PETER KIRKNESS - A Q-SHIP SURVIVOR
by Richard Taylor

THE FLIMSY naval prize statement issued to Royal Naval Reserve Seaman Peter Kirkness is now browned and stained but behind it lies the story of two dramatic Q-ship actions, one of which led to the award of the Victoria Cross to his commanding officer Lieutenant-Commander (later Vice-Admiral) Gordon Campbell.

While Campbell eventually earned a VC and a DSO with two bars, Peter had to make do with a 1914-15 Star trio and Royal Naval Reserve Long Service and Good Conduct Medal, despite sharing many of his skipper's experiences on submarine decoy work in the Farnborough, which was cleverly disguised as an apparently innocent merchant ship.

Those modest medals, with a ribbon bar and a small number of documents, have survived together with two fragments of a naval ensign, believed to have come from the crippled Q5 - the SS Farnborough - after that final VC action in February 1917. It appears her ensign was cut into pieces to be shared among the men, just as the Victory's huge flag had been divided among her surviving crew after Trafalgar.

Peter Kirkness's account with the Admiralty shows that he was awarded £1 11s 2d prize bounty for his part in the destruction of U68 on 28 March 1916 and £1 8s 2d for the sinking of U83 on 17 February 1917. But his war - and a very active one at that - had begun much earlier.

When he enrolled in the RNR in December 1909 he was a 22-year-old inshore fisherman living on the tiny island of Burray in the Orkneys, where he had been born. One of the crew of a Lerwick-registered boat, LK481 Fleetwing, he did three months' initial reserve training at Chatham and in the battleship HMS Caesar. After that he underwent regular annual training until he was mobilised for war service on 7 August 1914, being posted swiftly to the Armed Merchant Cruiser (AMC) Kinfauns Castle, which was sent to operate off the African coast. She was soon ordered to patrol between the Canary Islands and Cape Verde, looking for the German AMC Kaiser Wilhelm de Grosse, but instead she captured the German barque Werner Vinnen on the night of 22 August. A boarding party was sent to examine the sailing ship which was found to be carrying 400 tons of coal, possibly intended for the Kaiser Wilhelm.

Peter, perhaps because of his experience under sail, was one of about a dozen men who formed a prize crew to take the barque to Freetown, Sierra Leone. This was obviously an experience that impressed itself into Peter's memory because the Kirkness family still has a large framed drawing of the Werner Vinnen.

After other exploits, the Kinfauns Castle took part in the blockade of the German raider Königsberg in the Rufiji delta but by mid-January 1915 she and other ships from East Africa had left for Bombay for refits. The following month she arrived back on the African coast, equipped with two more planes intended for reconnaissance and attacks on the Königsberg, which was eventually destroyed by the Royal Navy in a dramatic action on 11 July. Soon after this Peter returned to Portsmouth, presumably for further training because in November he was sent to the gunnery school at HMS Excellent. In December he was posted to HMS Cyclops, the Scapa Flow repair ship, perhaps to help man her 3-pounders, although immediately after Christmas he was dispatched to Queenstown to join the Farnborough, the former collier Loderer, which had been commissioned at Devonport on Trafalgar Day as one of a number of submarine decoy ships.

Farnborough had already begun her patrols off the Irish coast when Peter joined to make up numbers after the ship had been fitted with two extra 12- pounders and two 6-pounders, a task which involved strengthening the decks, leading to several weeks in dockyard hands. She was eventually armed with three concealed 12-pounders, two 6-pounders and Maxim guns. With this work finished, word went around that the ship was to sail to Berehaven. In his 1928 book My Mystery Ships, Gordon Campbell wrote:

We sailed the following evening, and when clear of the harbour our disguises and false cabin side were demolished and we set course for Milford Haven, although the Navigator had all the charts ready for Berehaven. After a few days of intensified drill with our guns and some new men, we sallied forth full of hope.

One of those hopeful men was now Peter Kirkness. After a few weeks of, as Campbell put it, trying to secure a meeting with the enemy', the crew of the Farnborough had their chance. Patrolling off the west Irish coast, the Q-ship was just missed by a torpedo fired by U68 (Kapitanleutnant L. Guntrell), which then surfaced and fired a shot across the British ship's bows. The Farnborough's panic party, playing the part of frightened merchant seamen, made a show of scrambling for the boats. After a second shot from the U-boat, now some 800 yards away, the Q-ship dropped her disguise, broke the White Ensign from her masthead and opened fire with her three 12-pounders and Maxims, forcing the German captain to dive.

Campbell takes up the story in My Mystery Ships:
As soon as he had submerged and there was nothing more to fire at, we steamed at full speed to the spot where he had gone down, for at the moment there was nothing actually to show whether he had been destroyed or not, although we knew we had hit him, as he had closed his conning tower before diving. Two depth charges were therefore dropped, and almost simultaneously the submarine, that had obviously been trying to rise, came up nearly perpendicular, touching our bottom as it did so.

We were still steaming ahead when the submarine passed down our side a few yards off, and it could now be seen that in addition to a periscope having been shot off there was a big rent in the bows. Our after-gun was leaving nothing to chance and put a few more rounds in at point-blank range. A couple more depth charges were released, and the surface of the sea became covered with oil and small pieces of wood - but there was no living soul.

In addition to a series of awards and promotions, £1,000 was awarded to the ship to be divided in various proportions to all on board except commissioned officers of the Royal Navy - which meant Campbell was the only officer excluded from the share-out. Peter's share as a mere seaman was, as we know, very small, even allowing for nearly ninety years' inflation - and he had to wait until 1922 to receive it.

