Great uncle Harold Wheeler who survived the sinking of The Laconia

Discussion in 'User Introductions' started by debbied, Jan 10, 2011.

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  1. debbied

    debbied Junior Member

    Hi,

    I was very interested to find that I had a relative who was a British Sailor on The Laconia when she was torpedoed by the U Boat. His name was Harold Wheeler. I am reliably informed by his sisters ( cousins of my late father) that he was adrift in a rowing boat for 27 days before hitting the African coast. You can only imagine the horror of trying to survive in those conditions and having to dump people who they thought would not make it over the side of the boat before they were dead to enable the strong to survive. He was so traumatised by the experience that although he had to go back to see after the incident, he later emigrated to Australia after the war "breaking his mother's heart". I have yet to watch the documentary on the survivor's stories but there doesnt seem to be much about those boats which were adrift for a long period. I have seen on the internet that one chap was adrift for 40 days!
     
    debbied, Jan 10, 2011
    #1
  2. Drew5233

    Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive

    Hello and welcome to the forum.

    Do you know what rank your uncle was and what he was doing on the Laconia prior to being torpedoed? Did he ever records his experiences of the sinking?

    I thought the drama was very well done. I can appreciate how some relatives may feel that the part of the story that they relate to the most may not have received as much attention as they may have liked. Sadly the producers have to cover all aspects of this terrible incident from beginning middle and end and only have so much time to fit it all in.

    From a neutrals point of view I thought the lifeboat scenes were covered quite well as was all of the programme. Personaly I would have liked to have know what happened to the Third Officer, Mortimer taken to a PoW camp, the German lady who had passed herself off as a British subject and the Royal Artillery Officer, Captain Cootes (sp).

    I guess its a case of you can please some of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time.

    Ps. the longest survivor in a life boat is 133 days :)

    Regards
    Andy
     
    Drew5233, Jan 10, 2011
    #2
  3. Gibbo

    Gibbo Senior Member

    According to post no. 10 by KOF in the thread linked below, Ben Coutts wrote an autobiography called A Scot at War.

    http://www.ww2talk.com/forum/books-films-tv-radio/31755-sinking-laconia-survivors-stories.html


    There was some fictionalisation of characters in the TV drama. The Guardian says that Mortimer was based on the Laconia survivor Thomas Buckingham.

    Alan Bleasdale drama sets the record straight on heroic U-boat captain | Television & radio | The Observer

    Wikipedia mentions a survivor called Gladys Foster who didn't know for several days that her teenage daughter had also survived. The same thing happened to Lindsay Duncan's character in the TV drama, but she was called Elisabeth Fullwood.

    Laconia incident - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    The German woman may have been fictional. One of the newspaper previews said that the German TV company that co-produced it insisted on it including a sympathetic German character who wasn't in the Kriegsmarine. A google search on Hilda Smith Laconia produces only links to the TV drama.
     
    Gibbo, Jan 10, 2011
    #3
  4. Gibbo

    Gibbo Senior Member

    PS: From the National Library of Scotland's catalogue, Scotsman's War looks to be the title of Ben Coutts's war memoirs:

    WebVoyage
     
    Gibbo, Jan 10, 2011
    #4
  5. Gibbo

    Gibbo Senior Member

    Gibbo, Jan 10, 2011
    #5
  6. Drew5233

    Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive

    Cheers 7 Copies here for sale:

    Coutts - Scotsman's War - AbeBooks

    The Bio is interesting. I have the 98th Surrey and Sussex Yeomanry War Diary for 1940 and a Regimental history and they were in France from 1939 through to June 1940 and then went to Africa. He's not listed in the diaries or the history.
     
    Drew5233, Jan 10, 2011
    #6
  7. Mathsmal

    Mathsmal Senior Member

    Mathsmal, Jan 10, 2011
    #7
  8. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    Had this email send to the admin email account.

