Very Special Ships. Arthur Nicholson
in the Atlantic and they arrived at Brest the next day.9 The two sisters were a menace that had to be contained. On 22 March, he Admiralty ordered the Abdiel to the mine depot at Milford Haven in Wales to pick up mines. She left Greenock at 05.00 and proceeded at 35.5 knots to Millford Haven, dumping her dummy mines on the way. On the voyage she also carried out her first gunnery practice, on a raft with a flag on it, to unimpressive reviews.
After arriving at 14.30, she embarked as many mines as she could from the wooden mining jetty there and sailed to Plymouth. On the way, she was ‘given a welcome’ by an aircraft that announced it was not friendly by dropping its bombs in her wake. The Abdiel did not fire at the aircraft, which Lieutenant Austen thought was ‘not creditable’.
The ship then departed Plymouth to carry out her first minelaying operation, on the night of 23/24 March, off the Little Sole Bank. The destroyers Kipling and Kashmir escorted her as far as the Bishop Rock and then she was on her own, for the first time, in enemy waters. The visibility was good and as the ship approached the laying position, Lieutenant Austen thought ‘we could vaguely see the French coast and we felt remarkably visible ourselves!’10 For the first time in a fast minelayer, the order to ‘lay mines’ was given and she began to lay her 141 mines. Once the first one went out, ‘it seemed to us tense souls on the bridge to make a great splash and noise and one almost felt we could be heard ashore!’ The lay could not proceed quickly enough for those souls on the bridge, but eventually they heard ‘All mines laid’ and sped back to Plymouth. For this work, the Abdiel received a ‘well done’ signal from the First Sea Lord.11
The Abdiel at speed on trials. (Imperial War Museum FL 18)
Their Lordships were not quite done with her. The Abdiel was ordered to perform the same feat on the night of 28/29 March, this time in company with destroyers commanded by Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten. Lieutenant Austen ‘had a nasty feeling Lord Louis was spoiling for a fight’, which was not at all what the Abdiel was looking for. After sailing, Lieutenant Austen and the ship’s navigator thought they should try to use the taut wire measuring gear. Once the wire parted two or three times, they gave up on it. The Abdiel slipped her escort 25 miles off Brest and proceeded to lay her 150 mines without incident. Upon rejoining the destroyers, Lord Mountbatten signalled to the still-uncommissioned Abdiel that Samuel White & Co. was to be congratulated on their minefield.12 On this operation, the ship first fired her guns in action, at an enemy aircraft overhead.13
The Abdiel was finally formally commissioned on 15 April. She was ordered to proceed to the Tail o’ the Bank on the Clyde to have workmen put right some nagging defects and to carry out her much-anticipated first-of-class trials. The trials were, once again, not to be. As the Captain was conducting a church service on a Sunday morning, two tugs approached the ship and informed her officers that they were to park her at a berth ‘as they were wanted in a hurry’. The church service ended prematurely and off went the Abdiel to the Princess Dock in Glasgow to have her defects corrected, to load equipment and to receive secret orders.
Those orders required the Abdiel to sail off to the Mediterranean bound for Malta and Alexandria carrying urgently needed aerial mines, 2pdr anti-tank guns and other military equipment, as well as some service passengers.14 She would be in company with the light cruiser Dido and the 5th Destroyer Flotilla, commanded by Captain Lord Mountbatten in the Kelly, with her sister-ships Kipling, Kelvin, Kashmir, Jackal and Jersey.15
The Abdiel set sail for Gibraltar on 20 April. On the way, the weather was good, but an enormous swell was running and each wave was of great length. The heavily-laden ship’s hull hogged and sagged as she reached the crest of a wave, resulting in a nasty tear in deck plates on the forecastle. In spite of her damage, the Abdiel got a chance to show what she could do. As Midshipman Goodwin wrote,
Being so new, the rest of the fleet knew little of the capabilities of the Abdiel class. This was demonstrated when, in calm weather, we approached the western entrance to the Straits of Gibraltar. Captain D [Mountbatten], wishing to get into harbour as quickly as possible ordered his destroyers to form line ahead formation and increase speed to 30 knots. Abdiel was told to act independently, presumably on the assumption that she would soon be left behind. I was fortunate to be on the bridge at the time to see and hear what transpired. As soon as the signal was received, the Captain called the Chief Engineer to him. After a brief discussion concerning the state of the engines and the remaining fuel, speed was increased. As we steamed past the Flotilla Leader we sent the signal ‘Will this do?’ We were already tied up and taking in fuel by the time the destroyers came in.16
With that incident, word of the Abdiel’s capabilities no doubt started getting around the fleet.
The Abdiel and her consorts arrived on the 24th and enjoyed a brief stay in Gibraltar. Orders were received forbidding anyone but naval personnel on deck, but, as the Captain recalled, a ‘considerable addition was made to the Officers and Ship’s Company’, as the ‘passengers entered into the spirit of the game’ and ‘moustaches were shaved off and so on’. The Captain recalled with satisfaction that the ruse was a success, such that when Admiral Somerville came aboard he asked where the passengers had been put.
The ships departed Gibraltar that evening, with Malta as the next port of call. The passage through the Sicilian Channel was delayed for one day due to bad weather and then was made on a brilliant, starlit night. The Captain was surprised that the enemy was silent, as the force, passing within four miles of the island of Pantelleria in line ahead and at 30 knots, presented a wonderful target for shore batteries.
Malta was reached on 28 April. At the time, the island was under heavy bombing and aerial mine attacks and ships were sometimes trapped in the harbour by mines. The Abdiel and the Dido unloaded ‘certain important stores’,17 and then sailed for Alexandria the day they arrived, just as an air raid on Malta developed, giving the Abdiel ‘a wonderful view of what the Malta A/A barrage could produce’. The same day the supply ship Breconshire and the 14th Destroyer Flotilla sailed for the same destination and Mountbatten’s 5th Flotilla was left at Malta.
On the voyage to Alexandria, the force was attacked by Ju 88 twin-engined bombers, which made shallow diving attacks. One plane put a stick of bombs about 150 yards off the Abdiel’s bow and another missed everyone by at least a half a mile. After dark, the Abdiel and Dido were detached to proceed at high speed for Alexandria.18 At 16.00 on 30 April, they reached Alexandria,19 joining the Mediterranean Fleet at a critical moment, shortly after it completed the evacuation of British and Dominion troops from Greece just ahead of the invading Germans and just before start of the battle for Crete. The Abdiel was quickly put to work and on 2 May was sent to Haifa in British-ruled Palestine to load mines.
The Abdiel digs in on the voyage to Alexandria. (National Maritime Museum N 31257)
The Abdiel arrives at Alexandria, 30 April 1941. (National Maritime Museum N 31262)
The C-in-C of the Mediterranean Fleet, Vice Admiral Andrew Browne Cunningham, quickly detected the ship’s Achilles heel. On 3 May, he wrote to the First Sea Lord;
I don’t know if you have realised the low endurance of the Abdiel. She can’t lay mines off Lampedusa [an island between Malta and Tunisia] from Alexandria and must refuel at Malta. So our minelaying there also depends on Malta being open. I suggest, if it’s not too late, that the question of fitting extra fuel tanks in the others be studied and, if successful, one of them be sent to replace her in due course.20
Admiral Cunningham could nevertheless see the