A Lesson Not to be Forgotten

While returning from India aboard the RMS Georgic in 1947, Captain Harry Grattidge encountered a heavy fog and encountered what he considered to be a serious case of negligence on the part of another ship. He decided, therefore, to give them a lesson that they would not soon forget. But Captain Grattidge himself would also learn something.

Yes, she was a good ship, the Georgic, sturdy and reliable, with a whistle that cut the air like a razor if you needed it. It was...making for Liverpool, that I ran into fog off Anglesey, but not until the small hours of the morning did the officer of the watch send word that a vessel grouped around by smaller vessels had been plotted close ahead on the radar screen. So I ran topside to the bridge, reducing speed and altering course, blowing our whistle but getting no reply. Suddenly, at 2:30 A.M., the craft I had sought loomed out of the fog, close to our bow, silent as a ghost ship but with all her deck lights burning. By heaven, I thought, I'll teach them not to use their whistle when there's fog around, and for two unbroken minutes I made the night hideous with the ear-splitting scream of the Georgic's whistle.

Next morning, in Liverpool, Cunard's shore staff came aboard to ask searching questions. Had I run into anything unusual during the night? I gave the facts, but ended triumphantly: "If they threw a scare on me, I certainly threw a worse one on them. I blew the whistle so loudly that everyone asleep on that ship must have jumped clean from their bunks.

They seemed to know all about that. "The ship," explained one of them kindly, "was H.M.S. Dido.They were relying on radar, not blowing their whistle, so as to give their passengers a good night's rest."

Passengers on a destroyer? I said I could scarcely credit it. But no one had warned me, after all, that King George VI and Queen Elizabeth were crossing on an official visit to the Isle of Man.

Captain Grattidge would then write that his entire life had been full of mistakes like this one. But there is certainly no doubt that both parties learned a lesson from the entire experience.


References: Captain Harry Grattidge, Captain of the Queens: The Autobiography of Captain Harry Grattidge, Former Commodore of the Cunard Line as told to Richard Collier (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1956), 12-13.

Rivalries

The great rivalry between the White Star Line and Cunard is legendary among maritime enthusiasts. Each company was famous for trying to outdo the other by building bigger, faster, and more luxurious ships than the world had ever seen before (i.e., Cunard's Mauretania and Lusitania versus White Star's Olympic, Titanic, and Britannic). It should be no surprise to learn that this rivalry extended all the way down to those who actually worked aboard these liners. This was undoubtedly an underlying cause to an event that future-Commodore Harry Grattidge described while serving as Fourth Officer aboard the RMS Carpathia. But the main reason seems to have concerned a far deeper sense of rivalry:

At 6:30 P.M., a bugler sounded the dress call, which gave us just time to take our seats in the dining saloon as another bugle sounded at seven. At Genoa, where we lay alongside the White Star liner Canopic, the dinner bugle had provoked a long-standing feud. At the appointed hour the bugler from each ship would march solemnly on deck. To hail each other was beneath their dignity, nor did they even glance at each other, for, while our bugler had belonged to the Household Cavalry, the Canopic’s bugler had served with the Irish Guards. (Only a Guardsmen could appreciate the deep significance of this.)

Instead they let the music signify their rivalry and the harbor rang with the shrill notes of “The Roast Beef of Old England,” each man contesting for the extra note until one felt that their lungs must burst under the strain. They were implacable, they would not give up, and more often than not the contest ended in a dead heat.

As stated, sometimes this rivalry extended far beyond what company the crew individual member worked for. It nevertheless contributed to the somewhat tense relations between the White Star Line and Cunard.

References: Captain Harry Grattidge, Captain of the Queens: The Autobiography of Captain Harry Grattidge, Former Commodore of the Cunard Line as told to Richard Collier (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1956), 65-66.