Merchant Naval Seaman Christopher Tulitt

	This page: joining the Merchant Navy - the sinking of the City of Athens.
	The sinking of the City of Canton and audio clip.
	The sinking of the City of Adelaide and inventory.

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Bull Howerd and me, from the City of Athens.

Chris Tulitt was born in January 1925 and he was attending Bournemouth School at the outbreak of war. In 1940 he joined the Auxiliary Fire Service as a messenger and recalls French troops being billeted at his school for a short time, following the evacuation from Dunkirk. Chris' education had already been affected by the sharing of the school premises with another school, Tauntons, which had been evacuated from Southampton. The following year Chris went to Warrington to stay with his eldest brother Mike and family while he was waiting to join the Ellermans Hall Line as a Cadet. His job would be to learn all aspects of the role of a Deck Officer, including celestial and coastal navigation, keeping the Ship's Log, seamanship and cargo handling. Chris wanted to go to sea like his grandfather and chose the Merchant Navy as he was able to join earlier, at the age of 16. On arrival he was very apprehensive; the ship seemed chaotic, extremely noisy and presented an alien environment to Chris, at least to begin with!

On 17^th December Mike and Eileen drove me up to Liverpool with my tin trunk and we drew up alongside the City of Athens and I said goodbye. I met the other cadet who was a big Yorkshire lad called Bull Howerd. He had done the previous twelve months trip on the ship. He and I had a slap-up dinner with a bottle of Chablis at Reeces restaurant on the night of the 18^th. We sailed on the morning of the 19th bound for St. John, New Brunswick, in a convoy of some sixty ships. It was a rough trip as we were in ballast and I was seasick for about 24 hours, but after that could not get enough to eat! We were Commodore ship with an RN Commodore on board with his signal staff so we were in the centre of the leading line of nine columns of ships. Our speed was very slow at about 7 to 8 knots with an escort of at most five warships and very little air cover. However we had no great alarms and arrived safely in Canada after a fourteen day voyage - with Christmas Day spent halfway across the Western Ocean.

We spent three very snowy weeks in St. John loading our mixed cargo of crated motor car parts, aluminium ingots, rolls of newspaper print, etc for ports in Australia. I spent my 17^th birthday there on January 3^rd and sent a cable home by Western Union to say I was safe and sound!

Having discharged the cargo, the crew took on board 5000 tons of lead ingots and 5000 tons of bagged brown sugar, before sailing to New York and finally home to the UK.

So ended Voyage Number One. 'Home is the Hero, Home from the Sea'! I think I must have been very cocky and insufferable to all my friends who were still at school and just beginning to think about being called up into the forces at age eighteen. However mum and dad were glad to see me home safe, as Tony was a Prisoner of War and Mike had now been called up into the Royal Engineers and was commissioned.

'Quartermaster teaching me how to do Turks Head' on board the City of Athens.

After a short leave Chris rejoined the City of Athens which sailed to the West African Gold Coast.

At 3.30pm on the 8^th October I was having my afternoon cup of tea in the saloon when there was a tremendous explosion which was quickly followed by the ringing of the emergency bells. After collecting my life jacket I went to my emergency station on the bridge. The ship had been hit amidships by a torpedo and had begun to settle and lose way in the water, which was essential, before any lifeboats could be launched. Fortunately the sea was very calm. The ship was obviously sinking and The Captain gave orders to abandon ship.

The six lifeboats were launched without trouble. I assisted in throwing the confidential code books weighted-box over the side before climbing down into the lifeboat on the port side of the bridge. As we were moving away from the ship we spotted the periscope of the U-boat crossing ahead of the ship from starboard to port. As we moved away aft towards the other lifeboats there was another violent explosion as a second explosion hit the ship amidships in the engine room on the port side. We were glad the ship was not hit in one of the holds where all the ammunition was stowed. We watched the ship settle and eventually go down quite gracefully by the head. When we rowed back through the wreckage we found the ship's cat clinging onto some timber. She was glad to be taken into the lifeboat.

City of Athens, my lifeboat still alongside portside under wing of Bridge. We sighted U-boat periscope ahead of ship. The Third Mate had a camera to record the sinking.

Ship settles down, going, going ...

We were some 180 miles north west of Cape Town and the six lifeboats set course accordingly. Our Radio Officer had got off an SSS signal before the ship sank so we were not surprised to see a warship appear about 7.00pm just as the light was fading. We went alongside HMS Active and climbed aboard via scrambling nets put down over the side. The destroyer was in company with HMS Arrow and HMS Antelope and what we didn't know at the time was that twelve ships had been sunk in two days around the Cape Town area, including the Orient liner Arcades, so the Navy was very much on the alert.

We were entertained in the ship's wardroom and made ourselves comfortable. Around midnight a gun on the destroyer opened up and we could feel the ship was working up to full speed. We went up on to the afterdeck in time to see depth charges being dropped over the stern to be followed by great underwater explosions. The Active steamed over the area and the smell of diesel oil was very strong. It transpired that the U-boat had been surprised recharging her batteries on the surface and Active had opened fire and then attempted to ram. The U-boat crash dived but the depth charge attack was successful and the sinking was subsequently confirmed as the U179 commanded by Captain Sobe. We were all elated and a very happy crew of survivors plus cat landed from Active in Cape Town the following day.

	This page: joining the Merchant Navy - the sinking of the City of Athens.
	The sinking of the City of Canton and audio clip.
	The sinking of the City of Adelaide and inventory.