Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

Telegram from Girl Ethel

Summing up, I reach again into the Magical Memory Box and take out my mother’s Family Scrapbook. The first few pages are devoted to my parents’ wedding, 4 October 1940. There are many ‘greetings telegrams’ for the wedding; they were mostly from my mother’s friends and family on the Isle of Eigg. There was also a ‘greetings telegram’³³ which says, “Winning score Hearts 2 United 1 from Girl Ethel.” It doesn’t mention the wedding, although it is obviously a greetings telegram for the wedding. One of the other telegrams in the Scrapbook also makes the jest of “Hearts 2 United 1”. There were also some telegrams about Holy Loch that I had to dig into to understand. I discuss my findings on this post.

My father’s family in Edinburgh lived at various addresses that were never that far away from the Hearts football club, which he supported; so this witticism might have been especially amusing to him. In fact, he was born at 134 Gorgie Road. It was literally a stone’s throw away from the Heart of Midlothian Football Club. If he had opened his bedroom window on a Saturday afternoon, he would have heard the roar of the crowd.

The reason I am focusing on this telegram is to point out that my father served in the RNVR and worked on “Girl Ethel” before he met my mother.

The Holy Loch

It is important to use all the sources available and relate them to each other. This helps illuminate things, which before seemed opaque. I reach into the Magical Memory Box again and take out two photographs marked “Holy Loch” shown here.

It is worth noting here that between 1961 and 1992, the Holy Loch was used by the United States Navy. The CND launched a mass civil disobedience movement in opposition to the arrival of the US Polaris submarine in the Holy Loch. The Polaris was a nuclear-armed submarine-launched ballistic missile.

There was a massive sit-down protest in London in September, as well as more action at the Holy Loch itself. Amongst many others, the British philosopher, Bertrand Russell, was arrested and charged with inciting civil disobedience. He was sentenced to two months in prison, despite being 90 years of age and a well-respected British citizen.

The USA had already detonated two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 murdering one-quarter of a million civilians. Sixteen years later in 1961, and after this date, the U.S. was now planning a holocaust on a much larger scale; this time, the Soviet Union was the new target. The Holy Loch was an important strategic base from which to launch weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) against their ‘ideological’ enemy.  

Sandy and Stuart at the Holy Loch

Holy Loch is a considerable expanse of water; it is a sea loch. The photo to the right shows my two eldest brothers, Sandy and Stuart, ‘braving the storm’; they were perhaps only 5 or 6 years old at the time. In other words, some of the ‘mysterious’ words in the Magical Memory Box, such as ‘Dunoon’, ‘Holy Loch’, ‘degaussing’, ‘Girl Ethel’, and ‘Sandbank’ now start to make more sense.

That is, my father was an officer in the RNVR and was ‘captain’ of a degaussing vessel called ‘Girl Ethel’ docked at Sandbank. Both Stuart and Sandy were born at Rannoch Cottage, in Queen Street, Dunoon, and in the holidays and weekends they sometimes went to the beach areas around Holy Loch. In other words, I never really understood before why the photos were marked ‘Holy Loch’, nor could I even recognize my two brothers, but it is 95% certain that it must be them.  

Sandbank, Holy Loch, and degaussing boats

On looking at all these documents, transcripts, and photos, I also made another ‘cross-referencing’ discovery. In an indistinct conversation with my mother in 2005, she had mentioned, “We were stationed at Sandbank, where I was living, near Dunoon; there were also fishing trawlers used for degaussing. There was also a little Norwegian trawler with a ’noisy’ engine – a fishing boat, which had escaped the Germans.” 

While looking at the Internet source mentioned above, “Naval History Homepage”, I noticed that under the reference to “Girl Ethel” and “Young John” was the following:  “Degaussing Mobile Deperming Unit – deperming unit SCHIEVAN in Clyde, tenders BARMORE, TANMOUR, VOLANT, Norwegian FISKERGUTTEN, HAVLYN, all in Clyde.³⁶”

This obviously confirmed my mother’s little anecdote about the Norwegian fishing boat with the noisy engine. It was ‘Norwegian FISKERGUTTEN and HAVLYN’. ‘Fiskergutten’ means ‘Fishing Boy” in English. I did a quick search for ‘FISKERGUTTEN’ on the Internet and there seems to be more information available, but I won’t research it further here. But this of course is a whole new story which has already been researched by others, known as the ‘The Shetlands’ Bus’³⁷. This also became of greater relevance to me later in life, as Norway has become my ‘second’ (perhaps ‘first) home.

Proof of the Ships

To sum up, regarding the Holy Loch and degaussing boats, I reach into the Magical Memory Box again and find an email written by my younger brother, Gavin, in 2007:

“(Here is) a picture of the kind of boat that Dad operated on during the war degaussing.³¹ (Although if you said boat, Dad would instantly say ‘ship’ like a reflex action). The ‘ships’ were called Girl Ethel and Young John. Young John would have looked exactly like this in every detail.”

I include the photo he sent me here. Further exploration of my ‘extended’ Magical Memory Box, that is, the Internet, reveals more about Young John and Girl Ethel on the Naval History Homepage:

“Degaussing Mobile Wiping Units – steam drifters BRACKENDALE, GIRL ETHEL, MARY J MASSON, YOUNG JOHN, all in Clyde.”³²

A letter from the DGWO

I did manage to find one such document that seems to link together other photos and documents, and this was a letter written 28 September 1940, some few days before my parents’ marriage. The letter is written by the DGWO, that is, the Degaussing²⁹ Wiping Officer, H.M.D.³⁰, “Girl Ethel”, Ardnadam Pier, Sandbank, Argyll. The letter confirms that Sub. Lieutenant Harkness, RNVR, has been given three days compassionate leave as he intends to get married. 

Ardnadam Pier was part of the Holy Loch base, and it is only a couple of miles away from where my parents lived in Rannoch Cottage, Queen Street, Dunoon, and where my eldest brother Sandy was born. 

Sources

²⁹ Degaussing, named after the unit of magnetism, is the process in which you decrease or eliminate something’s magnetic field. During World War II, this tactic was used to reduce ships’ magnetic signature so they could pass over a magnetic mine undetected and unharmed. https://www.apexmagnets.com/news-how-tos/a-brief-history-of-magnets-degaussing-ships-during-world-war-ii/ Date of reading: 2 Jan. 2021.

³⁰ I’m not sure what H.M.D. stands for, but perhaps it stands for “Her Majesty’s Dockyard”.

³¹ https://www.unithistories.com/officers/RNVR_officersW3.html Date of reading: 2 Jan. 2021.

³² http://www.patriotfiles.com/archive/navalhistory/xDKWW2-4201-40RNShips3WApproaches.htm Date of reading: 2 Jan. 2021

³³ Greetings telegrams were introduced on 24 July 1935. These telegrams were attractively designed and were delivered in bright gold envelopes bearing the words ‘Greetings Telegram’. https://www.postalmuseum.org/blog/greetings-from-the-post-office/ Date of reading: 2 Jan. 2021.

³⁶http://www.patriotfiles.com/archive/navalhistory/xDKWW2-4201-40RNShips3WApproaches.htm Date of reading: 2 Jan. 2021.