Contents:
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 Canadian Yann Martel's surreal
fable 'Life of Pi' has won the prestigious Man Booker Prize
2002. Martel was the bookmakers' favourite for his tale in which
an Indian family who run a zoo take their animals to America but the boat
sinks and the boy is stranded on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger called Richard
Parker.
The
winner was announced at a ceremony at the British Museum in London and his
publisher, Canongate, said that almost all of a new print run of 30,000 books
had been sold to bookshops by the following Wednesday. |
"Every Picture Tells A Story" - Illustrated books by
Randolph Caldecott, Walter Crane and Others from the Early Children's
Books Collection, Harrogate Library, an exhibition at:
Royal
Pump Room Museum, Crown Place, Harrogate, HG1 2RY - Saturday 5th October
to 5th January 2003. Caldecott books are also on show at Harrogate Library,
Victoria Avenue 1st October - 14th November. |
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For fans of the Crime, Detective
and Spy genre - the PFFA are holding a specialist bookfair on Saturday
23rd November in the Melbourne Room of the Crown Hotel,Crown Place, Harrogate.
10.30-4.30, Admission £2 |
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from G. A. Michael Sims - 'A Book for all Reasons'
Collecting
Royal Naval Patrol Service books |
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Brief history of the Royal Naval Patrol
Service |
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The Royal Naval Patrol Service (RNPS) was a 'navy within a navy' during
WW2.
In 1939 much of Britain’s domestic freight distribution still relied
on coastal shipping. The experience of WW1 had taught the Royal Navy that
mines in our coastal waters could bring this distribution to a standstill
and they recruited to the Reserve many civilian fishermen from the home fishing
fleets to act, with their vessels, in a minesweeping role.
At
the outbreak of WW2 this reserve was mobilised and became the Royal Naval
Patrol Service with a shore base at Lowestoft in Suffolk. Originally HMS
Pembroke X (as a subsidiary of Chatham which was HMS Pembroke) it soon became
a base in its own right called HMS Europa. |
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These
reservists were similar in many ways to the ‘pals’ battalions of
WW1 in that they had known and worked with each other in peacetime and now
found themselves facing a new enemy together. Despite some postings in the
interests of Naval efficiency, many men swapped their draft chits so that
they could remain together - resulting in chaos in pay records and even in
some cases, false 'missing' notifications sent to next of kin when ships
were lost at sea.
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Purpose
of the RNPS |
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A
major role of the RNPS was to keep “the war channel” clear in home
waters, a channel which was kept swept through enemy minefields laid off
the East and South coasts of the British Isles. In the daytime attacks by
fighter-bomber aircraft were frequent and most nights visits by E-boats and
aircraft would re-block the war channel with mines. It was the job of RNPS
to clear them again - especially hazardous as new types of mines were developed
from the traditional contact mine, including magnetic, acoustic and pressure
as well as combinations of these types. It could often take the loss of several
vessels before it was realised that a new type of mine had been encountered.
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The vessels employed in the early days were mainly civilian craft
requisitioned for Naval service - trawlers, drifters, paddle steamers, etc.
It was not until later in the war that specialist small minesweeping craft
such as the Motor Minesweeper were built.
Some
of the larger trawlers of RNPS were also used in an anti-submarine role.
Many of the Atlantic and later the Arctic convoys would have a trawler as
one of the escort vessels, acting both as a rescue ship and as a listening
post for submarine activity.
Whatever
their role these vessels were officially only lightly armed, with usually
only a 12 pounder on the fo’c’sle and a couple of half inch machine
guns on the bridge but many were also veterans of Dunkirk and unofficially
sported a miscellany of weapons liberated from that operation. |
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Collectable
works featuring the RNPS |
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The
earliest accounts of the work on RNPS appear in some of the wartime anthologies
and are of little interest because the prevailing censorship prevented the
inclusion of much factual detail.
An
early title to look out for is ‘Terriers of the Fleet - The Fighting
Trawlers’ written by an anonymous author using the pseudonym
‘First Lieutenant’ and although undated was published by Hutchinson
about 1943.
A.
