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The Hesperus Diary
26 December 1942
St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada


Credits:
W.R. Dawe

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The Hesperus Diary
Boxing Day Dec. 26th 1942, East Bound

At 12:30 pm (Venessa) destroyer, screening astern of convoy, sighted an object on the horizon about nine miles astern. She informed us and together we raced at full speed to wards the spot. The sea was quite calm and weather although very cold was quite clear. Upon reaching the estimated spot nothing could be seen of the object and together we commenced to search. At 1:45 we picked up an echo on our asdics, (under water detector) and dropped two patterns of ten charges. Echo faded and we continued the hunt. A little later V picked up an echo and she too made two attacks. At 3:30 pm we sighted a periscope on starboard beam about 45 yds away. We turned at full speed and it disappeared. Action stations were sounded off. Up until 3:30 when the alarm bells sounded, I was asleep on the mess deck, after dinner I laid down for a nap. I was wakened twice to the thumping of depth charges but of course did not bother to get up. At 3:30 everyone jumped to life. As I pulled on my sea boots someone remarked that there was a U boot in the vicinity. Another said "what again?" and we all laughed. U-boat near was such an old story and we had made so many seemingly unsuccessful depth charge attacks that they were almost monotonous. However we had to go see what was going on.
I took up my action stations as star'd lookout on the bridge. Just as I arrived we dropped a pattern of 14 d. charges and the ship jumped and shook as they exploded throwing a high column of water up in the air.. It was beginning to grow dark at this time: at 4:30 it was dark with no moon, although the sky was clear. One of the chaps told me he had seen a periscope at 3:30 so I knew this was no uncertain attack.
At 7:15 we were still staring out over the water in the hopes of catching sight of the wake of the periscope or torpedo track. I was very tired having been in one position for nearly four hours: my eyes were heavy and seemed to be burning out of my head. I was pitying the depth charge party as some of them were on since noon having had the afternoon watch and they were still reloading and firing the traps and throwers.
We were keeping in touch with V all the time by radio-telephone. At 7:30 she told us that a U-boat had surfaced on her star'd bow and that she was about to ram. (I could just see V on our star'd beam about 100 yds. away). We heard her crew cheering and she reported she had rammed the U-boat. We had turned towards V to see what was going on and as I thought to picking up survivors, when suddenly V opened fire with all her guns and we seemed to be in her line of sight for some of her shell whistled quite close at sea level and some we thought had even passed through our rigging. Our captain told her to ease fire because of this. At the same time a dark object looming up very close on our starboard bow. I shouted "U-boat Green 20 sir", but the captain had already seen her, he ordered" on small searchlight" and "all guns ready". In the beam of the 10 inch searchlight we could see the U-boat quite plainly. She looked terribly large and appeared to be painted a silver color for she gleamed brightly in the light. She was speeding along at about 18 knots. Apparently the V had only struck her a glancing blow. The crew were all packed in the conning tower; we could see them waving handkerchiefs and they were shouting what sounded like "Kamerad". However the captain was taking no chances on her getting away and shouted to the gunnery officer "give them hell"! And at once every gun was firing at the conning tower. We could hear the shells at they hit against the steel hull and see the tracer shells of our small guns as they ploughed through the mass of men there. I saw one man jump over into the water. There were two standing by her gun, but they made no attempt to return our fire. Seeing that the U-boat was not slowing down the Capt. Ceased fire and ordered "Stand by to ram" bringing the ship around in a small circle, so that she was directly ahead of us, and rapidly drawing nearer..Everyone except the Captain and the gunnery officer were lying flat on their stomachs which was the proper position for ramming stations. I got down for an instant but stood up before we struck I wanted to see what was going on. When I stood up I had a fleeting glance of a crowd of men staring up at our bridge and saw two tumble over into the water. I braced myself for the shock and then Crash!!! What a bump! I lost my grip and went to my knees bumping my chin on the way down on a voice-pipe. A second before we were speeding at 28 knots, but now we were stopped. The boys were on their feet again now and it was our turn to cheer. The Capt. went astern to clear our bows of the wreckage. The U-boat had broke in two, we had hit her fair and square in the conning tower; the bow and stern met in mid-air, then sank in a pool of oil fuel, which we could smell quite strongly.; there were a few large boxes floating about. We stopped our engines and played our search lights on both sides of the ship. I saw eleven survivors on my side and could hear them shouting out for help. The nearest on swam towards us and when he was about 10 yards away he stopped swimming and began to shout what sounded like "Vimze". The boys on the after deck let down the nets and heaving lines and waved him to come on. He was hauled on board. Two more came alongside and were also hauled out. Altogether we picked up seven survivors although one died soon after. Three of them were wounded and an officer and seaman jumped down in the water and tied lines to them. However, when the Captain saw them he ordered them back in board. Another man came alongside but he was so exhausted he couldn't climb up the net. He tried four times but fell back each time. The lads were trying their hardest to grab his arms, but could'nt reach far enough. The Captain gave the order to secure everything as he was about to carry on back to the convoy, he said there were likely to be other U-boats near. The survivor who was trying so hard to get up, fell back into the water and drifted astern.
As we got underway, we heard four or five shouting out.
Owing to the damage of our boat, we could not afford to do more than 14 knots. Two forward compartments were flooded and we were down slightly by the head. Going below to the mess deck I saw that the six survivors were wrapped up in blankets and were given cigarettes, soup, tea, biscuits and anything that could be scraped up. They were all shook up a lot and only interested in cigarettes. They were kept separate and we were told by the 1st Lieutenant to gain as much information as possible from them while they were excited and off guard. In the first couple of hours, they were all a bit talkative but after that they became fairly calm and the morning after especially they would hardly speak at all. The scraps of information were pooled and the 1st lieutenant kept a record of it, which was as follows:
"The U-boat (U357), had carried a crew of 44, (Captain went mad and shot several of his own men just before surfacing). She had a rendezvous with four other U-boats at midnight, and had been shadowing our convoy for five days. She had been out on patrol from Kiel for ten days and had sunk three ships during that time. She had fired one torpedo at the V and two at us during the attack. She had been forced to surface because she was leaking badly (and all the lighting etc. had failed). V picked up two survivors and one was blinded by machine gun bullets."
We caught up with the convoy 11:30 following morning. As we steamed up through the columns of ships, their crews lined the rails and cheered as we passed. We left the convoy at 2pm for L- and arrived Dec. 28th at 1:30pm and landed survivors.

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Brass Voicepipe
Circa 1940
St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada

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Voicepipes were used as a means of communication between decks on a ship. There was usually one on the bridge where orders could be relayed below. The HMS Hesperus survivor recollects bumping his chin on a voicepipe during a fall received when Hesperus rammed U-357.

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HMS Hesperus Ship's Badge
Circa 1941
St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada