Sophie's Blog

Well I am returned to Tumbledown; the weather is extremely hot and as you know I don’t do heat. What has been happening while I have been away walking in the Lake District? Well, beautiful Rutland has had no appreciable rain for a start and my garden looks very brown, the water butts are empty, my scribe tells me. For sure we are desperate for some rain. There appears to be none on the horizon according to Accuweather, however as you will know weather forecasting for a group of islands like ours is an almost impossible science.

What else is perhaps an impossible science are the assortments of players that can arguably score goals, defend and generally play football she says, for our country. The latest excuse for the pathetic performance on Sunday from the England camp is apparently they are all tired, from a long hard season in the football league. Let me tell you a story, you want to hear, you know you do! She tells this story often, it is a favourite and I know it off by heart.

‘On the morning of April 19th 1949, H.M.S. Amethyst a small Royal Naval frigate left Shanghai to go up the Yangtze River to Nanking, the then capital of China. She was replacing H.M.S Consort a destroyer who was on station, as naval protection for the Embassy and British residents in the capital. It was the time of the Chinese civil war. Although she was draped in the Union Jack the communists fired on Amethyst from the banks of the Yangtze. She was lucky to start with; she was well out of range of the communists shells. Then, passing Rose Island, the ship was hit many times. Twenty two members of her crew died as a result of this attack: twenty eight others were seriously wounded. Amethyst had also lost her Captain and her doctor, ran aground in the mud with no wireless or any other viable instruments intact, except her echo-sounder. At 2.30 Consort arrived, guns blazing, and twice tried to tow Amethyst off the mud bank, but she was too badly aground. Consort went on alone to Shanghai. Lt G L Weston took command, they mended the radio and refloated; he took her a little up river to a slightly safer area. An R.A.F flying boat brought a doctor the next day. Weston moved Amethyst again; watched from the shore by Commander John Kerans, assistant naval attaché at Nanking; his orders where to take command, which he did the next day. It would be a hundred and one days before Amethyst would leave this spot. Food ran short, fuel was rationed. Talks with the Communists for a safe conduct for the ship went on week after week. Kearns kept returning ashore to argue with them. It was decided there was nothing for it they would have to make a run for it.’

It is a wonderful story of courage and well worth a read she says, they patched, pasted and connived their way back to sea. Every day brought renewed worries of internment and death from shelling. On the 30th of July Kerans took his chance, under cover of darkness using a merchant ship as a guide the ship’s crew made their bid for escape; blacking the white paint work and brass with grease, and using sacking and canvass to change their outline to look more like a Chinese frigate. Against the odds, despite being holed on the waterline, the damaged frigate was able to send Kerans last signal “Have rejoined the Fleet south of Woo Sung. No damage or casualties. God save the King.” Now I reckon that lot could carry the label of being tired deservedly. It is obvious that being tired is a state of mind and entirely relative for persons. I am sure the crew of H.M.S Amethyst would have enjoyed the opportunity to tire themselves in a plush hotel in Austria for a couple of weeks and then another all expenses paid (plus enormous wages) opportunity to tire themselves on safari and playing golf before a relatively few minutes of competitive football over four weeks in South Africa. They would of course been far too tired to escape after all that effort, and would of followed the English Football Team’s example and just given in.

I am of course

La Grande Sophie

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 at 12:43 pm and is filed under Diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.