Sea Dog Bamse by Angus Whitson

Author:Angus Whitson [Angus Whitson and Andrew Orr]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857900456
Publisher: Birlinn
Published: 2011-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

The addition of extra accommodation when she was converted to a minesweeper had had an unforeseen affect on Thorodd’s seaworthiness. She had been converted to do a job she had not been designed for and the conversion affected her centre of gravity, making her unstable. Naval records show that she was taken out of service for eight months from 8 August 1941 till 28 April 1942 for the fitting of ballast. It was a long time to be out of action, and there may have been difficulties in determining the most effective ballast for her, the choice being generally between solids and liquids. Informed opinion suggests it was likely to have been solids, which could range between lead ingots, bricks, stone, sand or concrete. The addition of ballast generally means sacrificing another feature on the boat, in part or in whole; in Thorodd’s case it most probably meant removing some of the fuel tanks, reducing her fuel-carrying capacity and consequently her range at sea.

During the winter of 1941−2, Thorodd had shipyard work carried out at Arbuthnott’s shipyard at Montrose, 50 kilometres to the north. Willie Nilsen tells of his father Olav giving his mother Jean a joyride on Thorodd from Dundee to Montrose, which probably happened after they were married in 1941. To think that a wife would be carried on a naval vessel in peacetime, let alone at the height of wartime activities and in such a dangerous stretch of sea, is inconceivable in the Royal Navy. So, too, is the presence of such a large dog on board. But the Norwegian Navy seems to have taken such irregularities in its stride, and in the wider context of the problems the Norwegians had left behind them, and the daily dangers they faced at sea, wives and dogs on board ship were of small consequence.

Thorodd is known to have been the only ship in the 71st Minesweeper Group to have spent time at Montrose. It is likely that this was due initially to these ballasting problems, as Thorodd is first reported as being in the town for the shipyard work at Arbuthnott’s during the 1941−2 refit. Recurrent stability problems and routine maintenance needs brought the ship back to Montrose repeatedly during the rest of the war, with her spending increasingly more time there and less in Dundee. Her restricted fuel range meant that her operations were more efficiently conducted from Montrose, which lay in the centre of the minesweeping sector. The town effectively became Thorodd’s new base, and her crew, including Bamse, became fully integrated into the life of Montrose and its townsfolk.

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