The Andalucia Star: a survivor's tale (Part I of 3)

Once again, I am the astonished yet grateful recipient of another remarkable survivor's tale from the sinking of the SS Andalucia Star during World War II.


The Andalucia was cruelly hit and sunk by three torpedoes fired from U-107, a German U-Boat submarine on 6 October 1942. (Click on link to see Wallace Trickett's painting of the attack).


I am now indebted to Michael (Miguel) Webb, a pediatrician working in Comodoro Rivadavia in southern Argentina, who has emailed me a letter he found only recently, written by his father, Gordon F. Webb. The letter, dated 1st November, 1942, written by Gordon to his parents, vividly recalls how he survived the U-Boat attack and witnessed the Andalucia Star’s final moments.

Gordon Webb's letter merits its own space, so my next two postings will feature his eye-witness account in full. Just to remind you, the background to all of this is that my own dear grandfather Les (pictured below) had sailed across the Atlantic many times on board the Andalucia Star before World War II. Naturally, Les was very upset when he learnt the 15,000-ton Blue Star refrigerated passenger, cargo and mail liner - one of his favourite merchant navy ships - had been torpedoed and sunk.

You might also recall how the life of a little girl, aged five, was saved by the bravery of  stewardess Mrs L.A. Green and crewman William Wheeler. Green had switched on a red light on the little girl's lifejacket before lifting her into a lifeboat. Minutes later, the lifeboat dropped as it was lowered and tipped Green and presumably the little girl into the Atlantic waters.
Green was killed but the little girl was fortunate. William Wheeler, hearing the little girl's cries, saw the red light and swam to save her. Incredibly, shortly after I posted this tale, I received an email from Jill McNichol-Harrell(née Bicheno) that simply began: "I was the little girl."


Michael Webb tells me Gordon, his father, spoke very little about the war. “But I do know he was in the Royal Air Force, flying as a navigator in Sunderland flying boats,” says Michael. “He was based in Lanark till he was grounded due to ear trouble.

“Remarkably, it was a Sunderland that sunk U-107,” adds Michael. “I wonder if there is any way of finding out where the avenging Sunderland was based?”

Michael adds the Andalucia Star’s Argentine flag was recovered with the passengers’ names on it. For many years it was shown in the Luján History Museum. 

So, Gordon Webb's dramatic and poignant letter, written less than one month after the U-Boat attack, is featured in my next two postings, The Andalucia Star; a survivor's tale, Parts 2 and 3.

(Pictured: Leslie Richard Coleman, my grandfather Les)

Paul Coleman, London, August 2010.

A Christmas message from the Ocean

Seventy-five years ago an Ocean Letter wireless telegraph was the only way my seafaring grandfather, Leslie Coleman, could wish Happy Christmas to his wife Win, my grandmother.

On 18 December 1934 the telegraph operator on board Les' ship, the Andalucia Star, bound for South America, transmitted his Christmas greeting by wireless to the Kaisar I Hind that was heading back to Blighty. Les' Ocean Letter (above,click on to enlarge) was printed and then sent to Win on Christmas Eve by registered post from the Kaisar I Hind's first port of call - although I'm not sure exactly when Win received it at their Turnpike Lane home in north London.

It's touching that Win and Les, both now passed away, lovingly kept their Ocean Letter telegraph in pristine condition. How many texts, emails, e-cards, social network postings and blogs will still be cherished 75 years from now?

Paul Coleman, London, December 2009.

The sunken ship still making waves

In the early hours of Wednesday (9 December) I wrote about my grandfather Leslie Coleman, a ship's steward, who had frequently sailed on the Andalucia Star but never spoke about its sad demise. The posting, All at sea, also recalled William Wheeler’s courageous rescue of a passenger, a little five-year-old girl, after a torpedo attack by a German U-Boat submarine sank the Andalucia Star on 6 October 1942. 

Later that Wednesday, at 9.35pm, I receive an email from Jill McNichol-Harrell (née Bicheno). “I was the little girl,” says Jill.

Astonished, I read on. Jill, who lives in Texas, says in the autumn of 1942 she was crossing the Atlantic on the Andalucia Star with her father, S.G. Bicheno. Her father worked for Cable & Wireless in Chile. The Blue Star Line ship was off the West African coast when it was struck simultaneously by two of U-107’s three deadly torpedoes.

According to one account, Mrs L.A. Green, “an elderly stewardess”, switched on a red light on Jill's lifejacket before lifting the little girl into a lifeboat with other women and children. Most of the lifeboats had already been safely lowered but, as another survivor Douglas Gibson later recalled, one of the lowering lifeboats went down bow first, throwing many of its occupants, including Jill it seems, into the sea. "The bar steward and an elderly stewardess were crushed between the ship and the lifeboat and killed,” said Gibson. Mrs Green received a posthumous commendation, the Merchant Navy’s equivalent of a military ‘mention in dispatches’. Her cool, dutiful and devoted care for the women and children passengers received high praise. 


