James Cronan, Record Specialist, November 2024
This blog is about a recently completed project to catalogue by name all the ships appearing in the series WO 435, Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships (DEMS): Ships’ Cards.
James Cronan is the Maritime Records Specialist at The National Archives. He specialises in the records of the Merchant Navy, Customs and Excise and Coastguard. James has co-written the books ‘Ship lost’: the fate of Titanic’s crew, and Foreign Office Records 1782–1986: A Guide to Country Series. James comes from a long line of merchant seamen. His relatives served on board RMS Titanic and its sister ships Britannic and Olympic.
During the Second Word War men from the Royal Navy and Royal Artillery were trained as Gunners to serve on Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships. Of these, a continuous strength of over 14,000 came from the British Army and were known as Maritime Royal Artillery gunners.
In January 1942 the Dutch ship Aagtekerk was on a voyage from Glasgow to Freetown, Sierra Leone, when the periscope of a U-boat was spotted. The Captain, Ary Romijn, set a course to ram the unidentified U-boat, which was then bombarded with gunfire from the ship’s stern gun. Aagtekerk was travelling towards the rear of convoy WS 15 and was carrying war supplies, including ammunition.
Sergeant John Walker, of the 1st Regiment, Maritime Royal Artillery (MRA) was in charge of six MRA Gunners, but although they had other defensive equipment, including machine guns, the ship’s only big gun was an old 4 inch Low Angle (LA) gun. It was a relic from the First World War. These guns had been harvested from decommissioned warships and had been set aside to be re-used should the need arise. Walker took command of the gun himself, and the U-boat was seen to rise from the water bow-first, before disappearing beneath the waves. The feat was even more remarkable since the convoy was under simultaneous attack from German aircraft.
Cover of Ship’s Movement Card for MV Aagtekerk showing that the ship was armed with a 4 inch LA Gun on 29 June 1940 . Catalogue reference: BT 389/33/1
Sergeant Walker was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal ‘For skill and bravery while serving in Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships’. The award was announced in the London Gazette on 25 August 1942. He was also awarded the Dutch Bronze Cross, for service as a Gunner. On 24 June 1942 the Dutch Ambassador in London, Edgar Michiels van Verduynen, wrote a letter to Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Secretary, informing him that:
‘The Netherlands Government intend to propose to Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands to bestow the Bronze Cross upon Sergeant J Walker. As Gunner on the MS Aagtekerk he conducted himself with courage and prudence in the execution of the orders from the Captain during an attack by submarine and from the air in January 1942, as a result of which the submarine was probably destroyed and the air attack beaten off. I should be much obliged to be informed whether this bestowal would be agreeable to the British Government.’
Permission was duly granted for Sergeant John Walker to wear the Netherlands Bronze Cross and this was announced in the supplement to the London Gazette of 6 April 1943 and in Admiralty Fleet Orders of 15 April 1943.
In 2023 the Ministry of Defence transferred two series of Maritime Royal Artillery records for the Second World War to The National Archives. WO 435 Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships (DEMS): Ships’ Cards contains cards organised alphabetically by ship, and WO 436 Royal Artillery Maritime Record Cards records detail the ships which individuals served on, and the ports where they joined and left.
The ships cards have now been catalogued for each vessel. The series contains 18 boxes holding just over 9,500 cards for 6,500 ships. When they came to us each box was arranged alphabetically with just the first and the last ship listed, so that WO 435/1 was just shown as Aagetekerk – Australia Star. We have now itemised the cards by the names of each individual ship.
In doing so we also rehoused the cards in acid free envelopes, pencilling in the ship name and the full reference so that Aagtekerk becomes WO 435/1/1 and WO 435/1/357 becomes Australia Star, with all the other ships itemised in between. A team of five volunteers, Sheila, Katrina, Gordon, Robert and Anne completed the data processing in five months and the new descriptions were all available to search on Discovery, our online catalogue by June 2024.
The ships’ cards record the date of joining, port of joining, date of leaving and port of leaving for individual Maritime Royal Artillery gunners allocated to a particular ship during the Second World War.
DEMS Ship’s card for MV Aagtekerk which shows that Sergeant Walker joined the ship on 6 January 1942 at Glasgow and disembarked at Bombay (Mumbai) on 19 March 1942. Catalogue reference: WO 435/1/1
The Maritime service cards have not yet been catalogued by the names of each individual Gunner, but the records are prime candidates for digitisation. In the meantime, the series is arranged in 38 boxes by ranges of name, with the first 37 covering Royal Artillery other ranks and box 38 covering officers. The box containing the cards for John Walker is in WO 436/34. Sergeant Walker survived the war, unlike many gunners who sadly list their lives when their ship was sunk.
Front of Sergeant John Walker’s Maritime Service Card (13013279). Catalogue reference: WO 435/34/6
On Sunday 14 June 1942 Aagtekerk was part of convoy WM 11, sailing from Alexandria to Malta, when the ships were attacked by enemy aircraft north of Tobruk, Libya. Aagtekerk was struck towards the bridge and the resulting explosion set it on fire and damaged the ship’s rudder.
The majority of the crew were picked up by other ships but the dead included Dutch Officers J C Van Der Peijl and A Van Der Poel, Gunners Richard Taylor and Sidney Yeates and three Indian crewmen, Joachim Lobo, Muhammad Bhai Cassam and Nur-Ud-Din Nizam-Ud-Din. A file at the British Library IOR/L/E/8/1252 outlines the compensation paid to the dependents of Indian seamen who lost their lives on the ship.