HMS Consort (R76): The Dash Down the Yangtze to Save the Amethyst

The Last of the Wartime Destroyers

HMS Consort was one of the C Class destroyers, thirty two ships ordered in 1942 in four groups of eight, the Ca, Ch, Co and Cr groups, and the last destroyers of the wartime emergency programmes. They had four 4.5 inch guns, torpedo tubes and a heavy close-range armament, and could make 36 knots.

Consort, of the Co group, was built by Alexander Stephen and Sons at Linthouse on the Clyde and launched in October 1944, but the war was over before she was ready, and she was commissioned on 19 March 1946. The photograph at the top of this page shows her in the Clyde on completion.

She went out to the Far East with the 8th Destroyer Flotilla, based at Hong Kong, with her sisters Cossack, Concord, Cockade, Constance, Comus and the rest. Apart from refits she would spend almost the whole of her ten-year career east of Suez, beginning with the Occupation of Japan.

Nanking

By the spring of 1949 the Chinese Civil War was reaching its climax. The Communist armies had reached the north bank of the Yangtze and were preparing to cross it, and the Nationalist capital, Nanking, lay on the south bank, some two hundred miles upriver from Shanghai.

The Royal Navy kept a warship at Nanking as guardship, to protect the British embassy and community and to take them off if need be, and in April 1949 that ship was Consort. She had been there a long time and was running short of supplies, and the frigate Amethyst was sent up the river to relieve her.

The Communists had issued an ultimatum to the Nationalists that expired on 20 April.

On the morning of 20 April, on her way up the river, Amethyst was fired on by Communist batteries on the north bank. Her bridge and wheelhouse were hit, her captain mortally wounded, and she ran aground on a mud bank with many dead and wounded aboard, still under fire.

The story of what followed for her, and of her escape three months later, is told in the article on HMS Amethyst.

20 April 1949

Vice Admiral Madden, second in command of the Far East Fleet, ordered Consort, under Commander Ian Robertson, to go to Amethyst's aid. She left Nanking at once and came down the river at thirty knots, and reached the stranded sloop at about two in the afternoon.

She was immediately heavily engaged by the batteries on the north bank. The fire was too heavy for her to stop alongside, and she passed Amethyst at speed, going on down the river with all her guns firing.

Two miles below, Commander Robertson turned her round and came back up the river to try to take Amethyst in tow. She came under such heavy fire again that the attempt had to be abandoned.

She answered the batteries with her full armament and signalled that she had silenced most of them, and then, half an hour later, her signals stopped as she turned and tried a second time. That attempt failed too.

She had been hit repeatedly, by one count fifty six times; her steering was damaged and she had men killed at their guns and on her bridge. Unable to do more, she went on downstream out of range.

At about eight that evening she met the cruiser London and the frigate Black Swan coming up the river at Kiang Yin, and was ordered on to Shanghai to land her dead and wounded and make repairs. Ten of her men had been killed and more than twenty wounded, four of them seriously.

The next day London and Black Swan tried to reach Amethyst themselves, and they too were driven back with heavy casualties.

A Hard Choice

In the House of Commons six days later the Prime Minister read out the story of her two attempts as part of his statement on the attacks. What is not in doubt is that her men went back into the fire twice, knowing what it would cost.

The sacrifice was not wasted: Amethyst survived, and on the night of 30 July she slipped down the river to the sea, where Consort's sister Concord was waiting to meet her.

Her Dead and Her Awards

The men of Consort killed in the action, or who died of their wounds, were Chief Petty Officer Maurice Gurney, Petty Officer Albert Morton, Petty Officer Telegraphist John Akhurst, Leading Seaman William Moir, Able Seaman Christopher Hutton, Electrician's Mate John Tobin, Stoker Mechanic Raymond Gifford, Ordinary Telegraphist Dennis Iredale, and Ordinary Seamen Sidney Jenkinson and Charles Theay.

The awards for the Yangtze were published in the London Gazette on 1 November 1949, for outstanding courage and devotion to duty in London, Consort and Black Swan. Commander Robertson received the Distinguished Service Order.

Chief Petty Officer Henry Robinson, who already held the George Medal, and whom his captain had placed at the head of the seventeen officers and men he recommended for gallantry, received the Distinguished Service Medal, as did Leading Stoker Mechanic Tony Johnson.

Lieutenant William Bonner, Ordinary Seaman Ivan Bennett-Bound, Able Seaman Albert McKee and Acting Leading Telegraphist Robert Miller were mentioned in despatches.

Korea

Consort was repaired and returned to the flotilla. When the Korean War broke out in June 1950, she was among the first British ships to go.

With the carrier Triumph, the cruiser Jamaica, her sister Cossack, a fleet tanker and an Australian frigate she sailed from Japan for Okinawa to refuel and then on to Korean waters, where she spent the next months on the endless patrols, escort work and bombardments of the blockade. A Royal Marine bandsman who served in her remembered the many patrols she and Cockade made off the Korean coast together. She also served in the Malayan Emergency.

The End

She came home at the end of her long Far East service and was broken up at Swansea in 1961. Her story is told at length in Paul Morrison's book Loyal and Steadfast: The Story of HMS Consort. Her sisters of the 8th Flotilla, Concord and Cossack among them, are in the C Class destroyers collection.