Lying in the waters of a former South Atlantic whaling station, the rusting hulk of the Viola shows little sign of its extraordinary heritage or the sequence of events that took it to one of the world’s most remote spots, almost 8,000 miles from where it was built.
But despite its rather sorry state – beached, but still intact – and unlikely setting, in Grytviken harbour, South Georgia, this trawler is among the most historically significant in the world, in a rapidly dwindling category.
For the Viola not only served in the First World War but saw action at close quarters, spending almost every month of that conflict at sea, engaged in a deadly struggle with German U-boats.
Built in 1906, in Beverley, East Yorkshire, she was one of hundreds like her made for fishing duties in the North Sea. In September 1914, a month after war’s outbreak, the Viola – named after the Shakespearean character, like many others in the Hellyer Steam Fishing Company fleet – was among several hundred similar vessels requisitioned by the Admiralty. Fitted with at least one gun, they were converted into what were known as Armed Trawlers.
The Royal Navy, wanting to preserve its warships intact as much as possible for an expected clash with their German counterparts, needed cheap, reliable, plentiful – some might say, expendable – vessels and their civilian crews for the task of waging war with the submarines threatening to squeeze the lifeline of supplies being shipped around Britain.
These vulnerable craft, with their modest armaments and speed, were sent out to patrol for mines and submarines – to blow up the former safely and to sink the latter. The Viola – renamed Viola III by the Navy – and its crew seemed to excel in this task.
For most of the war, she was skippered by Charles Allum, a Hull-based trawlerman, originally from London. Initially, most of her crew also came from Hull, the youngest being 15. Later, a number of Scotsmen joined.
The vessel was first sent to Shetland for patrol duties. While stationed there, it had its first encounter with a U-boat, which it chased for several miles, firing at it, before it escaped.
The 108ft craft also suffered losses. One of her crew, Thomas Craven, a deck hand, was drowned in a storm in November 1914. Then, in 1916, the skipper’s wife, Mary Allum – one of several spouses who had followed the crew to Scotland – died. She is thought to have been poisoned by chemicals that local women used to produce field dressings for the Western Front from the locally gathered sphagnum moss.
By September 1916, Viola had been transferred to the Tyne. As the campaign wore on, Viola was one of the first to use two new weapons – hydrophones to help locate submarines, and depth charges, to send them to the bottom.
In 1917 Viola opened fire on a U-boat attacking a merchant ship off the Farne Islands and successfully drove it off. That year the vessel was also involved in the rescue of the crew of a coal barge driven ashore at Scarborough. For these actions, Allum was mentioned in dispatches.
Then, on August 13 1918, Viola was patrolling with a group of trawlers, just off Whitby, when a periscope was sighted. As the submarine (UB-30) dived, depth charges were dropped on it. Two hours later, the crew on Viola, and another trawler, John Brooker, saw the submarine – which had already sent at least 17 Allied merchant ships to the bottom – trying to surface. Both craft fired and dropped more depth charges. The submarine, captained by Rudolf Stier, made one more attempt to surface, but was attacked again and finally sank. A month later and 70 miles up the coast, Viola was again patrolling when another U-boat was spotted, this time by an airship. The trawler joined the hunt and dropped depth charges on the vessel, UB-115, which was sent to the bottom. This action is the first to have involved the use of an airship in the destruction of a submarine and among the last submarine-sinkings before peace arrived two months later.
In a conflict not traditionally associated with great feats at sea, the Viola had a record more impressive than that of many warships.
But the boat and its men had the misfortune to serve in a campaign that, even now, remains little known. The Royal Navy did little to promote how much of this work had been performed by enlisted civilians, while many of its ships had remained, for understandable reasons, at anchor. Those who served on the trawlers – at least, those who survived – simply reverted to their former careers as fishermen.
In the years since, almost all vessels that survived this campaign, and other aspects of the war at sea, have vanished. Few, if any, ships still in existence saw First World War action at such close quarters. The only British warship left afloat from the era is HMS Caroline, a light cruiser. It served at the Battle of Jutland, but was not engaged with the enemy as closely, or continuously, as the Viola.
Almost a million pounds of Lottery money is being spent to ensure HMS Caroline is in a fit state to play a central role in the centenary commemorations next year, and with that anniversary looming some are starting to envisage the not unfeasible prospect that the Viola might also be renovated to play a similar part.
A study has been carried out into the idea of recovering the vessel and found it possible. Indeed, experts believe the ship could even be made shipshape once again, because her varied and eventful existence since the end of the war has, effectively, preserved her and protected her from being lost to the sea or the scrapyard.
After the war, she was sold to a Norwegian company and renamed, first, Kapduen and then Dias. She was used to catch whales off the African coast before, in 1927, being sold to Compañía Argentina de Pesca and moved to Grytviken.
Here, she was used to hunt the region’s elephant seals, as well as being a support vessel for a series of expeditions by explorers, including some by the Briton, Duncan Carse, who also worked for the BBC and portrayed the radio detective Dick Barton.
On one occasion, the vessel was used to relieve a meteorological station at Laurie Island, after other vessels were unable to get through the ice. On another, her skipper located a “new” bay on South Georgia’s inhospitable south-west coast, which was named “Dias Cove” after the vessel.
In 1960, her owners sold out to the British firm Albion Star and the ex-trawler returned to the British flag. But four years later, the whaling station at Grytviken closed and Dias, along with another sealer, Albatros, was laid up.
A caretaker was appointed to maintain the vessels, but he left in 1971. Dias foundered at her mooring three years later, under the weight of snow that had built up on her. Albatros sank the following year.
In 1982, the vessel played an inadvertent role in the Falklands conflict, which started when a group of Argentinian scrap metal merchants, infiltrated by the country’s marines, landed on South Georgia and raised their flag. The party’s original task had been to break up the Dias and other objects.
When British forces arrived to retake the island, the action took place around the vessel. The operation included the disabling of an Argentine submarine, Santa Fe, in waters just in front of the ex-trawler by British helicopters. It was the first time helicopters had achieved such a feat and echoed the clash in which Viola had assisted in the first “kill” of a U-boat by an airship, 64 years earlier.
Since then, the craft has been left to the elements. In 2004, she, along with Albatros, was refloated and beached. They now rest a short distance from the grave of Sir Ernest Shackleton, the polar explorer.
Dr Robb Robinson, an academic at the University of Hull and member of the Friends of Viola/Dias group, said it would cost around £1 million to bring the vessel back to the UK, and estimated £5 million more to restore her. “It would be wonderful to be able to bring her back. It is hard to imagine a better memorial to the war that went on around our coasts.”
Dr Robinson, who discovered during research into the vessel that his own great grandfather had served on her, said the example of the SS Great Britain, salvaged from the Falkland Islands in 1970 and now a museum in Bristol, at least gave hope.
Among the group’s supporters is Kim Lever, the great-granddaughter of the skipper, Charles Allum. “It would be a fitting tribute to him and others like him who served at sea to bring the boat back home,” she said.
Allum himself stayed at sea after the war – although, unlike his ship, he did enjoy a brief moment of fame, with a role in a 1922 silent comedy film, A Master of Craft. He was called up again in the Second World War – although over 60 years old – and was on a ship that was torpedoed. He survived, but was in poor health for much of the rest of his life, and died in 1953.
Even if the plans to recover Viola come to nothing, the ship looks assured of a role in the centenary commemorations. In 2006, her bell was discovered on a farm in Norway and two years later was returned to the ship.
If weather permits, officials on South Georgia are to be asked to ring the bell on the ship, on August 4 next year, 100 years on from the outbreak: in memory of those killed, and to ensure this little boat is not forgotten either.