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Location
At Sea, Bristol Convoy
Age
21 Years

3rd January 1945

We joined the B.C. convoy successfully at 0800 hours but have not made much progress as yet. The wind is rising.

We had a very exciting 15 minutes just after dark tonight. The wind rose to sufficient strength to cause much of the convoy to take shelter for the night. The escort (one), three Liberty ships and ourselves continued. When dark fell, it was practically impossible to see ahead owing to blinding rain squalls. I was on the bridge doing signalling and Mr Tully was on watch (officer off). All of a sudden, I saw a light ahead of the convoy. I pointed it out to Mr Tully who was in the chart room, then the Commodore put his navigation lights on. We immediately did likewise. Then all of a sudden, navigation lights began to appear all over the place on the starboard bow. Mr Tully decided to alter to port and as we could see red lights, we decided that the ships were coming towards us. It transpired that the red light was part of a signal and that the ships were really going the same way as ourselves! They seemed determined to cross our bows, and the nearest one to us came so close that though we were hard to port we couldn’t get out of her way. We stopped engines, signalled, did everything in fact, but it was ages before the landing barge (the large type) sheared off. She soon came back for more, however and I decided that this was definitely it! But no, she cleared off again. In the end we stopped and had about 5 of them cross our bows and pass down the column!