For years a rare print hung in my basement - in poor light, and definitely under-appreciated. Only last week did I place it upon the fireplace mantel (while my wife wasn’t looking) and subsequently discover its real value.
[“Cunard Line, Canadian Services, circa 1920s”]
My father gave it to me at least 20 years ago and one friend of mine loved it so much (“Love at first sight,” he told me) he stole it from my house one evening - as a joke - and once caught tried to make me swear to make him the beneficiary of the print in my will. I told him ‘No’, feeling it must be worth something.
[“Heading west passed The Needles”]
Resting upon the mantel, the ‘two-stacker’ appears to be travelling west toward my dining room, and while researching the print’s title (‘PASSING THE NEEDLES’) I learned the Cunard ship is in fact travelling west into the English Channel from the north side of the Isle of Wight, UK. It’s very likely heading toward the Atlantic Ocean, destined for Halifax or Montreal, Canada.
And I feel now, having learned more about The Needles and the Isle of Wight, and more about my father’s adventures during World War II, I know why my father immediately felt connected to it when he first saw it inside the train station in his home town.
My father began work at the Norwich Co-op in the west end of Norwich (situated near the station) in the late 1930s or early 1940s at about twenty years of age, and retired from the job in the mid-1970s. During that time he took one leave of absence, from 1941 to 1945, and travelled to many unsettling parts of the world with the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve (RCNVR).
["Norwich Co-op fire, 1989.”: photo by V. Whitcroft]
After the train station closed he asked someone if he could have it, and shortly thereafter received it. To my knowledge, no money changed hands. And, as far as I can recall, shortly after he gave it to me I stripped off several coats of white paint from the frame, exposed the words ‘Cunard Line,’ felt it might be worth a few dollars someday, and hung it - none too proudly, I suppose - in my basement.
(A Cunard match book came with it, and according to the internet the match book is worth about 6 pounds 50p, whatever that is).
Once I’d placed the print upon my living room mantel I asked myself, “What prompted him to think he must have it?” And since that day I’ve discovered there may be several answers.
In 1942, while with the RCNVR, father sailed from a training base in Scotland to Southhampton, England on the Ennerdale. Between Milford Haven, Wales and Cowes, Isle of Wight the ship was attacked by German planes.
About the attack my father writes the following:
“Eight German JU 88s came from the east, took position in the sun and attacked us from the stern. It was perhaps between eight and nine o’clock because I had undressed and climbed into my hammock next to Stoker Fred Alston. When the Klaxon went everybody hit the deck and tried to dress, and being the largest ship, we knew we were in for it.” (pg 19, “DAD, WELL DONE”: Navy Memoirs of Doug Harrison)
While scrambling to find his socks and sweater, father might have thought back to the words told him by one of the ship’s crew a day or two earlier. “I wish we weren’t going on this ship, matey,” said the crew member, and when father asked why he was told, “‘cause we got a bloody basinful last time!”
In his memoirs father adds, “we got our basinful this time too.”
He also writes the following:
“I got my socks on, put my sweater on backwards and got the suspenders on my pants caught on the oil valves. I was hurrying like hell and nearly strangled myself - scared to death. They needed an extra gunner so L. Campbell of London, Ontario (later to die of wounds suffered at Dieppe) said, “Let me at him.”
“The bombs came - and close. They really bounced us around. The gun crew on the foc’sle of the ship was knocked clear off the gun by the concussion and fell but were only bruised.
“The attack was short and sweet but it seemed an eternity. A near miss had buckled our plates and we lost all our drinking water. I ventured out on deck immediately and picked up bomb shrapnel as big as your fist. I noticed the deck was covered with mud from the sea bottom. I kept the shrapnel as a souvenir along with many other items I had but, alas, they were all lost in Egypt.
“We arrived at Cowe [sic] the next day with everyone happy to be alive and still shaking. It indeed had been a basinful. Incidentally, two German 88s were shot down. Norm Mitchison of Niagara Falls was credited with two planes shot down during the course of the war; one at Dieppe and one at Sicily. Both were low flying bombers. His weapon was a strip Lewis .303. (pg. 19 - 20, “DAD, WELL DONE”)
Having read father’s story carefully I wouldn’t be surprised if somewhere in the Niagara Falls area there is a member of Norm Mitchison’s family with a replica of ‘a strip Lewis .303’ hanging over a fireplace. (Okay, maybe not over the fireplace, but in a handy spot where it could be pointed out to others while a story was told about it.)
["The Needles are pieces of chalk cliff, Isle of Wight"]
I also would not be surprised by the story my father could tell - if he was here - about ‘Passing The Needles’ and what it meant to him when he saw it hanging inside a train station in his hometown several years after the war had ended.
The print would have surely reminded him of the time he reached safety after experiencing his first air attack. He would likely have saluted each of The Needles in turn as they came into view, and at the same time felt ever so happy to see dry land, and friendly, well-protected land, as the Isle of Wight was home to a Polish destroyer (at Cowes) in 1942.
As well, the print of The Needles, situated in the English Channel, would serve as a reminder of so many other events and adventures he’d experienced (directly and indirectly) on or near the shores of the channel during his time overseas.
For example:
The loss of friends at Dieppe, 1942
Training at HMS Westcliff, at Southend-On-Sea, 1942
The voyage through the Channel to North Africa, 1942
His friendship with Gracie Purvis of Croydon, Southend-On Sea, 1942
The Top-Hat Pub and many more, Southend-On Sea and London, 1942 and 1943
The voyage through the Channel to South Africa, 1943
The voyage through the Channel to and from Sicily and Italy, 1943
I think finding and bringing home the Cunard print was a good deed on my father’s part. Though he lost shrapnel and his other war-time souvenirs in Egypt, he perhaps found a fitting replacement a hundred steps away from his peacetime workplace.
The print not only looks ‘smashing’ atop my mantel, it infuses life into many of father’s 70-year-old adventures and subsequent stories as well. And some of them I finally understand.
[Photos by GH]
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The Needles are the western most point of the Isle of Wight and are a series of chalk stacks which protrude into the sea at the end of which is a lighthouse. Nearby is Alum Bay, which is home of the famous coloured sand... The sea around the Needles was notorious for shipwrecks. The first lighthouse was built in 1785 on top of the downs, the current one during from the 1850's. Photo and more information @ Alum Bay and The Needles.
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