Cruel wartime sea takes civilian crew
(From The Orcadian dated November 6, 2003)

Rescuers battle to save crew from the SS Giralda off Grimness Head, South Ronaldsay, on January 30, 1940. The collier had been attacked by German aircraft. The crew made it into the lifeboat, but all were drowned when it capsized.

As Remembrance Sunday draws near, the folk of Orkney stand and bow at their war memorials and in churches as the clocks strike 11am, remembering family and friends who made the supreme sacrifice in time of war.

Many were not servicemen as we know them, but men of the Merchant Navy, serving in the small ships that plied our coasts bringing fuel and vital supplies to our islands.

Let us look at the sad loss of one such small ship, the SS Giralda.

This small steam ship was built in Lewis, in Aberdeen, in 1924. She was 2,178 tons and boasted 230 horsepower. She had been acquired by Salvesen & Co of Leith in 1926. The Giralda carried a crew of 23 men, many of them from Shetland. The whole crew’s monthly wages in 1939 was £291, while bunker coal to keep the ship at sea cost £18 and five shillings per ton.

On the afternoon of Tuesday, January 30, 1940, the Giralda was on passage from Ayr to Kirkwall with a cargo of coal.

Some of the people of South Ronaldsay who entered the raging surf to try to save the lives of those from the Giralda. The bodies of some from the Royal Oak had come ashore at the same place just a few months earlier.

Kirkwall was a port she had visited many times and where many of the crew had friends.

When the ship was three miles south-east of Grimness, South Ronaldsay, on a very dirty day, with a heavy sea running, out of the afternoon sky swooped two enemy aircraft with their bomb doors open over the Giralda.

They dropped their evil cargo with machine guns blazing and when the ship was ablaze from stem to stern and sinking, they disappeared over the horizon.

The crew, still all alive at this time, launched the ship’s lifeboat and abandoned the stricken vessel.

The memorial stone in St Olaf's Cemetery, in memory of the crew. It was erected by Salvesen & Co, of Leith.

A passing Scottish Airways aircraft discovered their plight and flew over them, waving encouragement, to which the Giralda’s crew members were able to wave back. It was not long before a crowd gathered on the shore at Grimness, not to watch but to help the shipwrecked men from the sea.

But it was a tragedy of war and the cruel sea, because within a quarter of a mile of the shore their lifeboat capsized in the heavy winter seas, casting men, some scantily clad, into the North Sea.

Coastguard, doctor, police, nurse and islanders stood by in horror, unable to help.

As the bodies came nearer the beach, men waded into the raging surf but were unable to save anyone.

All the crew were drowned, some 18 bodies came ashore and were recovered and conveyed to the Cromarty Hall in St Margaret’s Hope.

Other bodies drifted ashore later, their ages ranged from 17 to 62. Here they rested for the last time together, where a few months earlier had rested men from HMS Royal Oak.

The bodies of two of the crew were returned to Shetland; the captain and two others to Leith.

The graves of some of the 18 crew members, including ship's cook, George Masson, in St Olaf's Cemetery.

The remaining 18 were buried at St Olaf’s Cemetery, Kirkwall, on Sunday, February 4, 1940, at what must have been one of the biggest funerals to be held there.

They include a George Masson, aged 57.

His relatives, including Mrs Hilda Alexander, of Inverurie, believed the crew had all been killed by machine-gun fire while in the ship’s lifeboat.

George Masson was a cook and not a regular member of the crew of the SS Giralda. He had signed on just for the one trip, which was to be the last for him and for the other 22 men.

At St Olaf’s they lie together in peace as they did in war, overlooking Scapa Flow. Their graves are registered as official war graves. Let us hope: “We will remember them”.