Jill, now 72, says: “Since I retired I have been able to find out quite a bit about the ship but I have not found any relatives of the stewardess, Mrs. Green. 

However, I did hear from the granddaughter of the brave man who saved my life.”

William Wheeler heard little Jill’s cry for help and then spotted her red light switched on earlier by Mrs Green. For saving Jill’s life, William Wheeler, the Andalucia’s lamp trimmer (the ship's lighting technician), was awarded the Bronze Medal for Gallantry in Saving Life at Sea.

An official citation in the The London Gazette, said: “The cry of a small child was heard some distance away. Wheeler immediately dived into the water, swam through wreckage for a distance of 600 yards to the child and supported it for 30 minutes…Wheeler displayed great courage in plunging overboard into a choppy sea…But for his gallant action the life of the child would have undoubtedly have been lost.”

Wheeler helped Jill into the lifeboat where she was handed to another survivor Marcia Maxwell (then Ferrier). Maxwell had served as an assistant in the Andalucia’s shop. Maxwell, speaking in 1977, recalled: “The awful cries for help led us in their direction. We picked up seven – one a little girl still clinging to her doll…I took charge of her. She was very good, but suffering from shock.”


The Andalucia Star is still making waves even though the ship sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean 67 years ago. In the late 1970s, Marcia Maxwell hailed a taxi outside the Sydney Opera House. The cab driver was Bryn Burris.  Maxwell and Burris had last met on that Andalucia Star voyage. Burris had been the ship’s quartermaster. He told an Australian newspaper: “Jill and her father were in separate lifeboats and he was frantically trying to find her. We were the last to reach the corvette (H.M.S. Petunia) and it was only then that he learnt that his daughter was still alive.”

Burris and Maxwell remembered that third torpedo zipping through the water and blasting into the stricken and soon to be sunken Andalucia. Jill tells me: "Daddy was getting into a lifeboat when the third torpedo struck. He was very lucky not to have been killed on the spot. Every year when he was alive he would phone me on the anniversary of the sinking and we would drink a toast to the ship and her brave crew."
Jill tells me that she asked the New Zealand artist Wallace Trickett to capture that moment in a painting. (Click to view). “It is hanging here in my house in Texas,” says Jill.


In All at Sea, I clumsily tried to guess why my grandfather Les never revealed to my father or I how he felt about the sinking of the Andalucia Star and the lives lost. Peter Stacey, who was at sea with the Blue Star Line for 15 years and is researching the sinking, suggests my grandfather had possibly "grown very attached" to the ship. "Seamen tend to view their ships as home, bonding very closely with their shipmates," says Peter. "From what I can gather, the Andalucia Star was a happy ship."


So, it seems my Grandad Les understandably felt it was too personal and painful to talk about the tragic sinking of one of his favourite ships. 

It's a possibility strongly supported by Jill’s own remarkable discovery about William Wheeler - the brave man who saved her life. 
Why?  
Well, Jill ends her email, with this revelation: “His (William Wheeler’s) family knew nothing about the Andalucia Star until after he died when they went through his things and found the medal.”

Footnotes

• Jill McNichol-Harrell would like to receive any information about Mrs L.A. Green and/or help to trace any of her relatives.
• In writing this post, I am grateful for the help of Peter Stacey in Wellington, New Zealand. 
• The photograph shows crew members in an Andalucia Star lifeboat, possibly during one of the ship's frequent boat drills that later paid off when so many lives were saved. Unfortunately, I've no way – currently(!) – to date the image.
• For more Blue Star Line info, visit Fraser Darrah's well-crafted site.

Paul Coleman, London, December 2009.

All at sea

Sons who try hard to please their fathers sometimes get hurt.

Back in the late 1970s, I remember my father John buying a special birthday present for his father, Les.

John reckoned that Les would really appreciate his gift - an enlarged and framed sepia photograph of the S.S. Andalucia Star, one of several merchant ships on which Les had voyaged across the world during the 1930s.

Grandad Les always enjoyed telling me, his only grandchild, about his life and times aboard the Majestic, Almeda Star, Doric Star and the Andalucia Star (above, click on ship to enlarge). He'd regale me with exciting tales of Tenerife, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Pernambuco and Rio de Janeiro.

As chief steward (photo below) on the Andalucia, Les looked after some famous people, including former Prime Minister Lloyd George. He recalled the Great Britain rugby team practicing on deck for their 1936 Argentina tour.

