Uncommon Courage; The Yachtsmen Volunteers of World War 2. By Julia Jones. Adlard Coles, Bloomsbury Publishing, London, 2022
Reviewed by Tim Coyle
Julia Jones is a contributing editor to Yachting Monthly magazine and a lifelong yachting enthusiast. Her enthusiasm began in infancy when her parents purchased a classic yacht, endearingly named Peter Duck. While rummaging in her attic, searching for a Peter Duck logbook to answer a request for details of the vessel’s 1991 round-Britain voyage, she found an official-looking folder detailing her father’s sailing trip to the Baltic in August 1939. When he returned home on 02 September, he found his call-up papers as Paymaster Temporary Acting Sub Lieutenant, Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. Julia forgot about the logbook as she poured through his service records, photographs and memorabilia of a six-year ‘temporary’ naval career.
As with many military veterans of the period, George Jones spoke little of his service; Julia recalled few instances of his mentioning it and, as with most offspring, showed little interest in their parents’ early lives. This emotional encounter with her father’s unsung wartime service led her to write Uncommon Courage.
George Jones wasn’t a ‘regular’ RNVR; in early 1939 he had signed up for the Royal Navy Volunteer Supplementary Reserve (RNVSR). The regular RNVR was run on traditional lines with formal establishments and a training regimen leading to specialisation and promotional prospects. The RNVSR was simply a list consisting of ‘Gentlemen interested in yachting and similar pursuits, desirous of being earmarked for training as executive officers in the event of war’. They had no rank, uniform, pay or training. RNSVR officers came from many walks of life – lawyers, accountants, advertising executives, stockbrokers, academics and not a few eccentrics; they all shared an enthusiasm for ‘messing about in boats’. They were from humble and wealthy backgrounds, owners of magnificent ocean yachts and sailing dinghies but all were accomplished sailors with a serious desire to serve at sea should war eventuate.
These temporary officers served in a vast range of roles; many were initially posted to trawlers and ancillary vessels for mine sweeping and rudimentary anti-submarine patrolling. The Royal Navy was leery of these amateurs – the regular RNVR was barely tolerated, and the professional mariners of the Royal Naval Reserve were grudgingly accepted. Early RNSVRs were told that the Navy would never appoint temporary officers to command, nor indeed rely on them as efficient specialist ships’ officers. As the numbers of convoy escorts, coastal forces and previously unknown naval occupations emerged, requiring skill not normally available in the regular RN, grew exponentially, fusty hidebound RN officers found these amateurs indispensable. A case in point were coastal forces; the VR-manned coastal motorboats of World War One disappeared after war’s end and the RN had no interest in ‘mosquito fleets’ until the new war brought an immediate need for their speed and striking power against German E-boats and for clandestine operations. It was RNSWR officers, most notably Robert Hichens (lawyer, racing car driver and yachtsman), who were instrumental in the operational reinvention of the motor torpedo/gunboats and developed them technically and tactically at high cost to their lives (including Robert Hichens DSO and Bar, DSC and two Bars).
The RNSVRs wrote extensively of their experiences and Julia Jones makes full use of their works. These writers included Nicholas Monserrat, Neville Shute Norway, Ewen Montagu (Operation Mincemeat) and many others which Julia skilfully meshes into the narrative.
It wasn’t long before RNSVRs were commanding coastal forces flotillas, corvettes, escort destroyers, submarines and the vast fleet of landing ships. The temporary officers brought imagination, flexibility, enthusiasm and their small boat skills to their naval service, whether they were posted to sea or to operational intelligence activities. They weren’t reticent about voicing their opinions against the ‘system’ because, as temporaries, they were only engaged for the war’s duration. Some individuals barely completed, or indeed were plucked from, their basic RNVR training at HMS Prince Alfred, so in demand were their perceived skills. There is a huge cast of characters in the book and the narrative is built around chapters on everything from the Dunkirk evacuation, convoy escort, rendering mines safe, landing craft and clandestine operations, naval intelligence and the dark recesses of the Special Operation Executive and the XX Committee.
Sadly, the book has no illustrations; a few well-selected images would have made Uncommon Courage a true gem. As it is I found I had to read it twice to fully appreciated the magnitude of the contribution made by these temporary officers to the allied war at sea.
It wasn’t just the British yachtsmen who served so splendidly. The RAN had a similar yachtsmen’s scheme, many members training as anti-submarine officers at HMAS Rushcutter before either proceeding for RN service or manning the wartime RAN. Significantly, RANVR officers (Leon Goldsworthy and George Gosse) earned George Crosses for their rendering mines safe activities.
Perhaps the extraordinary changes in these men’s lives are summarised in the book by a cameo of Edward Young and Ruari McLean. They were typographers at Penguin Books pre-war and flatmates. McLean was a pacifist and when he told his parents he was planning to register as such, they were horrified. He then tried to join the Navy, but his eyesight was poor. He joined as a Telegraphist but found his way into Combined Operations Pilotage Parties (COPP) as an officer. COPPs undertook clandestine beach surveys in preparation for amphibious landings using canoes launched from submarines. In August 1944, McLean’s COPP team was embarked in the submarine HMS Tudor to conduct a survey on Sumatra. McClean writes: ‘During the night my friend Edward Young passed close to us on his way in from patrol in his submarine Storm. If, five years previously when we were sharing a flat in Hammersmith and pursuing the peaceful profession of typographer, we could have known that we would one night pass within a mile of each other in submarines in the Far East, we would have rushed down to the Black Lion with shaking hands to have a pint’.
Uncommon Courage is most hight recommended.
