Battle of the Atlantic 1

“They that go down to the sea in ships and do business in great waters”

Mr and Mrs James dreaded the arrival of the telegram from the Royal Navy which came to their home at 10 London St, Leek in late September 1943. It confirmed that their youngest son Able Seaman Edward James aged 21 had been lost at sea and therefore must be confirmed as dead. Edward was one of the 72,000 Royal Naval and Merchant Marine personnel along with 40,000 Germans who died during the Battle of the Atlantic, the longest continual engagement of the Second World War. It lasted from the earliest days of the war right through to its conclusion. Earlier this year a service of commemoration was held at Liverpool Cathedral recognising the huge losses endured by men and women of both sides on the 70^th anniversary of the height of the conflict. Britain, being an island nation, required a constant flow of supplies and material to continue the struggle against Nazism. It was assisted by its North American Allies as well as other nations. The response of the German Navy was to stop the convoys by the use of surface vessels as well as the terrifying U Boats that caused great damage on Allied shipping.

The fate of Edward James illustrates the awfulness of this operation in microcosm. Edward was a silk worker prior to joining the Royal Navy in September 1941. He had been educated at All Saints School and the Britannia Street School before beginning work at the Euston Mill. He was a keen sportsman and very popular. The Leek paper reported him as being genial and of a sunny disposition. Edward had an older brother Frank who was in the Army serving in Iceland. Another relative Alf James was in a POW camp in Germany.

Edward wrote the last letter to his parents shortly before sailing with his ship HMS Fidelity formerly a French cargo vessel which during 1941/2 had been engaged in covert activity supporting the work of SOE in France. Interestingly the First Officer was a French woman Madeline Barclay who had been involved in espionage. It is unique that a woman should hold a senior rank at that time on a Royal Naval vessel. HMS Fidelity joined Convoy ON 154. The convoy was attacked by U-boats from 27 December while north of the Azores. Fidelity, suffering from engine problems, was left behind by the convoy and attempted to get to the islands. At 5pm on 30 December, the vessel was finally hit by two torpedoes from U-435 and sank immediately after heavy explosions. The U-boat reported a high number of survivors on overcrowded rafts and swimming in the water, none of them were rescued and all drowned in the worsening weather. The temperature of the ocean would have killed them in minutes,The dead included 274 crew, 51 Marines and 44 survivors from SS Empire Shackleton which the Fidelity had rescued the previous day.

The only survivors were the eight crew of the motor torpedo boat, detached on anti-submarine patrol, who were later picked up by HMCS Woodstock

The commander of the U435 was an experienced naval officer Siegfried Strelow he is credited with sinking 9 merchant ships and 2 Royal Navy vessels. The U435 was sunk by a Wellington Bomber off the Portuguese coast on 16^th July 1943. All 43 hands were lost.

Bare Knuckle fighters of the 19th century

They bred them tough in the old days. I came across an account from the  Staffordshire Advertiser from August 1813 of a local  boxing match

“A severe pugilistic contest took place near Cheadle between a blacksmith and a mason. It continued about 4 hours and 150 rounds were fought. The black smith was obliged to leave off fighting in order to go to work. About 1000 were present”.

I has always had an interest in boxing. An early memory is getting up  to listen to the first Liston- Ali fight in 1964 on the radio and was able, as a child, to recite all the names of the heavy weight champoins of the world in my childhood- Burns, Johnson, Willard, Dempsey, Tunney, etc

Bare knuckle bouts bore little relation to boxing today. Kicking, biting and gouging were not allowed, but wrestling was. The opponent could be thrown to the ground . It was not allowed to strike a man when he was down. A round ended when the boxer was felled. There was a 30 second break before the next round. Rounds could be any length. and the fight continued to the fighter was injured or exhausted. There were no referees as the spectators were the guardians of fair play

 There was nothing genteel about the sport. It was memorably described by  a 19th century writer as 'a vulgar and tumultuous rabble of vagrants, drunkards, ruffian brawlers, and gambling desperadoes'. The  argot of the  time is wonderfully conveyed  in a contemporary report in the Era newspaper  It is a description of a 90 round contest between Hugh McStavik a fighter from Liverpool and George Harrison from Manchester at Madeley in July 1845 which the Liverpudlian won.

 “Hughy Mc   as a cunning little general in the PR drawing his last battle prior to this with Allan McPhee who by proving to the world  that personal animosity does not exist in the boxing league actually trained Liverpool's pet . Hugh is 25  about 5 7 and well made, brown complexion and a downy customer. He is a good natured lad but like all the outer outers  he has indulged rather too  liberally in what the Buffaloes call the “ holy gatter. This lavish adoration to the jolly god  made the backers of Harrison  think that a few bustling rounds would soon set his bellows in active play and force him to yield”

The strange death of Manuel de Silveria Leek 1836

Manuel Egido da Silveria of Rio da Janeiro disembarked from the Manchester coach a matter of minutes before his death. Mr Brunt the silk manufacturer was worried. The foreign looking gentleman who climbed out of the Manchester coach looked very agitated. It was midday on Tuesday the 7^th October 1836 and the mail coach had arrived promptly outside the Red Lion in the Market Square. The arrival and the departure of the mail coach were always noted with interest. Mr Brunt and Mr Alcock, the ostler, returned to the Red Lion and climbed the stairs to an upper room. At the top of the stairs they met Miss James, the niece of Mr Barlow the landlord, and a serving girl Agnes Hambleton having heard what had sounded like a gunshot. The two men entered the room, which was full of smoke and smelt of gunpowder. In a corner of the room was a toilet, which had been locked from the inside. They tried to force the door. They eventually got it open and lying on the toilet floor was the foreign looking gentleman with a pistol in his right hand. Mr Robins a local doctor was called for but it was obvious that the man was beyond hope. He had shot himself in the right ear and blood and brain matter oozed out of large hole in the left side of his head. They laid him on the bed in the room but he died a few moments later without uttering a single  word.

