MV Norland, Secret Weapon of the Falklands War

From North Sea Ferry to Task Force Assault Ship

Reg Kemp, Michael Wood

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780750997126
• eBook ISBN: 9780750998284
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

In 1982, North Sea ferry MV Norland transported passengers and vehicles between Hull and Rotterdam. Requisitioned as a troop ship to take the 2nd Battalion, Parachute Regiment to the Falklands, the 'volunteer' merchant navy crew were told they would only go as far as the Ascension Island and that they should think of it as an extended North Sea booze-cruise run. However, without notice Norland's role was changed and it became the first vessel to enter San Carlos Water, ending up a sitting duck in 'Bomb Alley' air raids while disembarking troops and carrying out resupply runs.

Narrowly escaping sinking, the ship was used as a shelter for survivors and for collecting the Gurkhas from the QE2 in South Georgia, ready for disembarking in San Carlos Bay, before repatriating Argentine POWs. Long after the surrender, MV Norland provided a ferry service between the Falklands and Ascension Island. While many in the war served an average of 100 days, for the crew of the Norland it was ten months; indeed, they were considered the first in and the last out. This is a gripping account of non-combatant volunteers railroaded into serving in a war they hadn't signed up for.

1

A PEACEFUL LIFE

When not at sea, my main interest was to go rock climbing and scrambling. In 1982, on board the North Sea passenger ferry MV Norland, some of my fellow crew members wanted to take on the well-known Lyke Wake Walk, in North Yorkshire. I knew this could be a tough task, even for the experienced walker but certainly for the beginner. It would be a 40-mile trek over challenging terrain and not something you do on a whim. As I had always fancied doing it myself, after several requests from the lads to join them, I agreed to go along. Before I knew it, I found myself the leader of our small walking expedition.

Our ship’s policeman, Ron Marshall, had wanted to come along but he didn’t want to do the actual walk. Instead, he offered to drive a minibus that we’d hired, which I was delighted with, as I liked and trusted Ron – and him being a policeman! With a team of eleven, mainly cooks and stewards, I knew that some would have difficulty finishing the walk. But to give them their due, they were all raring to go.

At 3.45 a.m. on an April morning, we entered the village of Osmotherley, our starting location. On parking up our minibus outside the village, the conditions were ideal – dry with a clear sky that made it a delight to see the night’s stars. Osmotherly is located in the west of the North Yorkshire moors and we were to head east, across country, to our finishing location at Ravenscar on the North Sea coast. I’d decided on such an early start in the hope of reaching the finish before dark. The lads had been briefed about packing the basics of water, snacks, a torch, plasters, and advised to cut their toenails. I carried the necessary maps and a compass.

We started the walk at 4 a.m. From the off, I ensured stragglers didn’t drop behind in the dark. This was strenuous as I was forever up and down the line cajoling everyone along, keeping them together. Five miles into the walk, one of the less fit lads gave himself a rest break. Once he’d sat down, he didn’t want to get up. In all seriousness he asked me, ‘Reg, I’m completely knackered. Can you get me a helicopter?’ He knew the answer when I laughed out loud and slowly shook my head. Thankfully he pushed on to complete another mile until the first pre-arranged stop with Ron, where he became our first walker lost to the comfort of a seat in the minibus.

Our team of ten carried on. Helped by the dry conditions, initially all was going well. Everyone enjoyed seeing the dawn breaking, which was spectacular. The terrain was sparse, with the lack of trees very noticeable. Near to midday, we approached a small dip by a stream. As we got closer to the dip, we saw that there were four other walkers taking a rest. They were heading east to west. A friendly conversation ensued when we discovered that they were army lads. The conversation had a common bond; the delight of walking and the sense of freedom it gives. We respected their situation as soldiers who were in training. They respected our situation as lads from a seafaring background without training but giving it a go. After sharing a few stories about life at sea and life in the military, we all shook hands and went our own way. Little did any of our group of walkers know that in several days, our ship would be playing host to a large contingent of the British Army who were greatly famed for their walking – or rather their marching abilities.