    I was a close friend of Harold Wheeler. We served together as Telegraphists in HMS Enterprise from early 1940 to September 1942 when we left together in Durban to join the Troop ship SS Laconia en route ( as we thought ! ) to the UK to commence our officer training courses. On the night of the sinking we walked down the steeply sloping port side of the ship and managed to swim a distance away before she sank and exploded. Harold wasn't much of a swimmer and I was able to use my schoolboy life-saving training to good advantage and helped him keep afloat. We were in the water for some hours before we were hauled into a passing life boat by an RN Petty Officer. He and an RAF Sgt were the only other British occupants. The remainder ( between 25 and 30 of them ) were Italian prisoners of war. Our experiences for the next 5 days and nights were similar to those of other life boat survivors -- the odd pemican biscuit, carefully rationed sips pf water and litle protection from the equatorial sun during the day and the cold air at night. The Petty officer whose name I have forgotten, unfortunately, was at the tiller and very much in command of the situation. The RAF bloke and Harold and I were commissioned to keep a close watch on the Italians but thankfully they were quite subservient and were obviously just happy to have survived. Eventually, on about the 4th day, we were taken on board the deck of one of the U-boats and fed and watered with soup and black bread before being returned to our life-boat and towed behind the Sub. Before she dived the seamen on deck let go the tow ropes and we were advised to stick close to the other boats in the vicinity as a Vichy French warship was on its way to pick us up. From then on our story of survival matched that of most of the other survivors : taken on board the Gloire to Dakar, then Casablanca where we held as prisoners of the Germans and Vichy French until released by the American invading forces in November 1942. Harold Wheeler and I, bearded and clad in French Foreign Legion garb, were whisked off from the prison camp with the other inmates and on to a fast American Transport Ship bound for New York, where we were publicly displayed, still in Prison camp uniform, on open decker buses and driven up 5th Avenue. Within hours, however , the RN authorities in NY got wind of our presence and with the other RN personnel we were quickly rounded up, re-kitted and transferred to yet another bloody Troop ship ( I think it was called the Westernfeldt -- or something similar ) and so back to the UK. Harold and I eventually met up again in Sydney at the end of the war and both opted to take our discharges from the RN in Australia. But that's a story for another time.
     
    Owen, Jan 17, 2011
    #8
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  9. Paul Reed

    Paul Reed Ubique

    What an excellent account!
     
    Paul Reed, Jan 17, 2011
    #9
  10. debbied

    debbied Junior Member

    I was fascinated to get your wonderful account of your time with Harold which I know his two sisters Ethel and Mary will be very interested to hear of. I am not sure whether he went into much detail on his return. Certainly his sisters only seemed to have a sketchy account when my sister asked them. wonderful that you also met up again in Sydney. I was intrigued that after such an awful traumatic time at sea that anyone would want to travel all that way!
     
    debbied, Jan 17, 2011
    #10
  11. At Home Dad (Returning)

    At Home Dad (Returning) Well-Known Member

    "We served together as Telegraphists in HMS Enterprise from early 1940 to September 1942 when we left together in Durban to join the Troop ship SS Laconia en route ( as we thought!) to the UK to commence our officer training courses."

    Would that make them the telegraphists onboard laconia? The one's shown in the dramatisation as staying at their posts until finally relieved by the character Mortimer?
     
    At Home Dad (Returning), Jan 17, 2011
    #11
  12. tarquini

    tarquini Member

    Can anyone say where the Italians had been taken POW?
     
    tarquini, Oct 3, 2011
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  13. ballyhoo

    ballyhoo Junior Member

    Andy below wonders what happened to 3rd Officer Mortimer, in real life he was Thomas Buckingham from Newcastle, he was taken off his life boat and taken to Milag camp in Northern Germany, which was liberated in April 1945. He did not have any daughters as in the BBC drama, but was married with two sons, and after the war he went back to work for Cunard on the cruise liners moving down to Southampton and Bournemouth. After working his way up to Chief Officer left the sea in 1965 and took a completely different job at British Aircraft Corp at Hurn airport Bounemouth retiring in 1976. He died in 1984.
    John.
     
    ballyhoo, May 20, 2013
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  14. Hugh MacLean

    Hugh MacLean Senior Member

    Short answer, no.
    Both were RN telegraphists and would be travelling as passengers. LACONIA had her own Merchant Navy radio officers.

    Regards
    Hugh
     
    Hugh MacLean, May 20, 2013
    #14
  15. BrianM59

    BrianM59 Senior Member

    I'm sure those interested in the sinking know this, but the Missing Person's file at Kew is WO316/193. I had occasion to look at it and there are some fascinating accounts of the incident and from the survivors in there. Represented many times in books, films and on TV, but I was quite gobsmacked reading some of the material - one that grabbed me particularly was a crew list or list of survivors from one lifeboat, done on a menu card or similar - I think I photographed it, but I'm away from my notes at the moment - will have a look.
     
    BrianM59, May 20, 2013
    #15

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