Resurrecting a long-lost tale of trawler heroism
On the first of November in 1955 the Grimsby trawler Barry Castle sank off Iceland’s North Cape with the loss of four crew. Newspapers reported the loss and associated acts of courage and good fortune. One story has gone untold until today, that of how a sixteen year old galley boy survived because of a selfless and heroic act of kindness by a man who never came back.
Stan Flint was born with a caul, a ‘veil’, a trace of the amniotic membrane that held him safe in his mother’s womb until her waters broke.
Sixteen years later he survived when the Grimsby trawler Barry Castle sank off Iceland.
Superstition holds that a child born with a ‘veil’ is lucky and will never drown. Stan’s mother, Marion, was so sure that her son would never go to sea that she gave his caul away to a fisherman neighbour. Stan knows nothing of the fate of that man but does know his own good fortune was not solely down the caul.
For fifty years he has known that he owes his life to the selfless heroism of two men from two Grimsby ships one November day in the Arctic Circle.
Stan worked on the fish dock as a barrow boy after leaving school but he soon felt the itch of the greater adventure and at sixteen signed on as galley-boy on the Alafoss. He then served on the Burfell before joining the crew of the Barry Castle for what would be that ship’s last trip and only Stan’s fourth.
He recalls that they had a great trip on board and spirits were high early on the 12th day of the trip with talk of cod ‘setting in’ off Iceland’s North Cape, five or six steaming hours away.
The trawl was shot away off the Cape just after breakfast. The crew were hoping for a bumper haul but the net came fast on a wreck on the seabed. Under the tension one warp parted. This minor crisis required careful handling and while the net was raised on a single warp the heavy steel bobbins fell from the gear and fractured the coalbunker lid. It was almost mid-day.
While the crew struggled to repair the bunker the weather turned and water began to come over the side spilling into the leaking ship. The coal was soon wet and the fires struggled to raise steam for the engines as the weather worsened. The Barry Castle was in trouble.
Skipper Oxer requested an escort which came in the form of assistance from four trawlers, Princess Elizabeth and the Cape Portland of Hull and the Grimsby ships Stafness and Viviana. The Viviana took the Barry Castle in tow. The wind had grown to gale force 10 by the time of their arrival.
Twelve hours after the parting of the warp the steam was gone, the pumps had failed, clogged with coal-dust, and the lights went out. The crew were bailing out the ship in shifts in a bucket chain from the engine room to the deck. Through the night they worked until the Skipper ordered the crew out of the engine room.
“The water level got too deep to bale anymore,” Stan remembers. “It was above the foot-plates and it was too dangerous so the Skipper ordered the crew back to the cabin where Eddie Donnelly the Mate served tots of rum to the crew. We was in serious trouble then but we was doing pretty good under the tow and making progress. The other ships were close along side of us. We felt that with a bit of luck we was going to make it.”
In a desperate attempt to keep warm while they waited for daylight, the men burned what wood they could find in the pot-bellied stove in the cabin.
Morning broke with Isafjord in sight and the crew waited to reach the lee of the land and safety while the powerless ship rolled on the mounting waves in howling winds.
“Later the mate came down below to the cabin again and told the cook and me and the firemen to get up on the bridge with our life-jackets. The Skipper wanted us there so we’d all be in one place in case anything happened quick. The deck crew were on the fo’c’sle keeping an eye on the towrope.
“There was one point when I thought it got easier and wondered if we’d reached calmer water but someone explained that the ship was heavy under the weight of water she had taken in and that’s why she wasn’t rolling so much.
“Then things did get easier. It was more comfortable. We’d left the big waves behind as we got nearer the land. We were a little bit more confident. We tried to keep each other cheerful with talk and banter. I remember someone complaining that the cook hadn’t got dinner ready yet.”
But the winds were still strong under the cold, grey sky. For long periods the only sound on board the freezing ship was the awful, heavy sloshing sound of the water in the engine room.
“We started to think if we just made it round the headland we’d be alright. We were lying heavy in the water but we were making slow progress.”
Just after noon the mood changed dramatically.
“We were talking just back of the bridge and there was a sudden lurch as the ship rolled. But she didn’t roll back. We knew at that point that something was seriously wrong. And the Skipper gave the order, “Everyman for himself! We’re gonna have to jump ship!”
“Men started to leave by the wheelhouse doors as the ship turned to starboard and started to lean. That was when I knew we were going to capsize. I was frozen with nerves and the Mate had to shout and urge me to ‘get a move on.’ When I reached the bridge door the ship was already on its side and I knew I had to do something really drastic. I couldn’t let go because I would have fallen into the water. I was on the starboard side close to the water but I managed to get to the ship’s rail on the port side. She was sinking by the stern. I slid down the ship’s side. I remember it was like riding down a giant kid’s slide into the water. Though I was visually aware of where I was – it was dark – the freezing cold numbed my body and I had no sense of feeling. I seem to remember that I sensed that I knew, then, what death was like.
“I was underwater. It must have only been seconds. I could see daylight and that’s all I knew until feeling a bump. The next thing that I remember was a burning sensation on my face and I saw a glow and then nothing.
As the ship was abandoned ten men leapt from the whaleback of the Barry Castle to the bow of the Viviana, which Skipper Jim Gamble had brilliantly manoeuvred, into position. The Cape Portland plucked two further men from the water.
The bump that Stan Flint felt was himself and Mate Donnelly falling as a frozen lump on the deck of the Stafnes. The two had collided in the sea and instinctively gripped and held on to each other in their semi-conscious state. Denis Kay, Mate of the Stafnes had wrapped a line around his waist and dived into the freezing water to recover them both and bring them alongside for ship’s crew to lift them on to the deck.
Denis Kay’s courage and gallantry was later acknowledged and rewarded by the presentation of an inscribed cigarette case. Stan looks back today on that as precious little reward but recognises the difficulty of putting a price on the saving of a life.
Stan and Eddie Donnelly were in the water for approximately fifteen minutes. Their ice-distorted bodies were taken down to the galley for their clothes to be cut away. They were then wrapped in blankets down by the Stafnes stove. This was the burning glow Stan had felt in his brief spell of consciousness. Both men were then taken to bunks where they slept until disembarking in Isafjord where they received medical treatment before being flown back to home via London.
Four members of the Barry Castle crew, Grant, Barber, and the engineers, Stewart and Worrell were never recovered. Stan Flint might well have been lost and one of them survived but for a remarkable act of humanity by Worrell. As Stan reached the bridge the Chief had noticed the poor state of the galley boy’s life-jacket.
“Some of the jackets were in a poor state,” Stan recalls. “A lot of them were damp and mouldy. Some were falling to bits. He saw mine and told me to take it off. I can still remember what he said. ‘You’re a much younger man than me. I’ve lived my life. You stand a better chance in this one than you do in that.’ And he gave me his life-jacket and made me put it on.”
Stan is still deeply moved by the memory of the event and finds it difficult to describe his feelings other than to say that Worrel remains “special” in his memory.
Fifty years after the sinking, he still talks of Chief Engineer Worrell and the Stafnes Mate, Denis Kay, as the two great heroes in his life.
This article first appeared in the Grimsby Telegraph 28 October 2005.