For now, our group of walkers were just over the halfway stage and unfortunately more of them were suffering. At the next meet-up with the minibus, steward John Kamis decided not to go on. He was sitting inside the vehicle when he shouted, ‘Reg, can you take a look at this?’ He’d taken his boots off and his white socks were stained red, not due to dye from his boots but from blood. I said, ‘John, just put your boots back on and pretend it’s not there. Didn’t I say to cut your toenails?’

‘It’s a bit late for that now,’ he said with a strained smile.

It wasn’t without good reason that others decided not to go on. Though the weather was kind, as we slogged on yet more dropped out and by 4 p.m. there were only four of us left. I called a quick halt to chat with the other three lads, Johnny Lambert, John McWatt and Dick Johnson. ‘Look, fellas,’ I said, ‘we’re going to finish this thing. We’ve got to get to the end before nightfall. You’re going to have to keep up a good pace, a faster pace.You have to stay with me, okay?’ No one argued and so with quiet determination we continued.

With 5 miles to go before the end, we stopped for an unscheduled rest. Dick Johnson was normally a real ‘live wire’, but I could see he was suffering for he had gone very quiet. Johnny Lambert, a big powerful fellow, had asked me before the walk what he should do to get through it. ‘Just stick alongside me all the way,’ I advised him. This is what he’d done and if I’d said to him, ‘John, when we get to the end of this walk, we are going to turn around and go straight back the way we’ve just come,’ he would have shrugged his shoulders and done just that. Not so with John McWatt. He’d had enough and he didn’t want to go on.

‘Look, it’s only 2 more miles to go from here,’ I lied. ‘And anyway, you have got to finish it because how else are you going to get to the end? The minibus can’t get here to pick you up. Oh, and before you ask, a helicopter isn’t going to turn up and neither is mountain rescue with a St Bernard dog carrying a small barrel of rum round its neck.’ I didn’t know if my words were registering as there was a long pause before he spoke.

He looked at me blankly and said, ‘You’re a bastard, Kempy. I hate you. And no matter what you say, I am not moving.’

In response, I spouted one of those motivational movie speeches in which I talked about the embarrassment of failure, of how everyone on the ship would know he had given up with only a couple of miles to go, of how they would take the piss out of him big time and for a long time to come.

‘Do you know what, Kempy, I fucking hate you even more. In fact, right now, I don’t think I could hate anybody in this world as much you,’ he said. Then dragging up his aching bones, swearing and muttering away to himself, he began shuffling along until falling into a walking rhythm again.

I was amazed that I’d managed to persuade him to continue. On long walks like these you inevitably hit a pain barrier and that had happened to us all. To their credit, everyone dug in deep, including me. We finished just after 6 p.m. under ugly grey clouds, with a drop in the temperature setting in.

We may not look it, but we were definitely happy at finishing the Lyke Wake Walk. Left to right are stewards John McWatt, Johnny Lambert, Dick Johnson and me.

I was proud of all the lads for taking on the walk in the first place, but I was especially proud of those who’d finished it. We’d covered 40 miles in just over 14 hours. What a pleasure it was on arriving at our final destination of Ravenscar to be greeted by familiar territory, the North Sea. As far as I was concerned it had been a successful venture. I couldn’t have been more pleased, though, to see my wife, Jean. She had driven to Ravenscar to drive me home to Hull. Other family members had also turned up to drive some of the lads back. Before we headed off, either in Ron’s minibus or in private cars, we spent a good hour in the pub replenishing fluids lost en route. I am not someone who usually needs a lot of shut-eye but that evening, on arriving home, I felt at peace with the world as I fell into a deep welcome slumber.

(The 40-mile walk that we covered gets its name from the Lyke Wake Dirge. This is a traditional Yorkshire song describing the soul’s passage through purgatory, which is what many walkers feel when taking on the challenge. Not only does one have a great sense of self-esteem in completing it, one also earns an entry to the Lyke Wake Club. The song has it that male finishers of the walk are called Dirgers, women finishers are called Witches. And why this is, no one really knows!)

