HISTORY
Crucible for Heroes:(Part 2) the remarkable voyage of the Tai Mo Shan
I
n 1933, five intrepid naval officers decided to take a year out of their
lives to sail a 54-foot, three- masted ketch from Hong Kong to Dartmouth against the prevailing winds. The downturn in the world economy had allowed the five men, Lt Martyn Sherwood, 32, Lt George Salt, 24, Lt Philip Francis, 24, Surgeon Lt Bertie Ommaney- Davis, 27, and sailing-master Lt Robert Edward Dudley (or, unsurprisingly, “Red”) Ryder, 24, to have their own boat constructed by the best craftsmen in Hong Kong, where they were all stationed. To undertake the voyage the Admiralty had cut their
The Tai Mo Shan
wages to just seven shillings a day and everything had been done on a shoestring. Despite this, the yacht had beaten all their expectations as they sailed across the Pacific, via Japan, the Kuriles Islands, Canada, California and the Panama Canal. Then, as they sailed through the Caribbean, disaster struck,
in part due to their earlier ‘economy’ of not installing an engine on the yacht. They ran aground and broke their tiller on a
a large flotilla of yachts from the Britannia Royal Naval College, the town and the national press. One of these vessels contained something rather special: a congratulatory telegram from the King, who perhaps had been made aware of the rather special and secret element of their voyage: looking out for harbours that would be useful against the rapidly expanding Japanese navy.
They celebrated with their naval friends that night, rightly
proud of the achievement. For a while, despite the gathering clouds of war, all seemed well with the group: Salt married Francis’ sister and Francis’ brother in law married Salt’s sister, illustrating the closeness of the two families. Ryder carried on his adventuresome ways: he led an expedition to the Antarctic in a three-masted Schooner amongst other fun and daring feats. Sherwood recorded their exploits in a book:
tiny place called the Crooked Islands. The islanders were Seven Day Adventists and as poor as poor could be. They had no equipment to help and no way to contact the outside world. In fact, a request to help the sailors dig a trench around the yacht ready for rescue was refused as they only had one shovel on the island and could not risk it in heavy work because they needed it to bury their dead. Lt Ryder took the canvas dinghy from Tai Mo Shan and sailed off to find the port of Nassau in the Bahamas, more than 400km away, to bring back a tug to haul them off the rocks. It didn’t look good – the yacht was at a 45-degree angle and needed its tiller completely replaced. But, perhaps against the odds, 16 days later, ‘Red’ Ryder
the ‘Grand Tour’ the sailors were having had been granted by the
Admiralty on one condition: use it as a spying expedition.
The Voyage of The Tai-Mo-Shan. The book was re-published after the war by Arthur Ransome’s publisher, Rupert Hart-Davis, in The Mariners’ Library series. It would cement the legend of the voyage. But for this remarkable group of men dark
days lay ahead. In the testing times to come, the crew of the Tai Mo Shan would repay the debt they owed for their ‘Grand Tour’ ten times over, with one of them paying the ultimate price. Between them the crew won 4 Distinguished Service Orders, a Croix de
Guerre and a Victoria Cross. Sherwood, self-appointed chronicler of the Tai Mo Shan’s
returned with a local schooner to provide a tow and some teak for the tiller. The delay and the costs incurred, totaling more than £100, meant it would have been much cheaper and easier to buy an engine but no one seems to have minded. The boat sailed triumphantly into Dartmouth to be met by
Pictures from from the Tai Mo Shan website:
Tai-mo-shan.co.uk
exploits, won two DSOs: the first in the waters off Norway and the second for his exploits during 1941 in the Greek withdrawal from Piraeus harbour. Lt Francis earned two DSOs whilst a submarine commander. His crew revered him for his calm attitude under pressure: one described him as having ‘a brain packed in ice’. His clear thinking was shown in the high hit rate he had in torpedoing enemy vessels, most of them supply ships for Rommel’s Afrika Korps: 20 hits from 51 fired. He took the surrender of 63 German U-Boats at the end of the war,
by Phil Scoble
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