12 NAVY NEWS, NOVEMBER 2009
644
The Teepee 2000
NOW here’s a ship which
is enjoying an Indian
summer.
ooo
uuuu
rrr
s
And winter, spring and autumn
too.
o
nn
o
As her badge and motto suggest,
HMS Tracker owes her name to
H
Native American history.
She requires just five ‘braves’
e
(sometimes known as ship’s
company...), plus up to a dozen
Atlantic ................. 1943-44
students to carry out her training
Arctic ..........................1944
and education.
Normandy ..................1944
Battle Honours
Tracker serves Oxford and
Oxford Brookes Universities, as
Class: Archer-class P2000
well as Reading, with up to 51
patrol craft
students on its books (although
not aboard) at any one time.
Pennant number: P274
She’s based with the core of
Motto: re rawira – on the
the P2000s in Portsmouth, but
warpath
increasingly you’ll find her at sea
Builder: BMT
even when the students are on
Commissioned: 1988
board.
Displacement: 54 tonnes
The small boats are increasingly
Length: 68ft (20.8m)
being called on by the rest of the Beam: 19ft (5.8m)
Fleet for other duties, and Tracker Draught: 6ft (1.8m)
is no exception. Speed: 24 knots
This autumn (between freshers
Range: 550 nautical miles
es
fairs and the like), she’s taken
Complement: 5 ship’s
navigators to sea for a spell of
company, up to 12
training.
students
P274 has also been called upon
Propulsion: 2 x MTU V12
to represent the RN at Armed
diesel engines
Forces Day commemorations in
Chatham and escorting a cruise
Armament: Fitted for 3 x
ship carrying Russian convoy
7.62mm GPMGs and 1 x
veterans out of Harwich.
20mm cannon
Easter and summer leave are
Affiliates: Dover, University
typically the busiest time for the
of Oxford, HMS Gloucester,
P2000s (while the rest of the RN
HMS Turbulent, HMS
is on holiday).
Wildfire, Oxford Sea Cadet
Tracker took her students to
Corps
● A wave from the fl ying bridge of HMS Tracker, escorted by a Royal Marine ORC, during Navy Days
France, Belgium, and Holland
Facts and figur
(including a visit to Amsterdam)
Lt Conor O’Neill was to take Roughly one in 20 visitors to The present HMS Tracker is the in the Barents Sea – and supporting of a Landing Ship Tank, whose
and her next URNU jaunt overseas
Tracker to Navy Days in Plymouth Navy Days (that’s 1,048 people) third ship to bear the name. the invasion of Normandy. most notable duty perhaps was
is likely to take her to the Channel
(via Dartmouth to ride out some visited the small craft – not bad The fi rst was an American-built Thereafter she was returned to to act as hospital ship for the fi rst
Islands at Easter.
rough September weather) to join considering her size and the fact escort carrier which proved her the US Navy and was employed as British atomic bomb test which
Among the last acts of the
in the ‘anti-terrorist’ display with that she was on the water for a worth in the second half of WW2 a ferry carrier in the Pacific. took place off the north-west coast
summer ‘season’... and the first
the Royal Marines and Fleet Air good chunk of the festival doing escorting Allied convoys – her The name was reprised shortly of Australia in October 1952. She
acts of new Commanding Officer
Arm. her bit in that display. Wildcats and Avengers sank U288 afterwards, this time in the form was sold for breaking up in 1970.
photographic
HEROES OF THE ROYAL NAVY No.67
Survivors of the stricken LCG(M) 101 – Landing Craft Gun (Medium) – are helped on to Landing Craft AB ‘George’ Parker, BEM
Hospital 269 after being sunk by gunfi re from shore batteries shortly after 10am on November 1 1944.
LCG (M) 101 was charged with destroying pillboxes overlooking the landing beaches on the island of
ON THE first day of November 1961, Joseph it is believed to come from his resemblance to
Walcheren. Under Operation Infatuate, Royal Marines landed at Westkeppelle and Flushing as part
Stalin was settling into his new home in the George V...).
of the campaign to free the approaches to the Belgian port of Antwerp for shipping and supplies.
