Ogmore Valley Heritage Hub

HMS Quannet, Ogmore Valley`s Adopted Ship in WWII

Whilst browsing through the Ogmore & Garw Urban District Council Minutes I noticed several mentions of HMS Quannet and it’s `adoption` by the inhabitants of the Ogmore Valley in 1942. Now most people will have heard of the larger cities like Cardiff, Belfast or London adopting a warship and then having the ship named after the city, but perhaps not a small mining community like the Ogmore Valley and what type of vessel was HMS Quannet, what was her history and just how did the Ogmore Valley adopt her.

Initially the story was hard to research as there were only snippets of information in the Ogmore & Garw Urban district Council Minutes with vague references to correspondence between the Council and the Admiralty and despite extensive searching, no newspaper coverage has come to light.

However it wasn’t long before Wikipedia came to the rescue on the general background on just what was “Warship Week”, and indeed the similar “War Weapons Week” and “Wings for Victory” campaigns.

Warship Week`s were British National savings campaigns during the Second World War, with the adoption of a Royal Navy Warship by a civil community. A level of savings would be set to raise enough money to provide the cost of building a particular naval ship. The aim was for cities to raise enough to adopt battleships and aircraft carriers, while towns and villages would focus on cruisers and destroyers. Smaller towns and villages would be set a lower figure. Once the target money was saved for the ship, the community would adopt the ship and its crew.

Local charity organisations, churches and schools would provide the crews of the adopted ship with gloves, woollen socks and balaclavas. Children would often write letters and send cards to the crew. When possible, officers and men from the adopted ship would visit the local community. To celebrate their visit, a parade would often be organised in their honour. Though we have no information at this moment in time that there was any correspondence between members of the ships crew to any local people in the community, however the Captain of HMS Quannet did write an open letter to the Ogmore valley citizens in 1943.

During the early parts of the war, the Royal Navy not only had lost many capital ships but was facing increasing pressure to provide escorts to precious convoys in the Atlantic. While there was not a shortage of sailors, ships sunk by enemy action had to be replaced.
Between 1941 and 1942, the concept of National Savings was introduced by the British government. Each region in the country was provided with a savings target to achieve. This was based on the region’s population, with each general level of savings having a class of warship assigned. This became known as Warship Week, due to its similarities with War Weapons Week – which was a drive to replace the materiel lost at Dunkirk through a savings campaign.

The ship’s commanding officer would exchange plaques, objects and photographs with the city or town that reached the target set, and an adoption would begin. The number of warships adopted was over 1200, and this number included the battleships, cruisers, destroyers and trawlers.

The total amount raised for the war effort was £955,611,589. A community would sponsor a ship through individual savings in government bonds and national savings certificates. The campaigns were organised by the National War Savings Committee with the full support of the Admiralty. There were a total of 1,178 warship weeks organised during the campaign’s duration, involving a total of 1,273 districts. A press announcement quoted the adoption of eight battleships, four carriers, forty-nine cruisers, three hundred and one destroyers, twenty-five submarines, one hundred and sixty-four corvettes and frigates and two hundred and eighty-eight minesweepers.

Other national war campaigns included the ‘Wings For Victory’ Week to purchase bomber planes, a ‘Spitfire Week’ to purchase fighter planes, a ‘War Weapons Week’ and a ‘Tanks For Attack’ Week.

On a local level the Warship Week was quickly adopted and an “Ogmore Valley Local Savings Committee” was formed with the following members;

Chairman T. Llewellyn Esq. J.P
Hon. Secretary T. Jacob Jones M.C., B.A.
Barclays Bank Mr. E. M. Evans
Treasurer Miss Ray Evans
Secretary Miss K. Griffiths
Chairman Publicity Mr. C. R. John B.A.
Secretary, Publicity Mr. Iestyn J. Rees
Nantymoel Co-op Mr. David Jones
Savings Group Rep. Rev. A. E. Roberts
Midland Bank Mr. A. Ivor Thomas
Postmaster Councillor Morgan Thomas

With the committee in place the date was set for the warship week running from Saturday 7th to Saturday 14th March 1942 with the stated aim of raising £50,000 in savings in Government War Bonds or simply in savings accounts, whether by local businesses or by members of the public.

That the community would respond positively was never in doubt by the committee as they stated on the poster and flyers;
Before “War Weapons Week”, 1941 average weekly Savings amounting to £1,500 were attained through the local savings groups.

War Weapons Week 1941 raised a total of £75,000 – nearly five times the objective, and an average of £6/16/0 per head of the population. Of this sum £50,000 came from the small investors through the groups”.
It is worth noting at this point there were over 90 registered groups covering just about every street and organisation throughout the valley.

The week started with a reception in the Queens Room of the Ogmore Valley Kings Head Hotel, where the Chairman, T. Llewellyn Esq, J.P., members of the committee and invited representatives hosted Captain Hugh Trevor Pritchard R.N. at 3-o-clock which would be followed by a Mass Parade of the services and public gatherings at Nantymoel Memorial Hall and St. John`s Square.

The week was an unqualified success with a grand total of savings reaching £86,702/9s/3d and with the population of the district at that time being 10,800, this meant they had raised £8-0-7 per head, which surpassed their magnificent effort for War Weapons Week.

So having exceeded their target the Ogmore Valley formally adopted HMS Quannet, with the Garw valley having raised £25,000 they adopted Her Majesties Torpedo Boat 57.

