n the morning of November 5th 1940, the British merchant convoy HX84 was spotted and attacked
by a German pocket battleship.
Faced with the destruction of 37 merchant ships and a heavy blow against Britain’s
survival, it fell to HMS Jervis bay, the convoy’s only escort, to charge the enemy ship head
on and at all costs buy some time for the merchant ships to escape.
Convoy HX84 wa s like many others that had made the journey across the Atlantic before
it.
The 37 merchant ships that made it up gathered together off the coast of Halifax Nova Scotia
at the end of October, before sailing east together in a tight formation.
It was a multinational group- as well as British ships there were 4 norwegian, 4 swedish, 2
belgians, a Greek and a polish ship.
Together the convoy carried tens of thousands of tons of steel, timber, wool and general
cargo, as well as 126,000 tons of petroleum products in eleven oil tankers.
Initially the group was escorted by the Canadian destroyers Columbia and St Francis, but on
October 29th these ships turned for home, leaving HX84 with only one military escort:
the converted merchant liner HMS Jervis Bay.
Now It w as not unusual for convoys to be so lightly escorted at this time in the war,
for two reasons.
Firstly the Royal Navy simply didn’t have enough ships - many of those which would be
useful for escorting convoys had been retained around the British isles that year to intercept
any potential German invasion.
As well as this, the U Boat menace was not yet at its most dangerous.
In November 1940 German U-boats did not yet travel in the Atlantic beyond 20 degrees west.
The British knew this, so operated a system of providing anti submarine escorts to convoys
once they reached this line, but until then, with the convoy thousands of miles from Europe
any threat to the convoy was considered very unlikely, so only a token escort was provided.
But unknown to the British, in early November a threat to HX84 was most definitely at large.
The German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer had emerged into the North Sea on October
26th, steaming up past Norway before transiting the Denmark strait during a storm without
being detected by the British.
Skippered by Captain Theodor Krancke, by the start of November Scheer had made it into
the North Atlantic and was free to pursue her primary objective of destroying as much
of Britain’s merchant shipping as possible without getti ng caught.
A German surface raider was back in the Atlantic and on the hunt.
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Through early November Admiral Scheer scoured the ocean for targets, and on the morning
of November 5th, hit the jackpot.
The ships floatplane spotted a massive British convoy 90 miles south of their position.
It was the juiciest possible target – 37 ships, and even if there were any escorts
they were unlikely to have weapons that could go up against Admiral Scheer’s six eleven
inch guns.
Captain Krancke ordered maximum speed and set off to intercept HX84.
That same morning, HMS Jervis Bay was in her position at the centre of the formation of
merchant ships.
Being a ship of some 15,000 tons she towered over most of them, and was an equivlavent
tonnage to the Admiral Scheer with which she would soon do battle.
Size was where the similarities between the two ships ended though- whereas Scheer was
a modern, purpose built warship with enormous guns for its size, Jervis Bay was never intended
to go to war.
She had begun life as a passenger and cargo liner, travelling between Australia and the
UK.
But on the outbreak of war, desperate for ships the Royal Navy had pressed her into
service as an ‘armed merchant cruiser’.
What this meant in practice was that she had a motley assortment of ancient 6-inch guns
bolted onto her hull, and was then sent off to war.
Many of her civilian crew stayed with the ship and were transferred into the royal navy,
to which a variety of reservists and a few regular officers, including her Captain, Edward
Fegen, were added.
At 4.05pm that afternoon the merchantman Briarwood spotted and reported an unidentified ship
on the northern horizon and the alarm was raised.
To find out what they were dealing with, Captain Fegen ordered Jervis bay to turn out of the
convoy and close on the unknown interloper.
The ship’s antique 6-inch guns, one of which was made in 1894, were manned as the captain
peered through binoculars.
It was possible that it was a stray British warship come to check in on the convoy, but
more likely it was hostile.
To find out, Jervis bay flashed a recognition signal at the ship.
