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Age-27

23, Isla Road, Plumstead

Q ships were designed to look like defenceless merchant ships which would lure enemy submarines to attack them on the surface. They would then reveal their hidden guns and engage the submarine. They were called Q ships after their home port of Queenstown in Ireland. There has been a long running debate as to their effectiveness in sinking German submarines with some maintaining that they were a waste of resources, pointing to the fact that minefields destroyed more U-boats. Nevertheless they accounted for 10% of U-boat sinkings.

HMS Bombala, sometimes known as the Steam Ship Willow Branch, was one of these Q Ships, equipped with concealed weaponry designed to lure submarines into making surface attacks. On 25th April 1918 she was off Cape Blanco on the west African coast, en route from Gibraltar to Sierra Leone, when she found herself between two German submarines, U-153 and U-154. A two and a half hours surface action followed in which, after having inflicted serious damage on the two submarines, HMS Bombala sank. The surviving crew members took to the lifeboats. The following passage is taken from Gibson & Prendergast "The German Submarine War 1914 - 18" page 297,

After the first day the ship's boats became separated. The master's boat was never seen again. The other drifted about under the blazing sun for eight days, the torments of agonizing thirst torturing the survivors. Some - 11 in all - drank sea water and went mad. On the ninth morning the 14 left made land in the estuary of the Senegal River. Two of the strongest cast about and found a tiny pool of water, and after drinking a little they tottered back to their comrades bearing the life giving fluid. it was too late, they had died. These two struggled on until the next day, then, found by friendly Arabs, they were taken to a French post.

Harold Cole was one of the ship’s crew who did not survive.