Anti-Submarine Trawlers in WW2: William Gordon and Shipmates

My father, William Gordon, died in 1973 without really talking much about his time in the Navy, though it was obvious he liked boats. During my childhood he was always up for a trip on a ferry, or a rowing or motor boat when we went on trips to the Clyde coast. We didn't have much money, otherwise I'm sure he would have bought one.

William Gordon on the left

I have his service record and know he signed up on 26 September 1940, age 21. For induction and training he went first to shore establishments HMS Royal Arthur at Skegness (see photo above), HMS Pembroke gunnery school at Chatham, and then the RNPS base HMS Europa at Lowestoft.

The RNPS consisted of the smaller boats, minesweepers, auxiliary vessels, patrol boats and so on. The trawlers and drifters were used as minesweepers (M/S) or for anti-submarine duties (A/S), also known by the abbreviation ASW (Anti Submarine Warfare).

My father's first boat was HMD Harvest Reaper which was an old drifter used for minesweeping and harbour defence. At that time he was an Ordinary Seaman and based in Belfast. While in Belfast he became a steward and was then posted to HMD Sheen, a minesweeper at Scapa Flow, where he remained until the end of 1942.

He had always said he was a gunner/cook, but he was really a cook/gunner, as he then had training at the Royal Navy School of Cooking at HMS Europa in Lowestoft.

My father getting taught how to make a pasty [IWM]

After that he was posted to Gibraltar where he had a month on the Harbour defence Motor Launch ML1130. His next ship was the trawler HMT Imperialist, which was part of the 7th Anti-Submarine group based in Gibraltar, where he remained until August 1944.

He then moved on to the HMT Haarlem, which was similar in size to the Imperialist. He was on the Haarlem until November 1945 when he returned to Lowestoft and on to HMT Brock for a couple of weeks. He was discharged on February 13 1946.

After the war he returned to Paisley where he met my mother, who had been a cook in the WRNS, and they married in 1950. She obviously didn't think much of his cooking, assuming he ever did any for her, because, as a child, I don't remember him cooking anything at all!

Petty Officer Christina Mitchell

In the pages of this blog there are photos from the Imperial War Museum and other sources. However, my father was a keen amateur photographer, and apart from the usual studio photos, some of the photos below from his album could have been taken by him. There are some photos where the ship is known but he hadn't identified the men. And there are men whose names have been noted down but not which ship they were on. Then there are a few photos which have no information at all.

But I've added all the album photos to the blog.