Captain Krancke on the Admiral Scheer had no idea what the correct response to this
signal was, so ordered that exactly the same signal should be flashed back at the British
ship , asking it to identify itself first.
This was an old ruse, and one Captain Fegen wasn’t falling for.
He knew now that he was facing the enemy , and soon he could see that it was a pocket battleship.
Captain Fegen would have known that the enemy ship carried six eleven inch guns, far outmatching
the primitive by comparison weaponry of the Jervis bay.
Fegen now had a choice to make – to fight or to run?
It was not a choice that took the captain long to make.
However outgunned and outmatched his ship was, they were all that stood between the
enemy and 37 merchant ships and the only thing that could give them a chance to escape.
Jervis Bay swung round towards the Admiral Scheer , and signalled the convoy to turn
away and scatter . The ex merchant liner heaved itself through the swell at emergency speed,
trying to desperately close the range to her opponent.
With her larger guns, Admiral Scheer massively outranged the Jervis Bay, and had all the
time in the world to train her guns on its would be attacker.
At 5pm, Scheer lined up her full broadside on Jervis Bay, and opened fire.
In a textbook show of gunnery, Scheers first salvo landed 100 yards starboard of the British
ship, the second salvo landed 100 yards to port, and the third salvo slammed straight
into the front of Jervis Bay, destroying the focsle and starting a fire.
Captain Fegen ordered his ships guns to open fire at maximum elevation, hoping to distract
the Admiral Scheer while he tried to manuever his ship closer.
It was no t long unti l the pocket battleship scored more hits, destroying much of Jervis
Bay’s superstructure and mortally wounding Captain Fegen, who insisted on continuing
to lead his ship with an arm shot away and one of his legs shredded . The ships guns
continued to fire, but Admiral Scheer kept itself out of range while continuing to pummel
its opponent.
A salvo of German shells punctured the engine room and started large fires.
Jervis Bay was soon ablaze from stem to stern, continuing to charge at the German raider
with its hopelessly outmatched guns still firing away.
Keen to make sure the British ship didn’t get too close, Captain Krancke now ordered
his secondary 5.9inch guns to open fire, and they knocked out each of the remaining British
guns one by one, until the Jervis bay was eventually silent.
With Captain Fegen by this time presumed dead in the chaos, Lieutenant Commander Keith Morrison
– the ships second in command – took over to order abandon ship.
Survivors scrambled into the one intact lifeboat and others leapt over the side, clinging to
life rafts and debris in the water.
Jervis Bay took a long time to sink, and did not go down fully until after sunset.
The defiance of the Jervis Bay delayed Admiral Scheer long enough to allow the convoy to
scatter behind a smokescreen.
As well as this, vibrations from Scheer’s 11-inch guns had broken the ships Radar, which
made it more difficult for Scheer to detect merchant ships in the dark.
In the end, of 37 merchant ships in HX84 five were sunk by the pocket battleship as they
attempted to flee, with one more destroyed by axis aircraft two days later as it approached
Europe.
Scheer had also damaged the tanker San Demetrio, but its crew were incredibly able to re-board
their blazing ship after a day adrift and then steam it all the way to Ireland without
any navigational aids.
The sacrifice of Jervis Bay had enabled dozens of ships to get away safely.
60 of her crew would be pulled from the freezing north Atlantic by the Swedish ship Stureholm
in the early hours of November 6th.
Captain Fegen was not among them, and he soon received a posthumous Victoria cross for leading
the ship in its impossible fight against Scheer.
The sacrifice that he and 193 other members of the ships crew saved countless other merchant
ships from destruction.
Many of those who died were T-124 men – civilian merchant sailors who had been notionally moved
into the Royal Navy along with their ship, given almost no military training and then
asked to make the ultimate sacrifice.
It was a sacrifice that gave others the chance to escape and deliver their vital supplies
to Britain, as the Battle of the Atlantic developed into a pivotal contest of the second
world war.