Most of all, Grandad Les spoke of happy times spent with his colourful and mischievous shipmates.

He’d often pipe up with ‘When I was at sea…’

Understandably, my Dad anticipated his dad would be chuffed to receive the Andalucia Star photo.

But Les’ birthday smile disappeared when he opened his gift.

Les blurted a muted thanks to John but the image of the old ship had clearly upset him.

A rejected and hurt son pressed his father to explain.

‘I’d rather not say right now,’ Les replied sullenly.

In the 1970s, Dad didn’t have the web to do instant research into the fate of his father’s ships. Even if he had, not even Google searches find submerged emotions.

Decades later, and some years after both Grandad Les and Dad passed away, I drifted across a clue on the web to possibly explain Grandad Les’ terse reaction to the picture.

Built and launched in September 1926 by Cammell Laird’s shipbuilders at Birkenhead, the Andalucia Star - a 15,000-ton steamship - took to the seas as one of the Blue Star Line’s ‘luxury five’ liners. The others were the Almeda Star, Arandora Star, Avelona Star, and Avila Star.

When Les was part of her crew, the Andalucia was a refrigerated passenger, cargo and mail liner.

On 26 September 1942, the Andalucia Star set off for Liverpool from Buenos Aires by way of Freetown on the West African coast. On board were 170 crew and 83 passengers including 22 women and three children. Captain James Hall’s ship also carried 5,374 tons of meat and 32 tons of eggs.

On 6 October, at about 10pm, the Andalucia was steaming at her full speed of 16 knots without lights about 180 miles south of Freetown.

She was spotted by Harald Gelhaus, a 27-year-old German from the Lower Saxony town of Göttingen.

Gelhaus, the Kapitänleutnant (Lieutenant Commander) of U-107, a Type IXB U-Boat submarine, ordered the firing of two torpedoes.

The devices struck the Andalucia abreast of two of her holds.

The explosions ruptured the hull, causing the main engine to flood.

Captain Hall gave the order to abandon ship.

All lifeboats were lowered and rowed away – except for lifeboat Number 2. Whilst being lowered, this lifeboat fell forward, tipping its occupants into the freezing, darkened sea.

This cost the lives of a steward and a stewardess. One of the last acts of stewardess Mrs. L.A. Green was to switch on the red lifejacket light of a little girl, aged five. After the lifeboat tipped, it was this red light that enabled another crewman William Wheeler to spot the little girl. Wheeler swam 600 yards through choppy, oil-strewn waves to save her. 
Green, thrown into the sea by from Number 2 lifeboat, was sadly never found.

Incredibly, only one of the Andalucia’s passengers died during this lethal U-Boat attack. Another crew member suffered heart failure and also died.

Meanwhile, Gelhaus ordered another attack.

A third torpedo detonated so violently on the ship’s port side bow that it ripped out the starboard side also (click on link to see Trickett's painting of torpedo hitting the ship).

At about 10.25pm, the Andalucia Star sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

Six hours later, the H.M.S Petunia picked up the survivors and took them to Freetown.  

Family letters show Grandad Les was posted to Liverpool to join the Doric Star in August 1937, just over five years before Gelhaus issued his orders to fire. The Doric was sunk by the German battleship Admiral Graf Spee south of St Helena on 2 December, 1939 although Grandad Les - thankfully - wasn't on its voyage from New Zealand.

I can only speculate how devastated Les must’ve felt on hearing about the Andalucia’s violent end.

Probably, Grandad Les keenly felt the loss of two former colleagues, Mrs Green and the other steward.

Possibly, he felt guilty for escaping their fate.

After all, Grandad Les had lost two older brothers in the trench warfare madness of World War I, a conflict that began when he was just eight.

The Andalucia Star was just one of 39 ships destroyed by U-107. The submarine itself was sunk on 18 August 1944. A Royal Air Force Sunderland aircraft dropped depth charges close to the sub as it lurked in the Bay of Biscay. All 58 crew were lost.

However, Gelhaus escaped their fate. He wasn’t on board. By that time, he’d also been posted elsewhere. Haphazardly, I can only guess Gelhaus felt sad when he learnt of U-107’s demise.

Gelhaus died in December 1997, aged 82, one of 144 U-Boat men who’d received the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross, the highest award given by Hitler's Third Reich for 'successful military leadership' during World War II.

I'm left with one thought. The Cross showed how Gelhaus had pleased his 'Fatherland' but did the Cross help Gelhaus please his father?

My grandfather Les' 1935 Christmas card to his wife Winifred, my Nana. (Click on photo to enlarge).

Interested in the Blue Star Line? Visit Fraser Darrah's excellent website.


Paul Coleman, London, December 2009.