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by Kath Gourlay
CRAMMED into the small parish kirk, they sang with all their hearts in remembrance of the loved ones cruelly taken from them so long ago. The seaman's hymn. Eternal Father Strong to Save, rang out as relatives were finally able to pay tribute to the 189 crewmen of HMS Exmouth, whose last resting place had been a mystery for more than 60 years. Then, as the notes of The Last Post sounded, the Congregation came forward to lay wreaths and flowers for the fathers, grandfathers, uncles and brothers who died when the destroyer was torpedoed in the Moray Firth in 1940. Many were killed instantly. The survivors were left struggling in the freezing waters hoping for rescue by a nearby merchant ship, the Cyprian Prince. But Admiralty top brass insisted the merchantmen were not to be diverted from their vital mission to deliver essential wartime supplies and they were ordered not to stop and pick up the drowning sailors.
The official secrecy that surrounded the decision denied victims' relatives the opportunity to mourn publicly until last year, when those who had been left behind gathered together at long last, united in their grief.
Sue Eastwood watched four Sea Cadets march up the aisle at Wick Old Parish Church to lay a White Ensign -the highest naval honour - on the altar.
The 40-year-old teacher, who lost her grandfather Walter Andrews in the tragedy, said: 'I was there with my mother and my aunt Mim. When the cadets carried forward the White Ensign we all completely lost it.
'All three of us had tears just pouring down. We couldn't see a thing on the hymn sheets.
'It all came together at that moment. I looked across at the Orkney diving team who had made it possible and tried to put across what I was feeling but I didn't need to. They saw for themselves. It was an indescribable occasion.'
The 400 people who packed into the church were United by the events of January 21,1940, when the Exmouth saUed.from Aberdeen to the Naval base at Scapa Flow on Orkney. The destroyer, built in 1833, was acting as escort to the Cyprian Prince on a mission to deliver its vital cargo of searchlights and anti-alrcraft guns.
Suddenly, an early-morning explosion rent the air. The Exmouth had been hit and men tumbled into the water - but within three minutes, the Cyprian Prince was told to sail on. By the time the nearest lifeboats from Wick had been summoned, it was too late. The bodies of 15 men which were washed ashore a week after the tragedy were buried in a communal grave in Wick cemetery, but their individual identities remained as secret as the fate of their ship. Until last summer, none of the families involved had any idea what had happened to the Exmouth or even where she lay, and the mystery haunted many of the victims' children throughout their adult lives.
Michael Vaughan, of Inverkeithing, Fife, was six years old when his mother received a telegram from the Royal Navy about his father, Wallace, a stoker on the Exmouth.' He said: 'It just said he'd been lost at sea - not where or how. We were told later the ship had hit a mine, and I kept having these nightmares about my dad swimming in the water and calling for help. It never left me and sometimes the image would reappear years later, for no reason.'
Alex Deas, one of the divers who identified the wreck last summer, said Mr Vaughan's father was unlikely to have suffered, adding: "There is no way anybody connected with the engines or boiler room would have known what hit them. The U-boat torpedo that hit the Exmouth literally blew the ship to smithereens, and for stokers in the boiler room death would have been instantaneous.'
Some take solace from the thought that the mass grave could include their relatives, but others remain angry they were hot told about its existence earlier.
Mrs Eastwood said: 'It's a tenuous link but for my mum and my auntie Mim it closed a chapter that had remained open nearly all their lives. One of them could have been him.'
Mr Vaughan said: 'I worked in Wick at one stage in my life and I had no idea that bodies from my dad's ship were buried there. I know now it probably wasn't him but it could have been, and if I'd known I could have gone there and it would have helped.
'Before the kirk service some of us went out in a boat and cast wreaths on the water above the wreck. Just being so near to where my dad last was made all the difference to me. I could say goodbye properly and even after 60-odd years, that matters.'
Katherine Ross, of Inverness, was six when her. older brother Donald was reported missing, presumed dead. She said: 'We lived in Lewis then and he was 14 years older than me. He was my hero and was one of nine Lewis boys who died on the Exmouth.
'All my parents got was a number on a telegram identifying him as someone who'd been lost in action. They were never, told where and they could have travelled to Wick if somebody had only had the decency to tell them where the ship had gone down.
'I went when I found out and after seeing the communal grave I cried for my parents, who had died never even knowing it existed.' During her visit to the town, Mrs Ross spoke to the brother of the Wick lifeboat skipper at the time of the disaster.
She said: 'He said they'd been told a warship had hit a mine and they knew there were some survivors in lifeboats, but the weather was atrocious. They tried to launch twice and couldn't.
Fifteen bodies were picked up the next day and then three more came ashore fur-ther up the coast, and they were puzzled because at least one of them was a Danish merchant seaman.'
The Dane was buried with the British sailors and the events of that night would have remained a secret but for the tenacity of clam diver Kevin Heath, 37. He came across wrecks in the 1990s around the North coast of Scotland that didn't appear to tally with official explanations.