Cecil Hampshire was the first to write in more detail in his ‘Lilliput
Fleet’, published by Kimber in 1957. In the same year Souvenir Press
published Alexander McKee’s ‘Coal-Scuttle Brigade’
about the East coast convoys, the title making reference to the fact that
many of the merchant vessels were colliers and coal fired, as were many of
the minesweepers. In 1958 Jarrolds published ‘Glory Passed them
By’ by Ewart Brookes, an account by the one-time commander of a
minesweeping flotilla at Dover who went on to become a novelist.
A
detailed history by Hilbert Hardy, ‘The Minesweepers
Victory’, was issued by the small Kent publisher Keydex in a limited
edition in 1967 but probably the best known history is ‘Trawlers
go to War’ by Paul Lund and Harry Ludlam (Foulsham 1971), an account
told by anecdotes resulting from numerous interviews with members of RNPS,
and the sequel which included the ‘pusser’ branch of minesweeping,
the RN Fleet sweepers, called ‘Out Sweeps’ (Foulsham 1978)
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There are many references the RNPS in other works, not least by Nicholas
Monsaratt in his early stories about his time in corvettes in the North Sea,
and a number of other books of reminiscences by ex-RNPS members. The following
is a list the titles already mentioned as well as some others that we have
come across: |
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Fane,
Robert - We Clear the Way - Hurricane Books - 1942
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Fane,
Robert - Ships May Proceed - Hurricane Books - 1943
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'First
Lieutenant' - The Terriers of the Fleet - The Fighting Trawlers - Hutchinson
- 1943
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HMSO - His Majesty's Minesweepers - HMSO - 1943
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Monsarrat, Nicholas - East Coast Corvette - Cassell - 1943
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Monsarrat, Nicholas - Corvette Command - Cassell - 1944
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Hampshire, A. Cecil - Lilliput Fleet - Kimber - 1957
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McKee, Alexander - Coal-Scuttle Brigade - Souvenir Press - 1957
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Brookes, Ewart - Glory Passed them By - Jarrolds - 1958
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Ogden,
Graeme - My Sea Lady - Hutchinson - 1963
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Lund, Paul and Ludlam, Harry - Trawlers go to War - Foulsham - 1971
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Hardy, Hilbert - Minesweepers Victory - Keydex - 1976
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Lund, Paul and Ludlam, Harry - Out Sweeps - Foulsham - 1978
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McAra,
Charles - Mainly in Minesweepers - Leach - 1991
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Melvin,
Michael - Minesweeper - The Role of the Motor Minesweeper in WW2 - Square
One - 1992
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Brown, Jimmy - Harry Tate's Navy - Privately published - 1994
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Featherbe, F. C. (compiler) - Churchill's Pirates - North Kent Books -
1994
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Featherbe, F. C. (compiler) - More Tales from Churchill's Pirates - North
Kent Books - 1996
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For
further information about the work of RNPS and their veterans association,
see their website at:
http://www.rnps.lowestoft.org.uk |
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Five books have made it to the
shortlist of The Guardian First Book Awards
Two "genre-breaking novels" are favourite to win the Guardian first book
awards this year. Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated, the story
of a young Jewish-American's life-changing visit to the Ukraine, is strong
favourite. Next on the list is Hari Kunzru's The Impressionist, about the
son of an Indian opium addict mother and a British forester father.
The
other books making the shortlist include Mapping Mars, a history of the red
planet; Alexandra Fuller's Don't Let's Go To The Dogs Tonight, a story of
her childhood in Rhodesia; and Sandra Newman's magic realist The Only Good
Thing Anyone Has Ever Done.
The
winner of the competition takes away a £10,000 prize. The shortlist
has been picked by the public - four reading groups in Glasgow, London, Brighton
and Oxford chose the titles. The winning book is decided by a panel of judges
- including novelist Irvine Welsh, broadcaster Mark Lawson and actor Kathy
Burke - on 3 December. The competition, formerly known as the Guardian Fiction
Award, has been running for 37 years. |
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Next Month:
In
December 2002 the featured article will be by Magpie Books |
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