RORC Heroes all
Our centenary celebrations continue with our regional dinner at the Royal Maas Yacht Club in Rotterdam – a joint event with the Dutch celebrating their history of involvement with the Admiral’s Cup, including their spectacular victory in 1999. The Commodore in her column also touched on our Centenary Dinner at the Royal Cork Yacht… an evening of history and celebration of the RORC’s 100 years and the Fastnet Race, all at the world’s oldest yacht club. While talking history, as I write we are in the midst of the 80th
Anniversary of VE Day celebrations and I thought it would be inter- esting to look back at that period of the club’s history as well as remembering the bravery, service and sacrifice of our members. While the club’s sailing activities were suspended at the onset
of war in September 1939, that year’s Fastnet Race had already taken place and was won on corrected time by Bloodhound. In London the club decided to remain open during the war, offering
a degree of shelter and welcome to those in the capital during a period of immense danger and turmoil. At that time our clubhouse, our first, was at 2 Pall Mall, but in
November 1940 the building received a direct hit from a bomb slicing the building in half. Tragically the club’s recently appointed new steward was killed in the blast, but fortunately his wife and housemaid survived after being dug out of the rubble. The club’s records and trophies as well as some furniture were
salvaged by members who came to help. They also salvaged the contents of the club’s wine cellar, carrying them away discreetly on a blanket-covered stretcher as onlookers respectfully doffed their hats out of respect… The members and committee wanted the club to continue, so
it sought new premises and 20 St James’s Place first appears in the committee minutes of February 1941. There was much debate about the property, its cost and concerns about relocating only to be bombed again. Low and behold in April 1941 St James’s Place was indeed struck by incendiary bombs, forcing members to relocate again, this time temporarily, to the nearby Goats Club. However, when the agents for 20 St James’s Place realised they
could make parts of the building usable again, and recoup the costs against war damage, they agreed to reasonable terms for the club to lease the property on a yearly basis from December 1941. The building was still in a poor state but other furniture was scrounged by members from various sources. This included us acquiring – in an unusual fashion – the painting of the Dogana, the Customs House of Venice, that sits above the fireplace in the bar today. The stick of firebombs that damaged the club also destroyed the
building next door, no21. When members went to view the damage they found firemen stacking furnishings taken out from the wreckage with the intention of later burning them. Among the condemned furniture a member spotted the painting and promptly moved it to no20. After the war the lady owner of no21 came to view her old house and was asked if she wanted the painting back; she said she did, then changed her mind, graciously adding ‘No, it has been here for some time and so really you must keep it.’ After Dunkirk and the fall of France in 1940, prior to leaving Pall
Mall, the RORC set up an appeal to raise funds for allied seamen. The appeal raised enough for hundreds of thousands of cigarettes to be specially manufactured and distributed to seamen of allied nations fighting alongside the Royal Navy. Every packet carried the RORC Seahorse, plus the flags of the six allied nations and messages of goodwill in the appropriate languages. As war engulfed Europe thoughts of yachting were forgotten as
members rushed to serve their country. It is a remarkable fact that by the end of 1943, 200 of the club’s 600 members were serving in the Royal Navy, 160 in the Army or Royal Air Force, and 30-40 had taken on the perilous role of runners, carrying messages along the front lines (the 1945 RORC handbook lists 33 members who died on active service – a significant proportion of the membership). One notable figure of the times was Michael H Mason, com-
modore from 1938 to 1947. Mason owned Latifa, a 70ft Fife yawl. Originally a competitive offshore racer, Latifa was put to use as a
‘spyship’, tasked to investigate the inlets of Southern Ireland as likely boltholes for German U-boats and their supply ships. Among our membership the club counted many well-known
military figures, plus others thrust into the limelight later when their war experiences became public knowledge following the conflict. The distinguished lawyer Ewen Montagu, who joined the club in 1937 before serving in naval intelligence, became a bestselling author with his book, The Man Who Never Was, later turned into a film (recently remade as Operation Mincemeat). Explosives expert Major Millis Jefferies, RORC member since
1938, and Major ‘Blondie’ Haslar Royal Marines DSO OBE, who joined in 1939, were two others whose exploits would later turn them into household names. Jefferies ran the secret experimental outfit MD1 – whose creations included the limpet mine and sticky bomb. Its story was later told in print in Winston Churchill’s Toyshop.
Club page
Above: SBS founder and pioneering singlehanded ocean racer Major Blondie Haslar RM DSO OBE and Marine Robert Ewart train off Southsea in preparation for Operation Frankton. Ewart would be captured during the mission and was one of six Royal Marines executed without trial under Hitler’s infamous ‘Commando Order’. Top: Blondie Haslar and Marine Bill Sparks, kayak-mates on the raid up the Gironde, are reunited with Mary Lindell, English-born member of the French Resistance who ran the Marie Claire escape line that got Haslar and Sparks – and scores of other escapees – over the border into Spain. Shot three times and a survivor of Ravensbrück concentration camp, where she helped nurse other allied prisoners, Lindell died (peacefully) in France in 1986 aged 92
Haslar first found fame as leader of the ‘Cockleshell Heroes’ on
Operation Frankton, the near-suicidal raid on German shipping at Bordeaux for which he was recommended for the Victoria Cross… only failing to receive it because a VC must be won ‘in the direct face of the enemy’ so not on a covert operation. Of the 10 marines who set off up the Gironde in collapsible kayaks, only Haslar and Royal Marine Bill Sparks DSM survived. Two others died of hypother- mia while six were captured, tortured and executed by firing squad. Haslar went on to found the Special Boat Service and was one of the five pioneers to enter the first solo transatlantic race in 1960. All of their service, often behind the scenes, forms a quiet but
proud chapter in our club’s history. More stories of members’ wartime service can be found in The Royal Ocean Racing Club – The First 75 Years which can be purchased from the club. Jeremy Wilton, CEO
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