So, where were you on September 3rd? by Julia Jones
On September 3 rd 2019 I had the perfect invitation – I was asked to talk about my father, George Jones’s book, The Cruise of Naromis , to members of the Little Ship Club in London. The Cruise of Naromis , you may remember, is the slim volume I was able to make from my father’s 1939 diary, a suitcase of somewhat random photographs and papers from his wartime RNVR service and the account he wrote of his trip to the Baltic in August 1939. He had returned home on Sept 2 nd to find that his call up papers had been waiting for a week. On September 3 rd 1939 therefore he was hurrying north to join the submarine depot ship HMS Forth at Rosyth. The Forth was a floating workshop, a hotel, an operational centre. She had a crew of over 1,100 men, displacement 8,999 tons and was armed with 16 AA guns. Quite a contrast with the trim little pleasure yacht he had just left . HMS Forth Both vessels had been launched during 1938 but whereas HMS Forth had been built by ...