2

THINGS ARE ABOUT TO CHANGE

The morning after our walking trip my wife, Jean, woke me with a cup of tea and a look of concern. ‘Morning, love, hope you slept well. Listen, something’s up,’ she said. ‘I’ve just had a phone call from North Sea Ferries. I don’t know what’s going on but you have to go to the ship. They are calling all hands to a special meeting on board the Norland at 10.30 this morning.’

The date was 17 April and as I was on leave, I thought it a bit of an inconvenience. I realised, though, that such an unusual request meant it had to be something important. I grabbed some breakfast and hurriedly made my way to King George Dock.

There were two civilian crews who manned the Norland: one crew on the ship, the other on leave. It was therefore quite surprising to see people from both crews assembled in the ship’s restaurant at the same time. Also, there were two captains for the ship: Don Ellerby and Derek Wharton. After a lot of gossip and guesswork as to why we were there, Captain Don Ellerby appeared with several of his officers. He called out for attention. Straight to the point, he announced that the MOD had requisitioned the ship to do service for the military. The reason that we had all been called in was that the military wanted North Sea Ferries personnel to crew it, though it wasn’t compulsory to do so. ‘You either go or you don’t!’ said Captain Ellerby. He explained that if we decided not to go, the ship would be manned by Royal Navy personnel. The military didn’t really want this to happen and so they were hoping we would provide sufficient volunteers from the two crews available.

For me, it was easier to volunteer than not to. It just seemed the right thing to do and, anyway, others said they would go. We were assured it would only be a preliminary kind of exercise in that we’d be taking troops as far as Ascension Island. Someone then had the sense to ask the reason for all of this.

‘It’s because the Argentinians have invaded the Falklands,’ a military person piped up.

There was a long silence and someone near to me said, ‘What the fucking hell are the Argentinians doing in Scotland invading us up there?’ This was greatly amusing to those who knew the location of the Falklands. It was quickly explained that they were located in the South Atlantic. This was followed by a brief of the political and military situation, which those of our crew members with an interest in world current affairs were broadly aware of. Several hundred miles off the Falklands lay the islands of South Georgia, which belonged to the UK. Under the disguise of being scrap metal merchants, the Argentinian military had landed and raised their flag. This was later followed by an invasion of the Falkland Islands from the sea by full-on Argentinian troops. The Falkland Islands belong to the UK and they were home to around 2,000 people who considered themselves totally British. The UN had condemned the unprovoked aggression of Argentina and called for a withdrawal, which was ignored. The UK then declared a 200-mile exclusion zone around the Falklands. An Argentinian Junta headed up by the country’s President, General Galtieri, imposed its own South Atlantic operations zone in reply. General Galtieri had claimed that Las Islas Malvinas (The Falkland Islands) belonged to Argentina. It was political posturing by him to revive his waning popularity and to be seen as a strong leader by his people. Margaret Thatcher was about to put him right about ownership of the Falklands and, through a quickly assembled ‘Task Force’, she had already sent some of our military down to the area, including aircraft carriers HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible. A couple of days prior to our requisition, the ocean liner SS Canberra had been dispatched with the Paras and Marines on board. And when the heavy gang of the Paras and Marines gets involved, it’s more than serious.

We weren’t given time to go home and think before making any decision. It was ‘make your mind up’ there and then. Some of the crew said they had bad backs, holidays booked or other reasons not to go. Fortunately, my close pal Dave Aistrop, whom I had worked with on nights for some time, volunteered. Of the three lads with whom I had finished the walk, Dick Johnson and Johnny Lambert volunteered to go, but John McWatt was gutted that he couldn’t because of matters to do with his union position. He was deemed to be of better use on the Norland’s replacement vessel, whatever that was going to be. His younger brother, Pete McWatt, was allowed to volunteer instead, but this wasn’t without great resistance from his father, who thought that it was a dangerous decision to make and that he shouldn’t go.