Kremlin walls – his corpse had been removed When York was crippled by Italian motorboats
(A26235)
from Lenin’s mausoleum as part of the country’s in Souda Bay, a small detachment was left
■ THIS photograph – and 9,999,999 others from a century of war and peace – can be viewed or
process of de-Stalinisation. behind to man the guns for the defence of Crete.
purchased at www.iwmcollections.org.uk, by emailing photos@IWM.org.uk, or by phoning 0207
Americans were picking up the first copy of a George was left with no bedding, but when the
416 5333.
new superhero comic, The Fantastic Four. mainmast was shot down, he ‘acquired’ the
In Berlin, tensions remained high after a battle ensign... and used it as his pillow.
stand-off between American and Soviet tanks at He spent the next 18 months as a gunner with
Checkpoint Charlie. HMS Fareham (he reportedly shot down more
Of perhaps lesser significance on the global than a dozen enemy aircraft).
scale was the arrival home of Her Majesty’s Ship Post-war George joined the new Battle-class
Camperdown to pay off after 17 years’ trusty destroyer HMS St Kitts (and spent 12 years in
service. the ship, believed to be a record).
Her arrival marked not merely the passing of He made St Kitts his own. He lived not in the
a Battle-class destroyer, but the end of a career messdeck but in his own caboose. He fixed the
for the unlikeliest of Royal Navy heroes. future Queen’s skirt when she came aboard. He
William ‘George’ Parker never won a medal became a father figure to young sailors – officers
for bravery (although he did earn a mention in or ranks.
despatches). And he had a legendary ability to ‘rabbit’
He never rose above the rank of able items, not least his personal ‘insignia’. George
seaman. welded a spike to a toilet ballcock, persuaded
And yet when he left the service in the autumn the dockyard mateys to cover it in gold leaf and
of 1961, the national media showed interest in attached it to the foremast.
his retirement. Mountbatten may (or may not – George was
Why? Well, for a start he was the only active always a little hazy on the subject) have permitted
serviceman to have served in the Great War. any ship carrying the AB to ‘fly’ this insignia.
He was probably the longest-serving able He certainly took it with him from St Kitts to
rate in Royal Navy history – 38 years, and every Camperdown and it was flying when she paid
one of them at sea (in 43 years’ service, his sole off.
shore draft lasted a mere three months). And so, aged 60, AB George Parker left the
He certainly was the only rating in the annals Service he loved and which regarded his
of the Senior Service to be allowed to fly his own character as ‘very
insignia on a masthead. good/superior’
The Londoner joined the Royal Navy as a boy throughout.
seaman at the age of 16 in 1918, qualifying as It was, he
a bugler. conceded, time to go,
He didn’t see any action in WW1 – but he was for the RN of 1961, he
left in no doubt of the sacrifices it demanded. told Navy News, was not
The boy seaman sailed with HMS Emperor the Navy he had joined.
of India to Turkey where he found the Ottoman The modern rating, he
Empire breaking up and its constituent nations declared, “is getting
at loggerheads. soft”.
Worse still was burying (and in some cases He spent his final
re-burying) the dead of the Gallipoli campaign – years at Pembroke
four years after the fighting. House in Gillingham,
After a spell of gunnery training at Chatham, dying in February
the now ordinary seaman sailed on a world tour 1981 aged 79.
with HMS Repulse and spent four years in the
Far East, before a draft with HMS Tempest where
more solemn duties ensued, bringing home the
dead of the R101 airship disaster in 1931.
Much of the 1930s were spent with cruiser
HMS York, first in the Far East, then in the Med.
It was here that one of the Parker legends was
born (the nickname ‘George’ had by now stuck;
012_NN_Nov.indd 1 20/10/09 09:27:06
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