Anti-Submarine Trawlers in WW2: HMD Harvest Reaper

HMD Harvest Reaper was a drifter requisitioned by the Royal Navy in 1939.

Built in 1925 at Findochty at the Herd and Mackenzie yard she was registered at Buckie as BCK128.

She was a 100 ton steam drifter, typical of the type at some 86 feet long and 20 feet beam. Drifters were built in both wood and steel. A drawing of a typical armed drifter is shown above. A list of WW2 requisitioned drifters and trawlers can be found here.

Harvest Reaper

By June 1940 Harvest Reaper was on minesweeping duty at Belfast Lough with temporary skipper W Smith RNR. Also at Belfast were minesweeping drifters - HMD Gloamin (Ty Sk D Main RNR) and HMD Jewel (Ty Sk G G Stone RNR). A photo of the Gloamin (FR96) in peacetime is below:

Gloamin FR96

The crew of the Harvest Reaper would have been made up of the skipper, together with coxswain, 1st and 2nd engineers, one cook, 2 stokers,1 leading seaman, 2 seamen, one wireless operator, one signalman and one gun layer, a total of thirteen.

Crew of the Harvest Reaper. My father is kneeling at the front, centre.

The boat would have had a 6 pounder gun forward, and a couple of machine guns, as well as rifles.

Six Pounder gun

After conversion to an armed drifter the boat would have extra accommodation for the increased number of seamen. The drawing below shows bunks where fish would have been stored.

I remember my father saying that when a mine had been brought to the surface, the crew would attempt to detonate it using the Lewis gun and rifles. When I was a child and he took me to the fairground he would always head for the shooting range. He considered himself a good shot. If he missed he would just say the stall owner had filed or bent the sights on the rifles so he had less prizes to give out!

Shooting at mines by Stephen Bone (© IWM Art.IWM ART LD 3276)

Minesweeping was a dangerous and stressful activity. During the course of the war 32 Royal Navy minesweepers were lost, and over 250 RNPS trawlers and drifters. Belfast was no exception. On the 18 May 1941 HMD Jewel, hit a mine off Belfast Lough. The following is an account by Seaman Robert Thomas, from Trawlers Go To War by Lund & Ludlum (foulsham 1971).

'It was a Sunday, and we were duty ship. At about 2 P.M. the quayside telephone started ringing. The sentry who should have been on the quay was on the messdeck, and the rest of the seamen were in their bunks. An argument started between them and the sentry as to who should answer the phone, which kept on ringing. Eventually a young Scotsman with more imagination than the rest said it might be important and dashed up on deck to answer it. He returned with a message that there had been an explosion down Belfast Lough.

As duty ship we steamed out to investigate, but when we reached the scene all that remained on the surface was some floating wreckage and a lifebelt bearing the name of the drifter Jewel, an inshore minesweeper. She had gone up on a mine. In among the wreckage was the body of her young sub lieutenant; we found no survivors. Ironically, one of Jewel's Patrol Service crew had only just joined her; he'd been sent to recuperate at a quiet base after harassing time minesweeping at Dover.

'Soon after we returned to harbour the quayside phone rang again and this time I answered. A woman's voice asked if she could speak to the Sub Lieutenant of one of our mineweepers. I told her that his ship was at sea, which was true enough. The Jewel would never return, and the Sub Lieutenant was lying on our deck, his broken body covered with a blanket.'

Seaman Robert Thomas, HMT Friesland

An old film from WW1
The Imperial War Museum (IWM) has an old film of minesweepers in WW1. The equipment might have changed by WW2, but the same old drifters were once more put to use. So activity on board would have looked much the same (except that there would have been fewer moustaches!). There is a link to the film here

A cook's life
It wasn't so easy in the cramped galley which would have been something like this

WW1 Galley and cook

Imagine cooking when the sea was a bit rough! Note the guard rail round the stove to try to stop pots sliding off. I suspect tinned corned beef and beans was often the meal of the day.

In January 1942
The minesweeping force at Belfast comprised LL Drifters – Gloamin, Harvest Reaper, Refraction, and Tritonia. The LL refers to the use of electric pulses to detonate magnetic mines. There is more information on this at minesweepers.org.

As far as I know Harvest Reaper remained at Belfast throughout the war, so there's a good chance she appears in the photo below, taken in 1944. She would be one of the small boats near the shore, just above the pier.

Belfast Lough (from www.wartimeni.com)

Other than the above, there are no other mentions of the Harvest Reaper that I can find. Drifters were also used for Harbour service, maintaining booms, buoys, and similar duties. There is interesting online info with drawings and specifications on the WW1 armed drifters and trawlers here.

Sister ships to the Harvest Reaper built by Herd and Mackenzie were: Lizzie West (BF213), Loranthus (BCK3) and John Herd (FR149). A list can be found here.
In WW2, HMD Lizzie West served as an auxiliary patrol vessel, and HMD John Herd as a harbour service vessel.

Lizzie West as BF213

John Herd as BF94

Other Herd and Mackenzie boats built around the same time as the Harvest Reaper were the Solstice, delivered in 1918, Silt, 1919, and Sunspot, 1920. All three were Admiralty wood Drifters. The first served in WW2 as HMD Solstice, a minewsweeper and submarine tender. HMD Sunspot served as a minesweeper, and Silt, as HMD Rose Valley, was on contraband patrol until her sinking following a collision in Scapa Flow.

On delivery, post WW1, these three boats were specified as having a displacement of 100 gross tons, 43 net tons, and a length of 87.0', with a 20.0' beam, and a draught of 10.2'. Their engines were an 18 inch triple expansion type, of 43 nominal horse power, by Yeaman and Baggeson of Dundee. They had a top speed of 9kts and one 6 pounder gun.

Some more pictures of drifters