An assurance for those who would be going was that we could all keep our same jobs and run the ship, within reason, in the same way we did on our normal run across the North Sea. Though under overall military control, the ship’s pecking order would remain in place, from the Captain down to the lower ranks. After a lot of soul searching, those of us who would be making up the volunteer crew had our names registered and we were allowed to leave the ship.

Technically we were ‘STUFT’, which is an acronym meaning Ships Taken Up From Trade. This is an arrangement for supplementing the Royal Navy fleet in time of war, under which a merchant ship takes aboard a naval officer to command it, and sometimes a few other naval personnel to help run the ship.

Earlier that morning I’d arrived with a friend of mine, Russ Turnbull, who had given me a lift to the dock. Before going home, it seemed a good idea for everyone to go to the local pub to discuss the situation and he came along. It was a pub off the dock called The New Inn and that day it was absolutely packed with crew members and dock workers. By now news had filtered through on the local radio that the Norland had been requisitioned by the MOD. The beer began to flow. I suggested to Russ that he shouldn’t be drinking as he was driving. Russ wasn’t the type of bloke you could ever tell what to do. After a couple of hours in the pub, we got back into his car to drive home. It would have been wiser not to do so. But, anyway, he convinced me he was okay and we headed off home. Immediately, I noticed he was driving erratically and I advised that he took it easy. Like I said, Russ wasn’t the type to be told anything. Before we knew it, a police car had pulled us over. As the copper approached, Russ wound down the window and I told him just to try to play it cool.

The copper said, ‘Hello, fellas. I am going to ask you something. Have you been drinking?’

Russ brazenly answered, ‘Yes we have!’

Taken aback, the copper said, ‘Oh, have you?’

Russ replied, ‘Yeah, and you’d have gone for a drink if you’d just done what we’ve done.’

‘What’s that?’ asked the copper.

‘We’ve just volunteered to go to the Falklands,’ explained Russ.

Now as it happened, Russ wasn’t going. The Purser, John Crowther, had firmly decided on this. The copper then asked me, ‘Is that right?’

‘Yes, I’m going as well,’ I answered.

The copper thought for a couple of seconds and said, ‘Look, I am not going to make any charges against you. Pull your car over there to the side, lock it up, get a taxi home and pick your car up another time.’

I thought this was extremely kind of the copper. We then got a taxi home where I broke the news about volunteering to my wife and two young sons. Jean wasn’t happy but she was understanding of my decision. She was used to me being away on ships, not only on the short runs of the Norland but also in my earlier days on deep-sea voyages. This trip, though, was likely to be unlike any other I had been on.

(Many months later, it amused me to learn that Russ was stopped by the copper, who was in plain clothes. He was walking along the same street when he recognised Russ. ‘I thought you was supposed to be away on the Norland,’ he snapped at him.’ Russ was groping for an excuse when he was told in no uncertain terms by the copper: ‘Don’t you ever let me catch you for anything else, whatsoev...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Maps
• Introduction
• 1 A Peaceful Life
• 2 Things are About to Change
• 3 Sailing South
• 4 Freetown to Ascension Island
• 5 Ascension Island to the Falklands
• 6 Take Cover!
• 7 Take Cover Where?
• 8 Our Next Mission
• 9 Back to Bomb Alley
• 10 Such Joy but Such Sadness
• 11 We’re Going Home … Aren’t We?
• 12 Battle of Airborne Forces Day 1982
• 13 The Aftermath of War
• 14 You’re Going Home … Maybe!
• 15 Back Home then Back to Sea
• 16 Taking Control of the Ship
• 17 A Belated Christmas Present
• 18 Laying Ghosts to Rest
• Epilogue
• Afterword
• Note by Reg Kemp
• The Norland Crew List
• Acknowledgement of the British Public
• General Acnowledgements
• About the Authors
• About the Cover Painting
• Plates