrick, lost fins, entered through the deck to the side and exploded in sea.
Tobruk as strongly built. There were many near misses of bombs and nothing vital was damaged , everything worked perfectly.
Tobruk anchored in Murmansk a day before the PQ13 arrived, was later bombed and sunk partially by stern , the hull still floating. After some 6 months a drydock was available, the ship was patched and fit enough o take full load of apatite for delivery to the UK.
After the war ship was employed by a Polish merchant company and in 1968 sold for scrapping in Spain .
She was one of those old trusty ships and made no problems for the crew; there was one case when a crack was noticed on the hull, it was welded and never was seen again.
The last Captain of Tobruk who had this unpleasant task of delivering the ship to the breakers have told that he was not able to sleep in his sea cabin located in the forward superstructure because the ship was very silent.
Her steam engine was located well behind the superstructure so noise of working engine was not heard and the Captain woke up many times panicking that engine was broken down.
Before his last trip s/s Tobruk the veteran ship had a very solemn farewell in a Polish port, with military band playing, number of speeches by the notable politicians and Gov representatives and a party after all that.
It might be that somewhere in Poland the ship navigation clock still exists because before Tobruk last trip the captain donated it to a coal mine representatives who had patronage of the ship and the crew.

gd