Last Dawn
by David Turner

ISBN 9781906134136 [paperback] £7.99

Three years ago I stood on the shore at Scapa Bay and read the names of those lost in the Royal Oak disaster. I inwardly wept as I noted the extraordinary numbers of those listed as 'Boy'. Thus I approached David Turner's book with hope and enthusiasm, it promised to be a re-examination of all the major aspects of the tragedy, I left it disappointed.

David Turner was born, in Plymouth, the eldest son of an Admiralty civil servant. Qualified in engineering and marketing he has held several posts with BEA [since absorbed into BA] and other companies. His mother's eldest brother Lieutenant Ralph Lennox Woodrow-Clark RN was a casualty of the Royal Oak disaster and is buried in Lyness Royal Naval Cemetery. In 2007 Turner was to carry out one of his mother's last wishes when he buried her ashes in her brother's grave at Lyness.

The book was first published in 2004, by Melrose Books, Ely, under the title The Ultimate Sacrifice.

First the facts. HMS Royal Oak was torpedoed between 01:00 hrs and 01:30 hrs on Saturday 14th October 1939, not as some have it Friday 13th. It was torpedoed by the German U47 under the command of Kapitan-Leutenant Günther Prien. U47 fired one salvo of three torpedoes just after 01:00 hrs, two missed one struck the bow or anchor chain of Royal Oak. Captain Benn and Lieutenant Woodrow-Clark were together at one time inspecting the resultant situation. Some fifteen minutes later U47 fired another salvo and all three torpedoes struck the starboard side of Royal Oak, the ship sank inside six minutes, Benn never saw Woodrow-Clark again. The Royal Oak was lying at anchor about a mile off shore towards the north-west extent of Scapa Flow, approximately level with Gaitnip Hill. Here it was acting as anti-aircraft cover for Kirkwall and on shore military establishments. It would be wrong to think that Royal Oak was in harbour, for those who have not had the pleasure of visiting Scapa [ it rhymes with sapper not scarper] Flow, it is a great land locked bay many, many miles across having a depth not less than 10 fathoms. It has been the main northern base of the British Fleet since 1812 and was the site of the scuttling of the Imperial German Fleet in 1919.

Turner opens with the Royal Oak inquiry, questions in 'the House' etc. but fails to give the results of the inquiry. We must presume that the blocking of the eastern approaches to Scapa was an outcome of the inquiry. Turner deals with some of the family history of Woodrow-Clark, evidently he had lost touch with that side of the family. It seems his cousin, Michael, died in 1994 and his uncle's wife (strange way to describe one's aunt] in 1997. He finds a letter of condolence from Captain Benn and one stating that his uncle is buried with another 25 crew in Lyness Naval Cemetery in Orkney. Turner deals with the actual sinking, all of which is a matter of record and then gives us a chapter on Prien and the U-Bootwaffe.

Turner comments, all too briefly, on the heroic action of Skipper John Gatt and the crew of the Royal Oak's liberty ship, the trawler Daisy II. This one hundred foot long, seventeen foot wide boat rescued 386 survivors from the Royal Oak. It was so laden that it was in danger of capsizing.

