What did you do in the war, Mum?

[Danny Jo]

"I repainted this boat, son."

My father had command of Llanthony for a few months after she had returned from Dunkirk. He was based at Yarmouth and engaged in "examination service" and stayed at the Wheatsheath. No wonder he wouldn't talk about the war.

There was a problem with Llanthony though. She was too much of an eyecatcher. The RNVR was evidently quite a relaxed organisation, for they recruited the captain's wife to slop matt grey paint all over the lovely professional paint job. This is the boat after Mum was done with her.

 

[sailorman]

She must have been built by Silvers

 

[Guest]

What a belter! Drool...............

 

[LittleShip]

I can see myself now /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif.............. wheres that bl###y lotto ticket gone. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[Richard10002]

You'd have to change your name

 

[LittleShip]

[ QUOTE ]
You'd have to change your name

[/ QUOTE ]

Naaaa! I'd just call it Big Ship! and t'other would be the tender /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

Tom

 

[Danny Jo]

No, not Silvers, Camper and Nicholson in 1934. I forgot to include this link. Her two Daimler-Benz engines were rebuilt in 1995. She displaces 61 tons and is 77 ft long. The link gives an account of her trips to Dunkirk during which she rescued 280 men. At one point, "We were hit on the fo'cs'le. I lost about five of the crew and both my anchors snapped. The fuel tanks were forward of the engine room and the fuel pipes were severed so that both engines died. We drifted up on the beach. It all happened so quickly - one minute we were there and the next we were damaged, drifting and running aground."

These are the words of her commander, a 20-year-old Royal Canadian Naval Lieutenant, Robert Timbrell. He was training at a gunnery school in England when he was given command with a crew of "six Newfoundland woodsmen, two London bus mechanics and an RN petty officer whose equipment consisted of a First World War pistol, an uncorrected magnetic compass and a minefields chart." They refloated the yacht by driving a tank into the sea and winching her off.

Makes missing school to cross the Atlantic a little tame by comparison. Timbrell later became a rear admiral.

Mark