Very Special Ships. Arthur Nicholson
mine, allowing mines to be laid not just by surface ships and submarines, but, for the first time, by aircraft, beginning with the Germans and the British. The British first obtained a sample of the new German magnetic mine when the Luftwaffe generously deposited one in a tidal area. Aerial minelaying would very quickly become an important part of mining operations during the war, the United States taking up aerial minelaying in a big way, to the great detriment of Japanese merchant shipping. At least in European and Mediterranean waters, aerial minelaying supplemented rather than replaced minelaying by surface ships.
Captain John S Cowie, CB, LM, RN, in 1922. (Jean Hannant née Cowie)
In the Second World War, naval mining would play a very important part in the war at sea and the British fast minelayers would play no small part in that war. The first to do so was the name ship of the class, the Abdiel.
THE ABDIEL COMPLETES AND PROVES HER WORTH
Home Waters and the Mediterranean, 1941
IT was only fitting that the name ship of the class would be named after the Abdiel of First World War fame, which was named after the faithful seraph in Milton’s Paradise Lost who withstood Satan when he urged the angels to revolt.1
The Abdiel was built by the venerable J Samuel White & Company, on the River Medina at Cowes on the Isle of Wight. She had the distinction of being the longest and largest ship ever built there. Ordered in December 1938, the Abdiel’s keel was laid on 29 March 1939, just as Hitler was moving into what was left of Czechoslovakia after Munich, making the Second World War inevitable. She was launched on 23 April 1940 and was supposedly commissioned on 7 March 1941,2 but was not fully completed until 15 April 1941.3
Her crew was from Devonport,4 and 50 per cent of them had never been to sea before.5 She was painted up in a medium gray and was given the pennant number M 39. Her motto was Semper Fidelis – ‘Always Faithful’6 – and her crest was decidedly not classical, featuring a silver mine with golden wings.
The Abdiel’s first commanding officer was the aforementioned Captain Edward Pleydell-Bouverie, MVO, who had already been with her for months during her fitting-out. He was born on 10 September 1899, the second son of the sixth Earl of Radnor and grew up at Longford Castle in Salisbury. At home with his wife Pearl – Lady Montagu – in Beaulieu in the New Forest of Hampshire, he liked to hunt pheasant and duck.
The Captain had already been to sea under the most trying circumstances early in his career. While still a cadet at Britannia Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, he was sent to sea on the old armoured cruiser Hogue almost immediately after the declaration of war against Germany in August 1914. With a number of reservists, he and his fellow cadets, soon promoted to midshipmen, formed the complements of the sisters Aboukir, Hogue and Cressy, which were patrolling off the coast of Holland when the three were sunk in quick succession on 22 September 1914, by the German U-boat U-9, commanded by Lieutenant Otto Weddigen.7 The heavy loss of life, especially among the young midshipmen, shocked Britain. Ned Pleydell-Bouverie survived because, as he later said, his father had insisted he learn how to swim in the River Avon by the castle where he grew up. At first interned in Holland, he and his fellow survivors were quickly repatriated to Britain.
The Abdiel after completion. (Lt Cmdr Ben Warlow, RN)
From that point on, young Pleydell-Bouverie’s career was for the time being less exciting. He experienced the battle of Jutland aboard the battleship Orion and after the war served afloat and ashore. One of his last appointments before the war was as a Commander on the royal yacht Victoria and Albert. Once the Second World War broke out, he was sent to France as a liaison officer to the French admiralty, finally becoming the Naval Attaché. Leaving Paris just ahead of the Germans in June 1940, he made it to Bordeaux and then escaped to Britain in a fishing boat and then a submarine. He was posted to the battlecruiser Hood just before she took part in the tragic attack on the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir on 3 July 1940, to keep it out of the hands of the Germans.
About 5ft 10in tall, the Captain was a heavy smoker and was at times in less than perfect health, being prone to stomach ailments. Lieutenant N H G Austen found him a ‘most charming and friendly man’ and the two got on right away. The Abdiel’s young midshipman, Norman Goodwin, held the Captain in awe and remembered him as a strict disciplinarian by observation and personal experience, though on the whole he thought the Captain treated him well.
The Abdiel’s First Lieutenant was Lieutenant Nigel Hubert George Austen, better known to some as ‘Bunny’. He was the son of a vicar and was born in 1910 at Thirsk, Yorkshire. The ship’s first Torpedo (electrical) and Mine Officer was Lieutenant-Commander Paul Morrison Bushe Chavasse. He had just been awarded a Distinguished Service Cross and had commanded the minelayer Princess Victoria when she was mined and sunk off the Humber in May of 1940. In spite of his bruises, he had been bitten by the ‘minelaying bug’. When he applied for more of it, the Admiralty sent him to the Abdiel.8
Captain The Hon Edward Pleydell-Bouverie, MVO, RN. (Robin Pleydell-Bouverie)
Midshipman Goodwin was born in 1923 in Franche, near Kidderminster in Worcestershire. His father was from a line of millers and his mother ran a school from their house. After attending a prep school he decided on a career at sea and at the age of fourteen he joined the officer training ship Conway, an old sailing ship moored off Birkenhead. He did well, attaining the rank of Junior Cadet Captain and upon graduating at the age of seventeen he joined the Royal Navy. He was first posted to the armed merchant cruiser Canton, formerly a P&O liner and his next posting was the Abdiel.
Officers and men began joining the Abdiel while the ship was at Cowes fitting out. Lieutenant Austen joined at the end of July and found the Abdiel ‘the usual depressing sight of a ship in that state, a mass of rusty plates with dockyard gear of all imaginable sorts as well as dockyard workers. It all looked too dreary for words’. He and the other officers had all the plans of the ship and ‘each of us spent our time chasing up the first representatives in an effort to get things heaving around and ensuring that the parts of the ship for which we were responsible were as they should be’.
The Abdiel fitting out at Cowes. (Carisbrooke Castle Museum)
As fitting out progressed, the Battle of Britain was at its height, but in spite of frequent air-raid warnings the Luftwaffe did not hinder the work. The weather was wonderful and the Isle of Wight provided a grandstand seat. Lieutenant Austen was almost ashamed to admit that that in the evenings they were able to sit in a garden ‘with a drink in our hands and watch the war in the air go on as almost as though watching a film’.
As the months passed, the Abdiel looked less and less dreary as she neared completion. Finally, she was sufficiently finished to go to sea, first at Spithead. She carried out a full-power trial during which, according to Lieutenant Austen, she exceeded 40 knots. Then on 20 March she sailed to Greenock, where preparations were made for builder’s trials. There ended the best-laid plans.
On 21 March 1941, the German battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau