SEA WAR MUSEUM

Another delightful and interesting article from regular contributor Peter Young of IndyScot News based in Denmark as he continues to reflect on his early life in Glasgow.

Sea War Museum

It was in our Dennistoun tenement, late one night in 1964, that I became aware of the reality of the First World War. In our wee multi-purpose kitchen with its coal fire, gas cooker, clothes pulley and two armchairs, there was a big black and white telly with a small screen. 

I was propped up on one of the armchairs by the fireplace, playing with Airfix ‘sodjurs’ on a little tray. Only ma Da and I were awake. He switched on the box and a program began, it was called ‘The Great War’. Like many East End children of the era, the father figure in my home was often a stranger. So, the chance to sit up late wi ma Da, and experience the magical world of a TV documentary for the first time, was a bit special. 

The opening titles were set against bleak trench scenes, haunting images of the living, and skeletal faces of the dead. The theme music matched the mood of the intro and the voice of the narrator carried a sombre, funereal tone. That slightly spooky introduction made a huge impression on my seven-year-old mind.

Fast forward several decades and I’m driving north on the west coast of Jutland. I’m heading for the recently opened ‘Sea War Museum’ to do some research for an educational publication. The main road out of Esbjerg soon narrows. A convoy of huge lorries is heading south. I keep hard right as they roar past with tubular elements for wind turbines. They’re on their way to the Vestas facility by Esbjerg harbour. 

Running parallel with the main road, and at a safe distance from traffic, are cycle paths. Even here in one of Denmark’s most remote regions there’s excellent infrastructure for the all-conquering bicycle! 

The Sea War Museum is in Thyborøn, a small town in the north west which is, historically, one of Denmark’s largest fishing ports. After a few hours driving through the watery, marshland scenery under big skies, signs for my destination begin to appear. 

The museum is situated at the end of a peninsula, right on the coast. Stepping out of the car, the first thing you hear is the roar of the North Sea on the other side of the sand dunes. A quick stroll around the grounds reveals a selection of military artefacts on display – everything from torpedoes to naval guns. However, it’s inside that the real exhibition begins.

The museum was opened on the 100th anniversary of the 1916 ‘Battle of Jutland’. The name derives from the fact that it was fought off the Danish west coast. 

Independent Denmark was fortunate in that it played no military role in the ’14-18 war. However, the flotsam and jetsam of the biggest naval confrontation of that conflict was washed ashore here along the north-west coast.

On the day of my visit it’s quiet with only a few guests. There are no parties of excited school children. In fact, the only voices I hear are whispered and mostly German-speaking. The subdued lighting and the collection of 100-year-old maritime artefacts transport you back to another era. 

Bits and pieces of the violent naval battle are everywhere. There are also some extraordinary exhibits. One of the most prominent is the periscope from the German submarine, the U-20. It ran aground in Danish waters. You can, if you want, look through the very same viewer that the U-20’s commander, Walter Schwieger, used to locate and target the RMS Lusitania in 1915. His torpedo attack on the ship cost nearly 1,200 of the 2,000 passengers their lives. As fate would have it, Schwieger did not survive the war. The man who sank the Lusitania was commanding the U-88 in 1917 when it struck a mine. Both he and his crew were lost.

The most eye-catching exhibit in the entire museum, though, is the brass conning tower of a submarine. It looks almost new, having been polished up to its original golden-bronze colour. To my huge surprise, I discover it’s from the wreck of the Glasgow-built submarine, the E-50. 

According to records, E-50 was a Group 2 E Class Submarine. It was ordered in November 1914 as part of the ‘Emergency War Order’. This was only months after James Keir Hardie had spoken at a final rally for peace, on 2 August 1914, in a rainy Trafalgar Square. Hardie was often heckled during his speeches opposing the war, and that day was no different. 

Like other spokesmen for the working classes across Europe, Hardie was ultimately ignored and sidelined. Of course, if Scotland had been an independent nation, we, like Denmark, may have avoided the catastrophe of the First World War. Instead, we were led by our larger southern neighbour in the rush towards Armageddon. Of course, few among the toffs and high heidyins cared about workers being sent to the front as cannon fodder. After all, wealthy armaments manufacturers stood to profit massively as Europe’s workers were sent off to murder each other. 

As US Major General Smedley Butler stated, in his book of the same name, “War is a racket”. It really is.

The E-50 was built by John Brown and Company on the Clyde. Laid down on 15 March 1915, it was launched on 14 Nov 1916. The long period between being laid down and launch was partly the result of the yard never having built submarines before. Apart from that, John Brown and Company was apparently busy with a high volume of surface warship work. The submarine E-50 was finally completed and commissioned on 23 Jan 1917.

This Glasgow-built vessel survived at sea for only one year. During that time it was involved in an unusual underwater collision with a German U-boat, the UC-62. Remarkably, the E-50 escaped with no serious damage. But its luck ran out months later. According to reports, 

“On or about 1st February 1918 the submarine is believed to have struck a mine near the South Dogger Bank Light Vessel. There were no survivors of the sinking.” 

The wreck of the E-50 was discovered in 2011. Its conning tower is remarkably well preserved. On a brass-coloured plaque are the names of the crew. Each soul that perished, from ‘Commanding Officer’, ‘Able Shipman’, to ‘Stoker 1st Class’, is remembered. This is no mere exhibit, it’s a memorial. It’s also a small part of Glasgow and Clydeside history exiled in this remote part of north-west Jutland.

Seeing this part of our common heritage is especially poignant for me. Ma auld Da was just a bairn of 18 months when the first rivets went into this vessel. His formative years were spent during the First World War. Perhaps that is why he was so interested in the documentary series that night in 1964? Did the faither he never knew die in the trenches? He may well have thought that, but he never said. This was the era when no one talked about their feelings. We were supposed to bottle it inside and just get on with things. Nae wonder ma Da and those of his generation spent so many hours in the charmless drinking dens of Glasgow’s East End.

I have no photos of my Da when he was a child. But I do have an ‘image’ of him from those war years. It comes from an unexpected source. In some very old court records, a nurse, a Miss Higgieson, was attending his mother at a lodging on Broomhill Street. His mother was about to give birth and Miss Higgieson “attended her in her confinement”. Part of the record reads, “There was a child of about sixteen months old playing about the floor and she told me that that child was illegitimate and that the father of it was an old sweetheart. She told me that her husband was not the father of that child.” This story, buried in the archives, with its image of my 18-month-old faither playing on the floor, shone a light on a turbulent childhood during the war years. 

With a little more research, in Glasgow and Montrose, I had a biographical sketch of his upbringing and teens. It’s a desperately sad story, and one he did not share with any of us. It includes details of his mother’s unhappy marriage and that reference by Miss Higgieson to the existence of a paternal uncle or aunt about to be born, yet unknown to us. The worst part, though, is that ma faither’s story is far from unique or unusual. Poverty begets poverty, with all of the ills that follow in its wake. 

In spite of the best efforts of Keir Hardie and the peace movement in 1914, the nation’s brightest and best were sent to be slaughtered. The social upheaval it caused at home is hard to imagine. What we do know, however, is that these events took place at a time when more than half of Scotland’s revenues were withheld by London to be spent on ‘Imperial Services’. The nation was bled dry of its resources, both human and physical. Imperial Services was merely another name for a kind of posh, mafia-style protection racket. These days, they use the smoke and mirrors of GERS, to convince the gullible that we really are an impoverished nation with nothing going for us.

With Ireland negotiating a way out of its enforced Union with the UK, Westminster finally decided to stop publishing Scottish revenues in 1921. In that year, Scotland contributed £119m to the exchequer in London. Of that £119m, a mere £33m was spent on ‘Scottish services’ – just a quarter of our national wealth, spent to benefit the people of Scotland! If Scots back then had come to realise that Westminster was regularly helping itself to more than half of the nation’s revenues, the demand for home rule – and perhaps Irish-style independence – would surely have been irresistible.

Heading south back to Esbjerg, the sight of the E-50 had given me food for thought. Here I was in a small independent country – a close North Sea neighbour – that had declared its neutrality on 1 August 1914. Unlike Scotland, Denmark was not bound by the foreign policy decisions taken by its larger southern neighbour. What Danish defence forces there were, mobilised to safeguard the nation’s neutrality. As a result, Denmark, a country with a 1,000-year history like Scotland, was mostly untouched by the ’14-18 calamity. 

I also reflected on ma auld Da, Harry, and the accident of birth that left him faitherless and impoverished. I expect he could have written his ain poverty safari, long before that sort of thing became popular. On the other hand, he might have become a pet Glaswegian of the British upper class, who so love a feisty wee jock. Perish the thought. 

Other memories of him came back, too: a yellow nicotine-stained right hand, whisky breath, pools coupons, and his plaintive voice singing country and western songs on an old upright piano in an adjacent room. 

“I’m nobody’s child,

I’m nobody’s child,

I’m like a flower, just growing wild.

No mummy’s kisses and no daddy’s smiles,

Nobody wants me, 

I’m nobody’s child.”

This was his favourite, and he played it over and over. 

Back in our 1964 tenement flat ‘The Great War’ series had captured ma Da’s attention. Due to the era in which he was born, and with the circumstances of his birth, it’s doubtful ma faither ever learned much about his ain Da. Nobody’s child indeed. 

I looked up now and again from my Airfix sodjurs. He was transfixed by the documentary. Harry was staring at men in uniform, moving like regiments of staccato Charlie Chaplins. He was, perhaps, wondering if one of those soldiers, in grainy black and white, was the faither he never knew. 

MY COMMENTS

This article is very real for me. I grew up in Clydebank. John Brown’s was a huge employer in the town. I actually got a day off school to go to the launch of the QE2. I knew about the Queens and many other fine vessels built by Browns but did not know they had built submarines as well. While I was lucky and lived in a big house, my dad being a local minister, many of my pals lived in poor, overcrowded homes and poverty was still a huge problem in a town still desperately trying to recover from the decimation of its housing stock by the Clydebank Blitz in March 1941. The scars were still visible when I was walking through bombed out tenements to get to School in the late 1950’s. There is also an excellent modern Sea Museum in Tallinn Estonia which is well worth a visit. It has several submarines to view. Clearly submarines played a big role in the Baltics even though it is relatively shallow compared to other seas and oceans. Peter’s writing brings back many memories for me and I hope for many of my readers. Enjoy.

I am, as always

YOURS FOR SCOTLAND.

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