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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

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Warship Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024: A Cat with Several Lives

Above we see, some 85 years ago this week in October 1939, a bachi-clad fisherman-turned-sailor and his hard-bitten cat mascot, aboard the merchant marine trawler Roche Noire (Black Rock), requisitioned and armed by the French Navy in the early days of WWII to serve as an auxiliary minesweeper (dragueur de mines auxiliaire). Sadly both the fisherman and his cat are lost to history.

As for Roche Noire, it wasn’t even her first war.

The RN’s Battle Trawlers

When the early days of the Great War showed that the British, while rich in battleships and cruisers, were lacking in small coastal escorts and mine warfare craft, the Admiralty soon turned to trawlers.

Dozens were taken up from trade in Hull and other fishing ports, others were requestioned on the builder’s ways, and still others were purchased from overseas. e.g. the large fishing fleets maintained in Spain and Portugal. 

By 1916, with the Royal Navy hungry for an ever larger number of such hardy coastwise vessels, and many fishing boat yards near idle, the Admiralty soon placed orders for what would be an amazing 609 armed trawlers by the end of the war– many of which wound up being canceled.

As detailed by “British Warships 1914-1919” by F J Dittmar & J J Colledge, the RN ordered “military class” trawlers to three “standard” (and yes, that needs to be quoted) designs, this would include the 156-strong Mersey class (665 tons full load,148 feet oal), some 280 of the Castle/TR class (550 tons, 134 foot oal) and 173 members of the Strath class (429 tons full, 123 feet oal).

Using a simple coal-powered boiler with a single vertical triple expansion reciprocating engine generating between 480 and 600 ihp depending on class, these vessels had a top speed of around 10 knots.

Crewed by 15 to 20 men/boys, they had allowances in their plans for hydrophones and wireless sets, although precious few carried either– with the extra berths used for such specialists needed to operate the gear.

Most had the very basic armament of a single deck gun, typically a 3″/40 QF 12-pounder 12 cwt salvaged from retired destroyers and torpedo boats, placed well forward, along with whatever small arms could be scrounged.

A few carried larger 4-inchers, while some had to make do with smaller 6-pounders. Occasionally they would carry a bomb thrower (early depth charge projector), and some had basic mechanical sweeping gear installed.

Small arms were as motley as the trawlers themselves. 

The Straths were the smallest of the three designs. Compact little steam trawlers.

Ordered from a mix of 13 yards starting in February 1917, the most prolific of these builders would be the Scottish firm of Hall, Russell & Co Ltd, in Aberdeen, who had 66 under contract.

With so many different yards going all at once, the design inevitably changed from yard to yard and sometimes even from hull to hull, while the Admiralty itself contributed to the chaos by ordering minor “non-standard” changes of their own.

Delivery of the first standard Strath, HMT George Borthwick, occurred in August 1917.

With so many warships in need of names, these armed trawlers (His Majesty’s Trawler, or HMT) were bestowed the names drawn from the official crew rosters of ships at Trafalgar in 1805, with the Straths, in particular, coming from members of the crew of HMS Royal Sovereign and of Nelson’s HMS Victory.

Meet HMT William Barnett

Roche Noire entered the world in December 1917, constructed over four months at Hall, Russell (as Yard No. 622)  as a more or less standardized Strath-class armed trawler with a T3cyl (12, 20, 34 x 23in) engine constructed by the Dominion Bridge Co of Montreal.

Our subject as built was christened with the name of Petty Officer (Gunner’s Mate/Gunsmith) William Barnett, 31, of Scotland, who appeared on HMS Victory’s list of the 820 men who were awarded prize money and a Government Grant for enemy ships destroyed or captured during Trafalgar.

Digging deeper into Barnett’s service, he was born in Glasgow and volunteered for service in 1803 on the 64-gun HMS Utrecht as a Landsman before his transfer to Nelson’s flagship– where he would serve through Trafalgar. He would go on to serve on HMS Gelykheid, Zealand, Ocean, Salvador Del Mundo, Milford, and Prince Frederick, advancing to the rate of Armourer’s Mate, leaving the service in 1814.

Any gunner who sailed for more than a decade against Bonaparte deserves a ship named in his honor!

HMT William Barnett’s Admiralty Number was 3632.

Great War

Sadly, I could find no details of HMT William Barnett’s Great War service. Suffice it to say she almost assuredly spent 11 months across 1918 in a mix of dodging U-boats, escorting coastal traffic, searching for those lost at sea, guarding anti-torpedo/submarine nets at anchorages, and training young ratings.

Of her class, one member, HMT Thomas Collard (3686), was sunk in March 1918 by the German submarine SM U-19 while escorting the armed merchant cruiser HMS Calgarian North of Rathlin Island. Her crew survived.

Some deployed as far as the Adriatic and Aden.

Another classmate, HMT James Fennell (3753) would be wrecked at Blacknor Point, Portland.

Eight early Straths (HMT Charles Blight, Peter Barrington, Joshua Budget, Richard Bowden, John Britton, Thomas Billincole, James Bashford, and Michael Brion) were loaned to the U.S. Navy during the war for patrol/mine work, specifically in laying and later taking up the Great North Sea Mine Barrage. The Americans would dispose of them in 1919.

Post-war, 23 Straths that were still under construction were canceled in 1919 while another 45 others that were sufficiently complete were finished to mercantile standards (unarmed) and sold as trawlers.

The 94 surviving members of the class in RN service were, following the dismantling of the North Sea Barrage, paid off slowly between 1919 and 1926– including Barnett— and, disarmed, were disposed of on the commercial market.