But what sort of vessel was HMS Quannet and what exactly is a “Quannet”? The dictionary definition gives us:
Noun: quannet (plural quannets) (archaic) A flat file having the handle at one side, so as to be used like a plane.
HMS Quannet was a Boom Defence vessel, the definition of which is:

A net laying ship, also known as a net layer, net tender, gate ship or boom defence vessel was a type of small auxiliary ship.
A net layer’s primary function was to lay and maintain steel anti-torpedo or anti-submarine nets. Nets could be laid around an individual ship at anchor, or around harbors or other anchorages. Net laying was potentially dangerous work, and net laying seamen were experts at dealing with blocks, tackles, knots and splicing. As World War II progressed, net layers were pressed into a variety of additional roles including salvage, troop and cargo transport, buoy maintenance, and service as tugboats.

The earliest mention we have our HMS Quannet is as part of the North Atlantic Command based at Takoradi, Gold Coast (now Ghana) when she deployed to Freetown, Sierra Leone. Freetown being a major British port in West Africa at that time and key to protecting the South Atlantic convoy routes.

In 1940, HMS Quannet took part in Operation MENACE which was approved by the War Cabinet on 27th August 1940. It was an expedition to capture and occupy Dakar in the French West Africa colony (now Senegal). Charles de Gaulle convinced the British Government that he only had to appear with a token force at Dakar, and the populace and armed forces there would rally to him. The British Government also considered occupation of Dakar necessary due to its strategic importance to the North and South Atlantic shipping routes and to forestall its use by Germany. The operation was to be carried out by a joint Free French and British force. One of the little known reasons for Great Britain being interested in Dakar was the existence of 1,475 tons of gold bullion [which broke down as 1,200 tons French, 200 tons Belgian and 75 tons Polish]. This gold had been sent to Dakar by the French government just before the French capitulation. The British government was desperate to ensure that the Vichy government didn’t hand the gold over to Germany.

Operation MENACE was effectively ended when HMS Resolution was hit by a torpedos fired by the Vichy French submarine BEVEZIERS and Churchill ended the debacle officially at 13:27 on 26th September 1940 with all ships returning to Freetown including HMS Quannet.
The effects of the Allied failure were mostly political. De Gaulle had believed that he would be able to persuade the Vichy French at Dakar to change sides, but this turned out not to be the case, a result that damaged his standing among the Allies. Even his success in the Battle of Gabon two months later did not wholly repair this damage.

English novelist Evelyn Waugh participated in the expedition as an officer in the Royal Marines. The battle has a role in his semi-autobiographical novel Men at Arms, which forms the first part of his Sword of Honour trilogy.

After the official adoption by Ogmore & Garw Urban District Council, there was some delay in getting the plaques exchanged between the council and the Admiralty due to the volume of plaques required and after all, there was a war on at the time. The plaque for the council to present to HMS Quannet duly arrived from H. Cave & Sons of Swansea, though it bears the wrong dates of “8th-15th March” for Warship Week not the correct dates.

The council then attempted to organise an event to exchange plaques with a representative from the Admiralty but was again delayed for many weeks as councillors in the Ogmore and Garw couldn’t agree on dates and eventually settled for seperate dates to exchange plaques.
The Ogmore Valley Plaque was eventually sent and the ships Captain, Lieutenant J. Davidson RNR, sent an open letter to the inhabitants of the Valley to thanks them and to establish links.

Not much more is known about the service of HMS quannet other than the ship remained at Freetown, Sierra Leone and the next information is from Craig Stores, a ship repair yard based in Aberdeen Scotland in January 1950, advising that the plaque from HMS Quannet has been despatched by parcel post to the clerk of Ogmore & Garw Urban District Council and we know it was received as the clerk replied to Craig stores acknowledging receipt of the plaque.

The intention was to display the plaque in the Council offices and we can only assume at this point that it was indeed delivered somewhere in a council building within the district, though no mention or image of the plaque in any council building has been recorded since that last letter in 1950.

However in a strange twist of fate Les Allen, one of our members who also attends the meetings of the Gilfach Goch History Society was in July 2013, given a photo of the plaque by a new member to the meetings in Gilfach by Mr Lynden Roberts asking “would it be of interest to the Ogmore Valley Society”? Lynden explained that he had found the plaque in 1967 whilst working for the forestry commission in the area around the coal screens for the Central Washery in what must have been an old rubbish dump at some point for the council.

Where the plaque was located between 1950 and 1967 we have no clue, or why it was unceremoniously dumped by the council, however we are delighted to say that Mr Roberts donated the plaque to the Society being pleased the plaque was “going home”. it is now located in the Ogmore Valley Heritage Hub where it will remain for future generations to view and perhaps learn of the fantastic war effort the inhabitants of the Ogmore Valley and District carried out by raising massive amounts of savings at a time when the majority of the valley would not have had much in the way of spare money to save under normal circumstances.

In completing this article my thanks to the Glamorgan Record Office and their extensive collection of council correspondence on HMS Quannet, Wikipedia for information on Boom Defence Vessels, “Warship Weeks” and the Battle of Dakar (Operation Menace) and to Les Allen and particularly Lynden Roberts of the Gilfach Goch History Society for finding, looking after and ultimately returning the presentation plaque that was actually on board HMS Quannet during at least part of it’s war service at Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Known Captains of HMS Quannet:
Lieutenant C E Richardson RNR, 1940
Temporary Lieutenant W. P. Jones RNR, 1940, 1941
Lieutenant J. Davidson RNR 1943