HMT Watchful.

 

 

 This is the story of an historic little ship, built by Fellows & Company at Great Yarmouth in 1935, specifically designed as a pleasure cruiser, taking visitors for sightseeing trips. Brit was 88ft long with a beam of 19ft and a draught of 3ft, displaced some 72 tons and was powered by twin Crossley diesel engines, giving her a cruising speed of 10 knots. She was licenced for 200 passengers and for the next several years she operated excursions, taking holidaymakers out along the Norfolk coast.

 That was until the 16^th September 1939, a fortnight after the declaration of war, when Brit was requisitioned by the Admiralty for War Duties and then assigned to the stone frigate HMS Watchful as her tender. As HM Tender Watchful, her preparation for a wartime role included mounting a gun on her foredeck but initially she was employed delivering stores and munitions, etc. to vessels in Yarmouth roads.

 HMS Watchful had previously been a naval hospital, originally built during the Napoleonic Wars, whose first customers were seven sailors and seventeen Waterloo soldiers who were eventually buried in the courtyard. By 1863 the hospital was used as an asylum for naval personnel; continuing in that use right up to 1939, viz this notice from 1931:

 

          

  

The rather blunt Admiralty wording appears to lack the more sympathetic approach we might expect nowadays. In fact during late 1939 all 200+ patients were transferred to a safer facility in Lancashire and the hospital became an anti-submarine and minesweeper base as HMS Watchful.

 For the following months HMT Watchful continued her deliveries avoiding the regular bombing raids on the vessel and her shore establishment. All that was to change in May 1940 when this Admiralty instruction was received:

 

 

            

 This was Operation Dynamo, the attempt to extract as many troops as possible from among those trapped on the Dunkirk beaches. It is said that Dynamo was named for the room (ex dynamo generator room) within Dover Castle where Admiral Ramsey and staff planned and co-ordinated the rescue.

 

             

                               A group of Dunkirk-bound motor launches in tow on the Thames.

 

HMT Watchful joined a flotilla of around 850 trawlers, drifters, lifeboats, ferries and private motor launches departing Ramsgate on the 27 May 1940 for Dunkirk. Their particular role was to ferry men from the shallows out to the destroyers and larger vessels too deep to approach the beach. Theirs was the most dangerous task, exposed to the maximum risk by shelling, attack from Stuka dive bombers and occasionally by mines. On the first day barely 8000 men were rescued but, by the 4^th June, around 338,000 men were recovered… well beyond the original estimate of 45,000. Watchful is reported to have helped hundreds of troops reach larger ships waiting off shore and in the final days, helped rescue hundreds more from the beach in three cross-channel trips.  She was subsequently retained at Dover through June and July in the operation to recover bodies from the channel. One third of these heroic little ships failed to return; lost to the violence of the enemy.

  

On her release from war duties HMT Watchful was returned to her owners, operating successfully as Brit once more, from Britannia Pier, Gt. Yarmouth. Then in 1949 she was sold to a new owner who operated her on the Thames for the Festival of Britain. She was not entirely suitable for the Thames, being an open sea vessel, and was sold again in 1951 to new owners in Scarborough, who renamed her Yorkshire Lady. This was the boom era for seaside holidays and in 1961 her original Crossley engines were replaced with Gardners, increasing her cruising speed to 12 knots. She ran successfully through the 1970s, but foreign package tours had decimated the British seaside holiday business and she was soon up for sale again.

 

OK. Thank you for staying with me so far but you must be asking; ‘as interesting as this might be… what has this to do with Gibraltar?’ 

 Well, in 1985 after another change of name to MV Coronia, she began a six year residence in Gibraltar, operating as a dolphin watching boat. Many of us will remember the pleasure of taking our children or UK visitors on their first trip on board Coronia.

 

   

This Rock Photographic postcard illustrates that for many visitors Coronia became an integral part of their Gibraltar experience; but it wasn’t to last. By 1991 Scarborough was calling and Coronia was bought by North Sea Leisure Ltd. and summoned back to the UK.

By 2007 ownership was in the hands of skipper Tom Machin who found himself in trouble when a refit estimated at £40k ballooned to £200K. He was baled out by MP for Scarborough Robert Goodwill, who bought all 64 shares in the vessel, to save her for the nation. But her condition would gradually deteriorate and when sold to Graham Beesley and Pauline Field in 2017, she was virtually a wreck.

 

        

 Since then, over five years Coronia has been slowly and painfully brought back to life, largely by volunteers and with the co-operation of Hartlepool Marina where she is now berthed. Local companies have helped with a replacement funnel and a new generator and she was given a completely new upper deck and wheelhouse.  Graham recalls:

  ‘She was three months off being scrapped. She’s a living piece of British history that was very nearly lost.’

 Renamed MV Watchful she has permission to fly the UK National Historic Ships Ensign with a royal warrant and in May she intends to take part in the 85^th anniversary of Dunkirk, sailing to France with some of the 60 remaining Dunkirk Little Ships.

 

 

 

  

First published here in May 2025.           Paul Hodkinson.

                      p.s.   This was the Victorian entrance to Gt. Yarmouth Naval Hospital.

                                                           Does it look familiar to you?