Very Special Ships. Arthur Nicholson
mine deck, none could carry the mineload of the Abdiels and none was as versatile. The Abdiels were not the only game in town in offensive minelaying, but they were truly unique and were no doubt the best.
Once the design of the Abdiels was finalised, the first three fast minelayers, the Abdiel, Latona and Manxman, were ordered in December 1938 as part of the 1938 shipbuilding programme. A fourth ship, the Welshman, was approved at the November 1938 Cabinet meeting as part of the 1939 programme, but she was not actually ordered until March 1939.37 The first two fast minelayers were named after minelayers that served in the First World War,38 but the Manxman and the Welshman would be exceptions to the rule.
THE ROYAL NAVY READIES FOR MINE WARFARE IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR
While in practice the Abdiels performed many functions, they were first and foremost designed for minelaying operations and obviously required suitable mines. The Royal Navy had developed magnetic and acoustic mines by the end of the First World War and continued development of contact mines between the wars with the Mk XIV mine with the traditional Herz horns and the Mk XV with ‘switch horns’. The end result was that a new type of moored contact mine, the Mk XVII, was developed in time to be used by the fast minelayers. More suited for quantity production in wartime, the new mine used a broader gauge than previous mines, had eleven ‘switch’ horns, had a detachable case for two different sizes of charges, 500lbs and 320lbs, and could be laid in 500 fathoms of water. With an eye to the future, the Royal Navy started production before the war started of a moored magnetic mine designated the M Mk I.1 Any of these types of mine could be laid with a Mk XVII sinker.
The Abdiels were to need mine depots to load their mines from in various locations, including Frater, Wrabness and Immingham, but the most important for them was the one at Milford Haven on the south coast of Wales. There were also mining depots in such far-flung places as Malta, Haifa, Trincomalee, Hong Kong and Singapore. The Abdiels would use many different ports for their minelaying operations, but the most important one in home waters was located at the Kyle of Lochalsh, also known as ‘Port ZA’, on the north-west coast of Scotland by the Isle of Skye.2
Mk XVII moored contact mine. (Eric Leon)
When war broke out in 1939, the Royal Navy was not as ready for mine warfare as it might have been, but, even though the first fast minelayer did not complete until March 1941, it was much more ready for mine warfare in 1939 than in 1914. Four merchant ships were converted for minelaying, the Agamemnon, Menestheus, Southern Prince and Port Napier, of which the fastest could make 17 knots.3 Some of the pre-war destroyers built to be used as minelayers were also employed, as were the submarines of the Grampus class. The Royal Navy soon began using small coastal craft such as motor launches and motor torpedo boats as well. Later in the war, destroyers of the War Emergency ‘O’ class were used for minelaying. As in the previous war, the Royal Navy began laying minefields with thousands of mines to counter the U-boat threat.
For much of the war, the 1st Minelaying Squadron was based at the Kyle of Lochalsh, ‘Port ZA’ or HMS Trelawney, commanded by a RA(M), Rear Admiral Mines or a Commodore(M). The Royal Navy was blessed with officers who could and would lead the mine warfare effort and were experts in the field. Two of the most important ones were Captain R H De Salis, OBE, DSC and Captain John S Cowie, later CBE, LM. In his book, Mines, Minelayers and Minelaying, Captain Cowie gave De Salis credit for inspiring his interest in mining and for teaching him everything he knew.4
John Stewart Cowie was born in Mildura, Victoria, Australia, on 23 June 1898, to James Eden Cowie, who was born in Britain, and Maud Brown Cowie, who was born in Tasmania. He and his parents travelled to Britain when he was ten to continue his education. According to Admiral Sir Robert L Burnett’s foreword to Captain Cowie’s book, in his youth John Cowie ‘was a really fine athlete and an excellent exponent of the game of Rugby football’. Upon graduation from Dartmouth as a midshipman he was assigned to the dreadnought battleship Monarch and during the Great War he fought at Jutland, Zeebrugge and Ostende. After the war, he served in the cruiser Exeter during her South American tour and also the aircraft carrier Courageous.
HMS Vernon, the Royal Navy’s torpedo and mine shore establishment, founded in 1876. (Constance Keogh via Hermione Alcock)
According to Admiral Burnett, Cowie was a brilliant officer, passing his sub-lieutenant’s courses with many ‘firsts’ and qualifying as a torpedo officer in 1923 as ‘best of the year’. Again according to Admiral Burnett, Cowie’s athleticism, allied with his love of the stage and his ‘very considerable ability as a producer and writer, assisted him in maintaining his sense of proportion and very considerable sense of humour’. Both were essential in the minelaying business, Burnett wrote, ‘because there is nothing inherently amusing in steaming in foul weather, attacked at times by aircraft and submarines, with some 560 primed mines on board and laying them with great accuracy in the close proximity to fields which may or may not have drifted’.5 During part of the war, Captain Cowie served as the Deputy Director, Operations Division (Mining) (DDOD[M]), and his comments and his signature can be seen on many of the papers on the fast minelayers at the National Archives at Kew. In 1946, the King made him a CBE, Companion of the British Empire, and the President of the United States awarded him the Legion of Merit for distinguished service to the Allied cause during the war.
Captain Cowie married Mary Keogh, the daughter of a Surgeon Commander, whom he met at a tea party in Malta given by an admiral and his wife. They had two daughters, Jean Hannant and Anne Rowan (to whom the author was related by step-marriage). In addition to being an accomplished thespian, Captain Cowie was an avid shipmodeller. His great love was actually the law and, after retiring from the Royal Navy in 1948, he not only studied law, but became the Acting Solicitor-General in Bermuda. He passed the final bar in 1981.
The Royal Navy needed experts like De Salis and Cowie, because the Abdiels became operational at a time when minelaying and minesweeping were becoming an extraordinarily complex cat-and-mouse game, at least between the British and the Germans. The Italian Regia Marina was very active in minelaying operations, primarily using light cruisers and destroyers, but was far less proficient in – or interested in – minesweeping. The Japanese and Americans had little interest or proficiency in either, at least at the beginning of the war in the Pacific.
In one of the first moves of the naval war, the Germans introduced the magnetic mine in 1939 and one of the first victims was the new heavy cruiser Belfast, which had her back broken and took several years to repair. The British began to employ their own magnetic mine, which was based on a different principle than the German mine.6 Other types of mines were introduced, such as the acoustic mine, equipped with a microphone and actuated by the sound of an approaching ship. Mines could be set with time delays or set to explode after a certain number of ‘actuations’, such as a certain number of ships passing before the mine detonated. Mines could also be set to deactivate or sink after a set period of time. In 1944, the Germans were the first to introduce the pressure mine.
Protection against mines and minesweeping became part of the game. The days when mines could be swept just by cutting their mooring cables were gone. Minesweeping had to be adapted to meet their threat of each new type of mine. With magnetic mines, each side developed special ‘degaussing gear’ for their ships to deactivate a ship’s magnetic field and render magnetic mines harmless. Each side also developed mines with diabolical defences against minesweeping, such as ‘sprockets’ and ‘grapnels’, and even special floats called ‘obstructors’.
Another important