HMS Barcombe

The steel Bar Class boom defence vessel HMS Barcombe was launched from the Goole Shipbuilding and Repair Co Ltd. (Yard No 332) on 28th July 1938.  She measured 173.7′ x 32.3′ 9.5′ and displaced 730 tons. She was powered by a triple expansion steam engine by Amos & Smith delivering 850 horse power.  Built for the Royal Navy she entered service in the early months of World War two and was to feature in the D-Day landings on 6th June 1944.  She avoided any serious damage during the war but was to end her career in a more ignominious fashion some 12 years later

If it had not been for a stroke of good luck, some of the thirty four crew may not have survived when she wrecked on 13th January 1958.  They had endured twenty two hours exposed to the cold and rain of a wintry January night and day when their distress flares were finally spotted by the crew of the fishing boat Rosebud. The Rosebud had been fishing off Tiree and would normally have taken the longer, safer route back to Oban via the Sound of Mull but skipper Tim Ross had decided to take the more dangerous route via the Sound of Iona and the south west of Mull to get his crew back home as quickly as possible. As they passed the entrance to Loch Buie, on Mull’s south coast, they found Barcombe ashore east of the Loch with her cold, wet and exhausted crew aboard their half submerged ship.

HMS Barcombe, under the command of Lieutenant Commander Derek Charles Godfrey, had herself been involved in the rescue of H M Submarine Taciturn aground in Campbeltown Loch only a week earlier, and was on her way from her home port of Greenock to Rosyth when she ran aground in fog. It was clear that they had made a serious navigation error because, as they hit the shore, they sent out a radio signal indicating that they were ashore on Oronsay. A huge rescue effort immediately got under way with her sister ship, the Barrington, and the submarine rescue ship Kingfisher, setting out from Greenock, the Islay lifeboat from Port Askaig, the Naval tug Saucy which had been in the area and the island coastguards on Oronsay, all joining the search for the grounded ship. Plans were also being made to put up search aircraft but these were abandoned as the cloud base at Oronsay was too low for safety. After eighteen hours of fruitless searching and a worrying silence from the radio of the Barcombe, another radio message was received and the search area was changed to the Garvellachs. Shortly after this, some twenty one hours after Barcombe had gone aground, she was spotted by the crew of the Rosebud on the Mull coast.

Meanwhile the crew of Barcombe had spent a very uncomfortable night and day aboard their ship and ashore on the barren rocky coast of south Mull. When the ship first went aground they were plunged into darkness as the generators failed and, with no clear idea of where they were or what their situation was, decided to abandon ship and go ashore. One seaman, named Norman Lovell, volunteered to swim ashore with a line and the rest of the crew followed to find themselves on a small rocky beach at the foot of a three hundred foot cliff. The only possible route to safety was up and so they tied themselves together into teams and started the dangerous night time climb to the top. A few of them made it but most of the crew spent the night clinging to the cliff before returning, exhausted, to the beach the next morning. Their only option now was to return to their ship, which, when daylight arrived, they could see was in no immediate danger, and wait for rescue to arrive. They were very relieved when the Rosebud arrived on the scene. Over the next few hours the other rescue ships also arrived to take the injured to Oban and the rest of the crew back to the Clyde.

The following day divers were standing by to examine the ship but couldn’t do so because of the heavy swell that pounded the ship and the coastline. The swell was grinding the half submerged vessel heavily on the rocks causing further damage to her already battered hull. She became a total wreck. She was sold for scrap to Northern Shipbreaking on 12th January, 1959 and subsequently heavily salvaged.

Due to the attentions of the salvage teams only twisted scraps of metal and a few hull plates among the rocks remain in approximate position 56° 18.833′ N, 005° 52.163′ W. The wreckage lies parallel to the shore in around 5 metres with some interesting bits an pieces still to be found under the rocks. There are reports of larger pieces of wreckage in 18 – 20 metres but the authors could not locate any wreckage in deeper water.