Turner then gets involved in the realm of myth, fantasy or lies; take your pick. He cites a farmer, Mr D Wathan from Tobermory, Mull who in the 1960s said he was billeted with crofters who farmed land near to the 600 foot cliffs where many of the ill-fated crew finished up, having swum from the battleship some one and half miles away. The crofters wanted to descend the cliffs by a little known path and rescue the sailors but were prevented by police and coastguard. Well the cliffs are not 600 feet the OS spot height at Gaitnip is 101 metres (331 feet) and that is some way back from the cliffs. To suggest that police and coastguard would have stopped brave Orcadians from rescuing stricken men is a slur on police, coastguard and Orcadians; for an example of the bravery of the latter see Longhope graveyard. However, Turner contradicts himself, for a mere 10 pages later he quotes Boy Vincent Marchant. Marchant having been shipwrecked once in his short life, heard the first explosion went on deck, and was ready when the final explosions took place. He remembers swimming and swimming finally reaching the shore and climbing up a twenty foot rock. There a little time later he was found, given restoratives, wrapped in a blanket and taken to a hotel in town. Marchant was young, fit, lucky and had his wits about him, not many could have swum over a mile through water covered with thick black fuel oil. Considering the speed of the sinking, the unprepared state of the ship's crew etc. why does Turner suppose that it is unconceivable that 817 officers and crew went down with the Royal Oak? p89. We know that a number, but perhaps not that many, did get off the ship and did drown in the freezing cold, fuel oil covered waters. To suggest, on the basis of hearsay, that many did make the foot of those cliffs and were there abandoned by the authorities, because it was too dangerous to rescue them, is a disgrace.

With regard to 'Boys' I really hoped that Turner would deal with this subject in some depth but he allots only twelve pages of which eight are illustrations and or reproductions of letters. How can this be what the book's publicity calls '...a dramatic and moving reassessment of the biggest loss of boy sailors in a single Royal Navy event in World War II'.

Turner finishes up by considering and justifiably dismissing spies at Scapa Flow, these things always get thrown up. Remember a good spy doesn't have a foreign accent, he/she is the last one to be considered.

Turner finishes his book with a chapter on World War II British Battleships. Why? I have no idea. Similarly I have no idea why there are 106 illustrations some seem like makeweight.

I might have hoped that Turner would have busied himself with some examination and assessment of the tragedy. The ship was first hit in the bow, why was it not brought to some form of action stations? Many of the men who were drowned were still in their hammocks. After the second salvo struck and Royal Oak started to list, it flooded why? According to Captain RF Nichols RN, Commander of Royal Oak '[i]n addition to the heavy damage done by the torpedoes there were a large number of portholes open, fitted with light excluding ventilators. I knew every one of these must be submerged'. ¹ What part did cordite play in the swift sinking of the Royal Oak? Turner says, p120, one of the torpedoes exploded an aft magazine and the resultant fire from the cordite incinerated anyone caught in its path within minutes, it was impossible to outrun it; is this why so many died? Why did U47 come into Scapa Flow, were they expecting the whole fleet to be there? Surely the Germans must have known most if not all of the fleet had been out chasing the Gneisnau and had then left for Loch Ewe in the west of Scotland. Perhaps it was a chance to sink a capital ship in revenge for the forced surrender of the WWI Imperial German Fleet in Scapa Flow. The Nazis, if nothing else were very good at propaganda, hence the feting of Prien and his crew.

It was a pity Turner, who went to the trouble of showing workers building the Churchill Barriers, didn't mention that much of the work was done by Italian prisoners of war contracted to Balfour Beatty; there is one in plain sight, complete with yellow patch on his back, in the photograph. (p122) [Incidentally there is plaque near the start of Barrier 1 stating this involvement.]

As I said I was disappointed by Last Dawn it promised much but gave little. It isn't as though Turner has not done any research, he obviously has, but it has not been used wisely. It is hard to see any direction for the book or any conclusion; what is it's intention? I would have liked to have known more of Woodrow Clark. I would have liked to have known more of the 'Boy' sailors. Turner has gone to a lot of trouble including visiting the beautiful Orkney Islands. It all seems wasted somehow. Shame really.

In Lyness Naval Cemetery the fallen lie in neat rows except for one solitary grave sited well away from the others; this is the grave of a German sailor, how very sad.

Hopefully this year I shall get up to Orkney once again and perhaps get to Hoy and Lyness Naval cemetery, if I do I shall seek out the grave of Lieutenant Ralph Lennox Woodrow Clark RN and pay silent tribute to him, his sister and the crew of HMS Royal Oak.

Don Vincent

¹ Malcolm Brown and Patricia Meehan, Scapa Flow, Pan Books, London, 2002. p145