City ship that refused to die

Looking hopefully to Memory Lane readers to come up trumps in this quest is John Sanders, chairman of the Worcester Sea Cadets Unit and publicity officer for the city branch of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.

All he has been able to glean so far is basic information about what appears to have been the illustrious role in mid-20th Century naval history of HMS Worcester (RN Destroyer Pennant No. D96).

It was the eighth ship to carry the name HMS Worcester and was built by J. Samuel White and Co. Ltd, at Cowes on the Isle of Wight, in 1919.

Possibly the finest hour for this HMS Worcester was when it was among the fleet of vessels which helped rescue hundreds of thousands of British troops from the Dunkirk beaches 60 years ago. It was to be described as "the ship that refused to die" after sustaining and surviving bombing and torpedo attacks on its Dunkirk mission.

John Sanders has found that the battle honours of HMS Worcester not only featured Dunkirk, but also the Atlantic 1940, the North Sea 1940-43, the English Channel 1942-43 and the Arctic 1942-43.

Sadly, however, the HMS Worcester was not to prove indestructible and it was put out of action in December 1943, when mined while escorting a Russian convoy. The ship was re-named HMS Yeoman in 1945, possibly serving as a dock-based depot ship, and was eventually scrapped in 1946.

These brief facts are all that John Sanders has managed to discover about HMS Worcester though I have been able to show him photographs of the destroyer from Evening News files.

Ironically, John has found it much easier to come up with a detailed life history of the American fighting ship bearing the same name - the cruiser USS Worcester.

He earnestly hopes that among older Memory Lane readers there may be those who possess more facts or personal recollections about HMS Worcester.

What John especially wants to discover are precise details of the ship's badge of HMS Worcester. Did it include the city's Coat of Arms with the three black pears and a castle?

"I would love to be able to produce a replica of the original ship's badge," stresses John.

He points out that there have been at least eight HMS Worcesters in the British Navy over the past 350 years.

The first HMS Worcester was launched in 1651, the second in 1698, the third in 1705, the fourth in 1735, the fifth in 1769, the sixth in 1843 and the seventh in 1876.

There was a training ship, HMS Worcester based on the River Thames in London, from 1863 and this was used extensively in the instruction of cadets for the Merchant and Royal Navies. John believes it was a wooden ship with sails and tall masts and that it continued in use until sold in 1948.

He points out that there also used to be a Bibby Line motor ship called Worcestershire. It was built in the Glasgow shipyards in 1931, and operated on the Liverpool-Rangoon route until the outbreak of the Second World War, when it was converted to an armed merchant cruiser, at first escorting convoys from Canada to England.

The Worcestershire later went to the Far East on escort duties but then underwent further conversion to take a prominent part in the D-Day landings. After the war, it reverted to its peacetime role and operated on Burmese services, finally being sold to Japanese shipbreakers in 1961.

John Sanders' determination to research the history of the destroyer HMS Worcester followed a reunion of Worcester Sea Cadets last year. He first joined the city's Sea Cadets as a teenager in 1946 and remained until entering military service. Chatting to others of his age at the reunion, he set himself the task of trying to produce a more detailed record of the HMS Worcester.

Traditionally, local Sea Cadet units adopt the names of existing Royal Navy vessels as the names for their training bases - for instance, the Gloucester unit's base is TS Gloucester after HMS Gloucester.

But as there has been no HMS Worcester since 1946, the Faithful City's Sea Cadets have had to name their Diglis base TS Fearless after HMS Fearless. "It's clearly a great shame there is no HMS Worcester today," stresses John.

Earlier this year, he was put in touch with Ron Maciejowski of Massachusetts who is membership chairman of the US Navy Cruiser Sailors Association. Ron has since sent John a considerable amount of information about US ships which sailed under the name Worcester.

There have been three, the first being a steam-driven sloop-of-war commissioned in 1871 at the Boston Navy Yard, and the second a Tacoma class frigate.

The third ship, the cruiser USS Worcester was commissioned in 1948 and saw much action in the Korean War, being used extensively as a fire support vessel. The USS Worcester was awarded two battle stars for its Korean War service and, though recognised as being "a class leader and revolutionary light cruiser," it was de-commissioned in 1958 and eventually sold for scrap in 1972.

Obviously, the American ships were named after our sister city of Worcester, Massachusetts.

In his RNLI capacity, John Sanders has already produced a comprehensive record of the lifeboats which, over the past 150 years, were bought entirely with funds raised in Worcester and South Worcestershire through public subscription and private donations.

There were at least eight in Victorian times, some bearing, in turn, the name "City of Worcester."

* Incidentally, while researching in our files as part of this feature, I discovered a photograph of what appears to be a merchant ship cruising along the Suez Canal about half-a-century or more ago. It's name? The City of Worcester!

*Quirks of fate in Dunkirk retreat

ALMOST stranger than fiction are two true tales I recently heard from Worcester survivors of the legendary Dunkirk evacuation of 60 years ago.

One involved Major Tom Averill and the Worcester Gunners - members of the locally-based Royal Artillery battery.

A remarkable concidence occurred as they were gathered on a jetty at Dunkirk patiently waiting to be plucked from the French beaches by the big fleet of vessels sailing over from England.

Major Averill of Hanbury Park Road, Worcester, takes up the story: "At last we spotted a large Royal Navy ship approaching and I sent my friend Cliff Willis to see what it was.

"He returned some time later and to our great surprise announced that it was the HMS Worcester.

"After a moment or two, I exclaimed jokingly 'That's just the job - it will be able to take us all the way home!"

Major Averill, who has been a leading figure for years in the Dunkirk Veterans Association at Worcester, says the colonel of their unit wrote glowingly in his diary of their thanks and gratitude to the captain of HMS Worcester for rescuing them and bringing them safely back to England.

The other huge coincidence happened to Ron Houghton, also serving with the Worcester Gunners. Accompanied by just one friend, he had trekked on foot across Belgium with the retreating British Expeditionary Force and was just approaching Dunkirk, when he spotted a large bag of Army mail discarded at the roadside.

He opened it up to find it was full of mail for his Worcester unit and that on top was a letter from his wife-to-be Muriel telling him that all the arrangements for their wedding he been made for his next leave home!

Thus, it was that he was married at Worcester, less than a fortnight after being rescued from Dunkirk.

Sadly, the Durkirk Veterans Association recently went out of existence and hung up its standard in the St George's Chapel of Worcester Cathedral. It is pleasing to hear that the association has handed the sling and gauntlets of its standard-bearer to the Worcester Sea Cadets.