They are HMS Durban, HMS/HMNZ Achilles, HMS Dorsetshire and HMS Cumberland. The hero of the book, David Horrocks, serves on each of these vessels. I knew from the research I'd done on ship movements in and out of the historic Simon's Town dockyard, that each called in to the naval base in the lead-up to, and during, World War 2. But statistics on a page only go so far. I wanted to find additional evidence of their presence, and I wondered if it might be possible to do so by visiting the dockyard itself to search for clues.
And those clues lay in an extraordinary tradition initiated by the Royal Navy over a hundred years ago. Soon after the building of their huge - even by today's standards - dry dock in Simon's Town, they encouraged the seamen from vessels that were repaired there to paint their ship's crest around the inner perimeter of the dock wall. The navy were creating, in effect, a memory wall not unlike the one I wrote about in my previous blog. The dry dock would become not just a place where ships were repaired but a living reminder of all those famous and not-so-famous vessels that struggled into the docks with battle damage or mechanical failures during both war and peace.
Would the present-day dockyard authorities allow me in to have a look?
Would I find the evidence I was seeking?
More next time...
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