The excitement for the Farnborough's crew continued in April 1916 when on the 15th, in a heavy Atlantic swell not far from where U68 was sunk, they sighted what proved to be a Dutch vessel. A surfaced U-boat was suddenly spotted between the two steamers; it signaled to the British ship and then fired a warning shot. Unhappily, one of the gun crews - let's hope it wasn't Peter's - thought their own ship had begun shooting, so they fired too. With this a general order to open fire was given. Despite the mist and swell and the range of 1,000 yards, two hits were scored on the submarine's conning tower and there was a small explosion, possibly from ammunition on deck for the U-boat's gun. The submarine dived and the Farnborough dropped a couple of depth charges over the spot but there was no sign that the submarine had been destroyed.

The following month the Q-ship's crew was given four days' well-earned leave but they were soon back in action. After joining other ships in an unsuccessful attempt to intercept the unarmed German cargo submarine Deutschland returning from America, they went back on decoy patrol, disguised as a neutral. Then, on 18 August 1916, the Farnborough spotted a submarine on her port bow off the north coast of Ireland. During a prolonged chase, the Q-ship dropped a depth charge and was herself the subject of a torpedo attack. The Farnborough twice changed identity to confuse the U-boat commander, but he managed to escape.

Peter used to tell his family about an incident which occurred after he had been on watch with Campbell. Peter left the bridge and soon afterwards met a steward on his way up with the skipper's breakfast. The steward said they were in a hornet's nest, surrounded by a number of U-boats. Two torpedoes were launched but the Farnborough survived by taking evasive action. How, one wonders, could a member of the crew have been left so ignorant of what was happening?

Nobody was left in any doubt about what was happening on 17 February 1917. While off the west coast of Ireland the Farnborough, stuffed with timber to keep her buoyant, was torpedoed without warning by U83 (Kapitanleutnant Brune Hoppe).

Campbell turned his ship into the track to allow it to be torpedoed. The panic party hurried to leave the apparently sinking ship, whose gun crews, presumably including Peter, stayed hidden until the U-boat broke surface. Campbell tells the grim story in his book:

It was point-blank range, and the 6-pounder opened the battle, whose first shot hit the conning-tower and beheaded the German captain. The surprise had been instant and effective, for the submarine never recovered from the shock, but remained on the surface whilst Farnborough's guns shattered the hull to pieces, the conning-town being continually hit, and some of the shells going clean through. Over forty rounds had thus been fired, to say nothing of the Maxim gun. U83 was beaten, finished, smashed: and she finally sank with her conning-tower open and her crew pouring out. About eight of her crew were seen in the water, and one of Farnborough's lifeboats went to their assistance and was in time to pick up one officer and one man, and then rowed back to the ship through sea thick with oil, blood and bubbles.

A distress call was answered by the destroyer HMS Narwhal and the sloop HMS Buttercup, who arrived in time to take the Farnborough in tow and beach her. This was the fourth Q-ship U-boat kill of the war, earning Commander Campbell his VC. The notice in the London Gazette gave nothing away, stating merely that the award had been made for 'conspicuous gallantry, consummate coolness, and skill in command of one of H.M. ships in action'.

There was also a generous number of awards to other officers and ratings, including two DSOs, three Distinguished Service Crosses, nine Distinguished Service Medals, one bar to a DSM and twenty-four Mentioned in Dispatches. On 25 February 1917,

Peter, whose name does not appear in any of the Gazette listings, was placed on the books of HMS Colleen, the naval base at Queenstown, and his service record notes that he was a 'survivor'.

In May he was back in Portsmouth, being sent again to the gunnery school at Excellent, this time in preparation for his posting to President III for service in defensively armed merchant ships (DAMS) as an acting leading seaman. He served as a gunnery rating in merchantmen from August 1917 and was finally discharged with 28 days' leave on 20 May 1919. The ships in which he served and what further adventures he may have had in them are not known.

By July 1919 he was back working in the Orkneys as an inshore fisherman, this time in the Edith Jean. He continued serving in the RNR, undergoing regular training, and on 25 June 1925 he was presented at Kirkwall with his Long Service and Good Conduct Medal, named to him as 3910D P KIRKNESS. SMN. RNR. Peter's son, Andrew, told me a few years ago that during the Second World War his father helped man a coast-watch hut on Burray. This was organised into two watches and was equipped with a machine-gun. The men, mostly ex-naval ratings from the First World War, were issued with greatcoats and naval caps, and many of them were armed with Lee-Enfield rifles.

The stations were established to keep a look-out for vessels in distress and for relaying sightings of aircraft or shipping, each post reporting to Kirkwall Coastguard every hour. Andrew recalled that Peter's hut had aircraft recognition posters displayed around its walls. But Peter's war effort went further than this. At night he maintained steam in the oil-fired boilers that provided power for the cableway used in the construction by Balfour-Beatty of the Churchill Barrier across the eastern end of Scapa Flow. Much of the labour was provided by Italian prisoners of war, one of whose camps was close to the Kirkness family home on Burray.

Peter Kirkness, who died aged 77 in 1964, is almost certainly entitled to a Defence Medal 1939-45, but did he ever claim it? The answer appears to be 'no'.

Acknowledgments

• The author is grateful to Andrew Kirkness and Peter's grandson, Harry, for their generous response to an appeal for information published in The Orcadian newspaper in 2001.

 

• This article appeared in the Orders & Medals Research Society Journal, Volume 48 No 2 in June 2009, and subsequently in The Great War Magazine No 48 March 2010

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