North Carr: history

No ocean greyhound perhaps, but the North Carr Lightship has witnessed some of the most dramatic events in Scotland’s recent maritime history, not least during the Second World War when every Allied vessel bound to and from the Clyde and the Mersey had to pass through the North Channel. It was here, at this vital maritime crossroads off the Firth of Clyde, that the North Carr served as a beacon for vital Atlantic convoys and helped guide home the great Cunarders Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary bringing as many as 15,000 GIs at a time for the invasion of Europe.

Here too, in 1942, she marked the outbound route for the great invasion armada of 334 ships carrying 70,000 men bound for Operation Torch, the Anglo-American landing in North Africa. Once again, in 1943, a huge outbound assault convoy for Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily, passed by the Lightship. And she saw her share of enemy action while in the North Channel, notably in January 1945 when Oberleutnant Jürgen Kühlmann hid U-1172 right underneath the Lightship while he torpedoed a tanker and an aircraft carrier.

Post-war, the Lightship returned to her proper station off Fife Ness and a more peaceful existence. Peaceful, that is, until December 1959 when the east coast of Scotland was lashed by violent gales and blizzards for a whole week. The North Carr had stood up to countless storms, but this was something altogether different and finally, in the pitch-black early hours of 8 December, the Lightship’s massive anchor cable snapped and she began drifting towards the rock-bound Fife shore. The Broughty Ferry Lifeboat Mona responded to the Lightship’s call for help and was seen fighting her way through enormous seas into St Andrews Bay. But the Mona never reached the Lightship and, at daybreak, the wreck of the Lifeboat was found on the beach at Carnoustie. In and around her were the bodies of seven of her eight gallant volunteer crewmen; one man was never found. Meanwhile, Skipper Rosie and the crew of the North Carr managed to get a spare anchor to hold before being winched off by helicopter.

Now, in 2004, the North Carr lies in Dundee Harbour awaiting restoration. As a tangible link with Scotland’s maritime past, in particular with the grim war of attrition on the North Atlantic, she has to be worthy of preservation. And it is heartening to see that, unlike so many other maritime restoration projects, she will not become a dead ship, a rarely-visited burden on the public purse as nature, cash-strapped maintenance programmes and inevitable oxidisation take their toll. As headquarters ship for the Maritime Volunteer Service, the North Carr will benefit from all the care and attention that only a permanent crew can provide. But, most important of all, she will remain a living memorial to the eight brave men who set out into the teeth of that terrible storm in December 1959, never to return.

Andrew Jeffrey Ph.D (St And), January 2004.

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Dr Andrew Jeffrey has recently completed, at the School of History, St Andrews University, a major research project on Scotland’s maritime role in the Second World War. He is the author of four books on Scotland’s maritime history. Andrew Jeffrey is also an experienced seaman, having worked as both a fisherman and a yacht skipper, and having served in the Royal Naval Auxiliary Service. He is currently Deputy Coxswain of the Broughty Ferry Lifeboat Elizabeth of Glamis.