Who was Manuel da Silveria the name of the man who lay dead on a bed in the Red Lion? He was Brazilian and a man of some importance. He was described in the coroner’s report published in the Macclesfield Courier on the 15^th October 1836 as being a person who held a commission for the newly independent Brazilian Government for the West African country of Sierra Leone. In other words, Manuel Da Silveria was probably a person of some influence and connections; certainly the name had a long connection with Africa and Portuguese influence. A Silveria was canonised by the Catholic Church following his murder by Muslim Slave Traders in Africa in the 16^th century. Several of that name crop up as colonialists running areas of Asia and Africa for the Portuguese Crown in times past. The Brazil that Da Silveria would have known would have been in a state of turmoil during the 1820s and 30s as it sort to free itself of Portuguese rule to eventually proclaim in 1822 the first Brazilian Emperor Pedro 1^st to rule an extremely large empire. The Emperor proved autocratic and after an uprising fled to Britain.

One subject that would have linked Brazil and West Africa where Da Silveria worked would have been slavery. The Portuguese had began to take slaves from West Africa in the late 15th century and slaves were forcibly taken in their millions over the next 300 years to North and South America. By the early 19^th century a country like Sierra Leone, by then a British possession, would have been in the front line in the attempt by the British to drive slave trading out of the continent. During the period that Da Silveria worked there the British launched military expeditions against slave owning chiefs. Perhaps he was ensuring Brazil’s interests, still slave based, were defended? It took Brazil several years to take the decision to abolish slavery and then only after considerable British pressure.

A clue about the wealth of Da Silveria emerged at the inquest when reference was made to him living at a London address and also a Liverpool one. The London address of Portland Place would have been very fashionable in 1836 as the Adam brothers designed the houses only a few decades before. In the case of the Liverpool address the area around Great Charlotte St was rapidly being developed in Liverpool, a city that had very strong slavery associations.

At the inquest a local doctor, Dr Robins, reported examination of the corpse revealed that the bullet had entered the head of Da Silveria through the right lobe of the ear and had travelled upward causing an inch long exit wound. Mention is also made of an old injury on the back of the head, which he had complained about to Henry Numes, a personal friend of Da Silveria and lived in Liverpool. The doctor also suggested that the dead man’s liver showed signs of damage.

Numes gave a vital clue at the inquest, which confirms Da Silveria involvement in West Africa. He said that Da Silveria had moved to Liverpool only 4 months before he shot himself in Leek. He was on long-term sick leave from the Brazilian Government after falling ill with a fever in West Africa. He told the coroner that his friend was of a depressed state of mind as a consequence of his work in Sierra Leone.

Another possible reason for the action taken by De Silveria was that he was under investigation by the authorities and the police accused of a massive fraud against the Brazilian Government. In fact the Consul General for the Brazilian Government and a man called Ruthven a detective hired by him attended the inquest. The matter led to a great deal of interest in the town with over 200 trying to attend the inquest in the Red Lion

A history of smells

A few weeks ago I received a letter from Shirley Williams thanking me for sending her an article I had written on her mother Vera Brittain. In the piece, which appeared in May, I wrote of Vera’s taking her Oxford entrance exam at Leek College one hot day in July 1914. She wrote of the unpleasantness of the occasion the consequence of being cooped up with “odiferious” 16-year-old students. In her letter of reply the Baroness believed that the personal hygiene of teenagers had not changed much in a century. It’s an opinion, which I challenge given the range of deodorants available. But nevertheless this led me to think of the olfactory landscape of North Staffordshire in the past.

One great change is the absence of horses nowadays compared with 100 years ago the by-product of equines would have been very noticeable as would have been the absence of cars and exhaust fumes. People would have smelt of carbolic, especially as soap become more widely available after the 1880s. There was the odour of camphor from mothballs on clothes during the winter. My mother recalls clearly the smell of “Rinso” on washing hanging in the alleyways in the 1930s. Industry would have its own emanations. Smoke hung heavily in the air. Dye works gave off a pungent fragrance. The smell of steam trains to me is wonderfully evocative, other places would give off from less pleasing stenches. A friend recalls the reek coming from a bone mill near to where he lived in Silverdale. Slaughterhouses smelt of blood and the acrid smell of scorched hide, but for my mother an unforgettable aroma was that of roasting meat on the range. My own Proustian recollection is that of hot Brown’s sausage rolls in Stoke market. Of cigarette smoke during a football match combining agreeably with wintergreen. And I do miss the smell of pipe tobacco in public places.

Certain places carry with them unique bouquets. I always think of the pleasing reek of Higson’s brewery- sadly gone- as you walked out of Lime Street Station in Liverpool. When the wind was in the right direction aniseed fragrance from the Uncle Joe’s Mint balls factory pervaded the air of Wigan and catching a train in Worcester was made the more congenial by the close proximity of the Lee and Perrin works.