Eric Flower - Malta Convoy, Operation Pedestal

Eric Charles Flower joined the Royal Navy after leaving school before his 16th birthday. HMS Manchester was commissioned in 1938 and built on the River Tyne, Eric was posted north to oversee the ship's completion. Here he met his future wife Dorothy Tinmouth.

His daughter Dorothy said: "HMS Manchester was a town class cruiser destroyer and she was among the fleet of ships that were deployed to take the much-needed aid to Malta where the people were cut off and starving. The route was hazardous with numerous attacks and challenges to the convoy vessels all the way there. In one incident, the ship's starboard side was struck by two torpedoes, plunging the engine room into darkness and causing serious damage and with jammed rudders, she was circling an 11-degree list while the engine room was both flooded and on fire. At 2:00 AM half an hour after the torpedo had struck, the captain Harold Drew, decided his ship was unsavable. They were only about two miles off the North African coast and as the dawn was breaking, she was becoming increasingly vulnerable to an air attack. Captain Drew had to decide whether to save the valuable ship or the equally precious lives of his crew, of more than 600 men. The crew took to boats and rafts and some even swam the two miles to reach the coast of North Africa." This was the famous Operation Pedestal.

Eric stayed on board with the captain and they scuttled the boat rather than let it fall into enemy hands. Captain Drew was court-martialed for scuttling the ship. This decision infuriated Eric and when he came home from the trial, he threw his cap down the hallway and said, "that's me finished with the Navy." The Royal Navy top brass were more interested in their own reputations and the ship rather than the lives of 600 men. A later diving operation revealed the extensive damage HMS Manchester had suffered.

On reaching Tunisia, Eric was taken as a prisoner of war to an internment camp, Laghouat in Algeria. The Red Cross informed his wife that he was a prisoner. They kept themselves stimulated by teaching each other topics they knew, they called their group "Laghouat University". Years later Dorothy would say to her father: "What's for tea? I'm starving." Her father would reply "Please don't say that you don't know what starving is." All they had to eat in the camp was figs.

He was released after several months and returned to sea. In another wartime incident, he was sitting right next to two other colleagues when one of his colleagues was shot.

After the war, Eric became a woodwork teacher in South Shields. He was unable to talk about his wartime experiences until many years later when he discussed them with one of his daughter's friends who was of a similar age to himself. He was an avid table tennis player and still very active till late on in life. Eric Charles Flower died in 2006.

Audio and transcription are attached.