GROUPS AND SINGLE DECORATIONS FOR GALLANTRY 70
An unusual Second World War Inshore Squadron D.S.M. awarded to Able Seaman Edward Phillips, Royal Navy, who served under eccentric Australian skipper ‘Pedlar’ Palmer – ‘the Pirate of Tobruk’ - in the celebrated auxiliary schooner H.M.S. Maria Giovanna, and was decorated for facing down and destroying a German bomber that was attacking his ship.
DISTINGUISHED SERVICE MEDAL,
G.VI.R. (D/SSX. 20007 E. H. Phillips. A.B.) edge bruising, very fine D.S.M. London Gazette 25 November 1941:
‘For courage and devotion to duty while serving in the Mediterranean’.
The original recommendation states: ‘Able Seaman Phillips fought his gun skilfully during a low level attack by 2 Heinkels. I attribute the success of shooting one of the attacking planes down to Phillips’s coolness despite the fact that he was being machine-gunned. He withheld fire until the plane was within 200 feet, then managed to get his full magazine into the nose of the plane and the ultimate result was a crash.’
Edward Howell Phillips was born in Wales in 1919, and joined the Royal Navy on a short service engagement in 1938. He served during the Second World War in the auxiliary schooner H.M.S. Maria Giovanna, and was presented with his D.S.M. at an investiture held on 10 November 1942.
H.M.S. Maria Giovanna had a short but noteworthy career as one of the more unusual vessels on the Navy List of 1941 – though the class of warship in which she belonged always remained a mystery. A three-masted Italian cargo schooner of about 250 tons and 180 feet length, built in 1919, she later had diesel engines added to assist her propulsion, and was called up by the Italian Navy for war service. On New Year’s Day 1941 she was captured off the coast of North Africa by the destroyer H.M.S. Dainty.
The need to supply the advancing British forces in the Western Desert led the Royal Navy to form an Inshore Squadron in its support. This motley collection of ships included an elderly monitor, three river gunboats from the China Station and a couple of armed boarding vessels, together with destroyers, minesweepers and various small supply vessels. Their duties would include bombarding shore targets, as well as replacing merchantmen in the business of carrying fuel, water and supplies, and evacuating wounded and prisoners of war. Of the less conventional craft – of which Maria Giovanna was a prime example – the Admiralty’s official account of operations in the Mediterranean later wrote ‘there was about all their exploits a disdain of the enemy and a contempt for death that had a fine Elizabethan flavour; it is said that even gold earrings were not unknown among them.’
Maria Giovanna was spotted at Sollum not long after her capture by Lieutenant A. B. Palmer Royal Naval Reserve, an Australian-born professional seaman who had first gone to sea in the days of square riggers, and whose experiences included surviving encounters with mines and U-Boats during the First World War, as well as an interlude serving with the Shanghai Volunteer Corps in the ‘thirties. As one journalist observed, ‘he might well have stepped from the pages of Somerset Maugham’. Palmer had spent the previous couple of months in charge of the lighter X-39 – a primitive sort of landing craft – carrying petrol, ammunition and rations to ports such as Sidi Barrani and Sollum, work for which he was to be rewarded with a D.S.C. When X-39 was badly damaged in a bombing raid, Palmer received permission to transfer his small crew to Maria Giovanna and take command.
At first Maria Giovanna was kept busy ferrying stores from larger vessels offshore to the pier at Sollum, often returning with cargos of Prisoners of War for removal to Alexandria. Carrying 750 at a time, on one day alone she is recorded as transporting more than 14,800 men. Initially unarmed, by devious methods Palmer managed to have a 3-pounder fitted in the stern, a 12mm Breda mounted in the bow and a 20mm Izzoti amidships, with a couple of Lewis guns for good measure. While the British advance continued the schooner made several trips between Alexandria, Derna, Tobruk and Mersa Matruh; as the arrival of Germany’s Afrika Corps caused the tide to turn, Maria Giovanna continued to perform useful services and was one of the last craft to remain at Derna while the enemy were hammering at the port with their artillery. In fact she loaded stores until the wharf itself came under the fire of hostile tanks which appeared over the hill. Then, embarking the remains of an Indian regiment, she proceeded to sea with shells falling round her.
From then onwards this indefatigable schooner was employed in carrying stores to the besieged garrison at Tobruk. Between April and October 1941 she managed 23 journeys, the round trip from Alexandria taking about six days, on each occasion braving the hazards of enemy minefields, submarines, shore batteries and aircraft attacks, as well as the navigational challenges of an unlighted coast and unchartered wrecks. She became an icon to the garrison, and equally well-known to the enemy, being selected for a special tirade from Lord Haw Haw – ‘We will get you yet, Palmer!’
Maria Giovanna received the attentions of enemy aircraft on numerous occasions, at least three of them falling to her guns. The specific incident referred to in Able Seaman Phillips’s recommendation appears to have taken place when the ship was briefly detached to round up small craft during the evacuation of Crete, and was colourfully described by Palmer himself in a newspaper interview: ‘There was my old tub loaded to the scuppers with explosives – in fact everything that nobody else would dream of carrying. When we saw these two birds come over only a few hundred feet up, I said to my crew “Now, by heck you have got to fight like you have never fought before or you and I will be meeting upstairs in a few minutes, and I know none of you coves can play harps.” I took the wheel and started swinging poor old Maria Giovanna as she had never had helm before. Jerry thought we were piece apple pie and came down to look at us. Leading fellow circles round to give us works, when my forrard gunner turned hose on him. Boy, we gave him twenty-five of Musso’s best 12-millimetre shells right in his ribs. Bits and pieces flew in every direction, black smoke poured out of him, and he put his nose right down into the sea with almighty splash. I had no time to do anything more about him, for his mate came for us. He never gave us the same chance, but tried from all heights for nearly an hour to get us. I thought he’d never run out of bombs.’
Returning to Alexandria after this trip she was met outside the breakwater by the guard boat, which tossed in a black flag and instructions from Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham to fly it coming into harbour. The little schooner’s subsequent passage through the shrilling whistles and sounding bugles of the capital ships of the fleet – Ensign at the Mizzen, Skull and Crossbones at the Main and Pennants at the fore – was a proud day in her existence.
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