[by volunteer Dave Cole]
William (Bill) Watts, was born in Durham in 1923 and joined the Royal Navy in 1938 as a Boy Seaman. His first ship was the cruiser HMS Glasgow, on which he served from October 1939 to May 1941. Glasgow spent a lot of time in Arctic waters around Norway though didn’t actually act as close escort to any convoys during Bill’s time aboard. In April 1940, she was involved in the escape from Norway of King Haakon VII, Crown Prince Olaf, several senior ministers and civil servants, and foreign diplomats. Also rescued was approximately 23 tons gold – almost half of the Norwegian national treasury. The ship left Molde under heavy aircraft fire and transported the group and the gold to Tromso (from where they were later evacuated to the UK by HMS Devonshire). Bill tells the story of a Marine who managed to acquire a couple of gold bars but was caught when he tried to pawn them ashore. The police were called and apparently did not believe his story that he found them floating in the sea!
Bill saw further Arctic service when he joined the destroyer HMS Wells in November 1941, which escorted convoy PQ12 from Loch Ewe to Murmansk. He says little about the hardships of Arctic service but does mention “endless storms where you could see 10,000 ton cruisers sitting on top of 100 foot waves with all four propellors and rudder clear out of the water, or where the roll indicator records an unbelievable 43 degrees or where the guard rails are 6 inches thick with frozen seawater, or where the ice and frozen snow has to be scraped off the superstructure because the ship was becoming too top-heavy.”
In 1943, at the age of just 20, Bill achieved the rank of Petty Officer, which made him the youngest PO in the Navy at that time. The destroyer HMS Limbourne was his next ship, which he joined in September 1943. Limbourne was attacked and seriously damaged by German torpedo boats off Guernsey on 23 October 1943. Bill recalls finding himself in the water, swimming for a short time and then climbing a scrambling net onto what may have been HMS Tallybont. An attempt was made to tow Limbourne but failed, and she was sunk by HMS Tallybont and HMS Rocket. 44 of her company were lost. In the same action, the cruiser HMS Charybdis was also sunk, with a loss of around 460 men.
Bill’s next ship was the landing craft (infantry), HMS Glenroy, a converted merchant vessel, which he joined in January 1944. Glenroy began landing troops on D-Day, but on 17 June she struck a mine off Utah Beach. Most of the crew were evacuated and Glenroy was towed back to Southampton for repair. Bill spent two days assisting on the beach at Arromanches before being returned to the UK.
After a couple of years ashore, Bill’s final ship was the destroyer HMS Myngs, on which he served from May 1946 to March 1947.
In 1948 Bill was invalided ashore, permanently unfit for Naval Service. He emigrated to Australia and worked as a civil engineer and business man. During his retirement, Bill produced a short memoir for his family about his Naval career and this document has provided most of the information for this article.
Bill passed away in 2005.