Peacetime: Gone Fishing

Sold to Val Trawlers of London in 1919, Barnett became what she was designed to be from the outset– a commercial fishing boat. Named Valerie IV (sometimes seen as Valerie W), she would continue on this service out of Hull and Milford until October 1924.

Moving across the Channel, her registry soon changed to Soc. Nouvelle des Pecheries a Vapeur (New Steam Fisheries Co), in Arcachon along the Bay of Biscay just southwest of Bordeaux. With the name of Valerie IV no doubt needing a more Gallic upgrade, she became Roche Noire (ARC 3918).

In 1934, SNPV went belly up and its assets were liquidated by Credit de l’Quest. This left Roche Noire to be scooped up for a bargain price by Saint-Nazaire Penhoët Shipyards and Workshops, and operated by Nouvelle société de gestion maritime (New Maritime Management Company) out of Bordeaux (radio call sign TKED).

War! (Again)

With so many retired Straths floating around (pun intended) in 1939, it was a foregone conclusion several wound return to martial service.

Three ex-HMTs– William Hallett, James Lenham, and Isaac Harris— which had been sold on the commercial market in 1921, were taken back up by the RN in 1939– with Harris lost in December.

Three Straths in Australian waters, ex-HMTs William Fall, Samuel Benbow, and William Ivey; were taken up by the RAN as coastal minesweepers.

Ex-HMTs William Bentley and Thomas Currell became Kiwi mine vessels in the RNZN.

Meanwhile, in France, our William Barnett/Valarie IV/Roche Noire was requestioned by the French Navy in August 1939– even before the beginning of the war– and given hull number AD 355. Armed with a single elderly 75mm Schneider modèle 1897, she was to serve as an auxiliary minesweeper.

In October, during the doldrums of the “Phony War,” she was visited at Brest by photographer Eugène Robert Philippe Petiot who captured an amazing series of images of the (re)armed Admiralty trawler and her laid-back crew, now in the ECPAD archives.

Sadly, our humble Roche Noire was caught up in the fall of France in June 1940 and got the short end of the stick.

Two weeks after the “Miracle of Dunkirk” and just three days before the Armistice that brought about the Vichy regime, all ships fit to go to sea in Brest were ordered to either make for England or French colonies in Africa, ultimately carrying some 80,000 Commonwealth, Free Polish, and French troops with them.

The last ships to leave on the night of 18/19 June included the incomplete battleship Richelieu (bound for Dakar with just 250 shells and 48 powder charges for her main battery) and a flotilla under RADM Jean-Emmanuel Cadart composed of the five liners and cargo ships transporting 16,201 boxes and bags of gold– carried from Fort de Portzic by garbage trucks– escorted by the destroyers Milan and Épervier as well as the auxiliary cruiser Victor Schœlcher, bound for Casablanca.

Unable to sail, the torpedo boat Cyclone, patrol boat Étourdi the non-functional submarines Agosta, Achille, Ouessant, and Pasteur, the condemned tanker Dordogne, the auxiliary minelayer Alexis de Tocqueville, avisos Aisne, Oise, Laffaux, and Lunéville; the old armored cruisers Waldeck-Rousseau, Montcalm, and Gueydon; and a host of net-laying vessels, tugs, and assorted cargo ships were scuttled. They were joined by the armed trawlers Mouette, Trouville, Roche Noire, and Flamant.

Many of the crews of the scuttled ships made it out with RADM Cadart’s gold-carrying flotilla, so Roch Noire’s fishermen may likely have gone on to further adventures in North Africa and Senegal. 

The port facilities were likewise sabotaged, with 800 tons of gasoline and assorted ammunition stocks blown up.

Joachim Lemelsen’s 5th Panzer Division entered Brest on the 19th, and the Germans found little of immediate use, with the fires reportedly taking several days to die down.

The strategic port would go on to endure 1,553 days of occupation and a 43-day siege before the Germans surrendered in September 1944.

And, Back to Fishing

Immediately after taking control of Brest in 1940, Kriegsmarine VADM Eberhard “Hans” Kinzel would inspect the facility to see what was salvageable.

In his report, he would note:

The auxiliary minelayer Alexis de Tocqueville, the auxiliary patrol boat Mouette, and the auxiliary sweepers Roche Noire, and Flamant are recoverable, but the three latter are of little interest to the Kriegsmarine and could be returned to the Government of Herr Laval to ensure supplies for the population.

Shortly after, Roche Noire was raised and, after a stint in Vichy use, was removed from the French naval rolls in November 1941. She was allowed to return to fishing.

Post-war, she continued to harvest her stocks from the deep for over a decade.

In 1957, she was sold across the Channel again, returning home to be added to the inventory of Wood & Davidson – J. Wood, Aberdeen. That year she was listed in Lloyds as FV Shandwick.

Eventually, all things come to an end, and our little trawler, which served in both wars, was finally broken up in 1964.

Epilogue

Little remains of the hardy Strath-class armed trawlers, save for a few wrecks and scattered relics. 

Some models are available.

The City of Aberdeen, where many Straths were completed, maintains several models, photos, and records of these otherwise forgotten trawlers.

German VADM Kinzel, who moved to resurrect our little trawler at Brest in 1940, survived the war only to take his own life in June 1945 near Flensburg.

And, while the Admiralty hasn’t elected to recycle the names of the old Strath class, Armourer’s Mate William Barnett included, HMS Victory, currently under a “Big Repair,” endures at Portsmouth’s Historic Dockyard.

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Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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