He said: 'The Royal Navy was based in Scapa Flow during two world wars and the whole area is a maritime junkyard. I began investigating and discovered many anomalies.'
The attic in Mr Heath's house outside Stromness, in Orkney began to fill up with Admiralty charts, maps and copies of wartime logbooks from British and German naval archives.
He said: 'When you mixed and matched them with present-day hydrographic surveys, the true story behind some of them began to emerge. It showed how official sources had never bothered to get the details right and just assumed things - wrongly in many cases.'
Mr Heath's research led to the discovery last summer of the wreck of a German U-boat with the bodies of its 50 crewmen still aboard.
Fellow diver lan Trumpess, who Identified the wreck, said: 'They were just sitting there with the conning tower and hatch still shut, suspended in time for nearly 60 years until I became the link that reconnected them with the outside world. We contacted the Ministry of Defence and the German Embassy and kept the co-ordinates to ourselves. When you die like that you deserve to keep your dignity.'
That find spurred Mr Heath on to further research, which brought him into contact with shipwreck expert Bob Baird.
'Bob had a Board of Enquiry report on the loss of a destroyer in the Moray. Firth on January 21 1940,' he said. 'I checked it with diary and log book entries from a German submarine, U-22, that was in the area and found that the ship had definitely been torpedoed. It had been covered up at the time for morale reasons because it happened just a couple of months after 800 guys had been lost on another warship, the Royal Oak, in Scapa Flow. The war had just started and it didn't look good' By carefully adding and subtracting from the accounts of the report the British ship's logs, and U-22's war diary, Mr Heath plotted the co-ordinates of where the Exmouth's final resting place was likely to be. He contacted Mark Reeves, whose Orkney-based European Technical Dive team can out the underwater search in the Moray Firth.
Mr Reeves said: 'She lies beyond the limits of recreation diving so we needed to be sure, Kevin's co-ordinates were spot and we found her in just 20 minutes. When the identification was confirmed with the MOD, Mr Reeves set about contacting the relatives of those who died. He set up a website and put out press release. The response was immediate.
Mrs Eastwood said: 'My mum had been searching for information all her life and suddenly modern technology placed it right in front of me. I sat and stared at the computer screen, hardly believing what I was seeing.'
Her mother, Margaret, was one of five children left fatherless in the ship's home port of Portsmouth.
Mrs Eastwood said: "The ship was due in port for a four-day furlough at the end of January, and my mum and gran and aunties and une were just leaving to go down to meet grandad when the telegram arrived.
Gran was told they'd struck a mine and the ship was lost with an hands, but nothing else.
'She told me she'd been wearing a green dress to meet him, and she took it off and never could bear the colour green after that. She died 20 years ago, still never knowing where he was.' Mrs Eastwood contacted Mr Reeves, and when she found out the true facts she set up a survivors' association and began badgering the MOD for both recognition and protection for the Exmouth.
Her hard work paid off when the Government awarded the wreck special defence status last month, the equivalent of a war grave, which means treasure hunters now face prosecution and a minimum fine of £5,000 for disturbing the site.
The Wick ceremony also com-. memorated the Danish sailors who died that bitter January night.
Close to the Exmouth is the wreck of Danish cargo vessel, Tekla, which Mr Heath is convinced was hit by the same U-boat when she stopped to pick up survivors left behind by the Cyprian Prince. He said: 'The war diary of Karl Jenisch, who commanded U-22, clearly shows how he turned to pur-sue the Cyprian Prince but logged another hit after he doubled back. 'It had to be the Tekla, which was recorded as being in the area at the time. I worked out the co-ordinates according to Jenisch's diary and there on the sea bed was the wreck. When the whole story starts coming together it's all such a sad waste, really.'
Gordon French, who served on the Exmouth for three years but was not aboard the night it sank, feels that sense of waste keenly.
Mr French, 85 - known then as Froggy - had been put ashore as the convoy headed north in order to complete an electrical course and expected to meet up with his crewmates in Portsmouth.
He said: 'Early one morning, I was told "Pack your kit", and an hour later I was being ferried ashore. My friends said "Cheerio Froggy - see you in Pompey".'
Two weeks later he was in Portsmouth ready to rejoin the ship. Mr French said: 'She's not coming back, I was told. She hit a mine they said. Part of my job was to set the depth charges and I thought to myself, "Oh God, she must have started to sink and the depth charges blew her to pieces". I never got over it. Never.'
It would be 61 years before he was to discover what really happened to his colleagues.
He said: 'I couldn't believe it. I was watching TV and for no reason at all I switched over and there was a diver coming up and a newscaster saying the words HMS Exmouth - and then the picture went off.
'I started phoning broadcasting stations everywhere and eventually ended up talking to Mark Reeves. Suddenly everything came flooding back and I became very upset again.
'However, I'm glad It's all out in the open and the MOD has now made her a protected site. I just wish I’d been able to get to the memorial service for her, but then, I don’t really know if I could have handled it.’
For those who did attend, the service in September helped to not only heal old wounds but also to seal new friendships – providing a living tribute to the dead.
