Chief Engineer Merchant Navy, S.S. Empire Star, Blue Star Line
S.S. Empire Star slipped out of Liverpool docks on 20th October 1942, heading for South Africa. Her decks were loaded with aircraft, holds packed with munitions and 19 passengers aboard. Being a cargo liner, she was fast enough to sail by herself. She had defensive armament added with a detachment of gunners to operate anti-aircraft Oerlikon cannon and a pair of anti-ship guns.
On the 23rd, the North Atlantic weather was bad, so north of the Azores islands, her master reduced speed to 14 knots and stopped zigzagging to protect the deck cargo. As the afternoon light failed, a torpedo exploded in her engine room, killing three artificers. U-615 had spotted her at 15.00hrs.
They radioed a distress call as life rafts and three lifeboats were launched. The crew then collected everyone into the lifeboats, setting course for the Portuguese islands. The submarine waited half an hour, then hit the settling ship with another torpedo.
Richard was in the Captain’s lifeboat with 38 aboard, but it was lost in rough seas during the hours of darkness. During the next day, HMS Black Swan, investigating wreckage, saw an upturned boat. The next evening, on the 25th, Black Swan found a lifeboat with 34 aboard. The sloop continued her search and early on the 26th rescued the other 27 survivors, 120 miles away.
That was the sad end of Richard’s story.
Our search for information started when Carole was checking the Friends of Folkestone Cemetery records against photos. There was an inscription, on the Francis family’s gravestone, saying “Lost at sea” by Richard’s name. His sisters Gertrude, Edith and Mary lived into the 1950s, so could have added Richard’s name to the stone.
His parents, Charles and Jane, ran a thriving ironmongery in Tontine Street, Folkestone. Richard was born on 14th June 1894, the 5th child, a son among daughters.
The 1911 census shows Richard, aged 16, in London, at Emily Chaplin’s boarding house in Mile End Old Town, close to the Thames docks, along with five teachers and a clerk. He is listed as an apprentice engineer. At the end of the Great War, 1919, he is mentioned as an engineer and metal turner at HMS Pembroke, the shore establishment at Chatham Dockyard.
We have found no record of Richard in the 1920s and early 1930s, until in 1938 he is on a passenger list of arrivals at Southampton Docks. He was aboard the Union Castle liner ‘Athlone Castle’ after its voyage from Durban and Cape Town, occupation ‘engineer’.
I assume that Richard joined the prestigious Blue Star Line in 1939 as a chief engineer, aged 46. Blue Star ran cargo liners, which worked on regular routes carrying valuable cargoes, as well as a few passengers. In the case of Empire Star’s class of vessels, they had refrigeration, so carried meat from New Zealand and Australia to Britain, originally across the Indian Ocean, around The Cape then north through the Atlantic, maybe calling at Cape Verde or Las Palmas, to London Docks.
When 1939 war began, the ship used the safer west coast ports and headed for the Panama Canal to cross the southern Pacific, then bring vital food to us. Some defensive armament was now installed.
Empire Star was included in Convoy WS 12Z when Japan threated our South-East Asian colonies, leaving Liverpool in November 1941. They called at Freetown, Sierra Leone, from where she and other ships continued to Bombay, in India. By the time they arrived on 6th January, Japanese troops were fighting in Malaya.
On the 19th, Empire Star left Bombay with Convoy BM 11 for Singapore on what turned into a rescue mission by the time they’d arrived on the 29th. Malaya was under Japanese control with only a narrow waterway between them and the island.
Air attacks were beginning as the ship was loaded with RAF equipment plus RAF, RN and Army technical personnel. Over 2,200 people were jammed aboard; 200 being Australian female nurses, women and 35 children according to Captain Capon’s count. Richard and his engineers made sure their machinery ran smoothly. Before dawn on February 19th, they and cargo ship SS Gordon were at sea, joining HMS Durban, a small anti-aircraft cruiser.
Soon after 9am. the first attack came as they threaded between islands toward Batavia on Java. Three bombs hit them starting fires, but the hose pumps kept working. Richard and a couple of junior officers kept the engine and machinery running, sending all artificers on deck to fire fight and clear debris. On the bridge, the Third Officer and Pilot told the Master where attacks were coming from so that he could “take violent evasive action” until mid-afternoon, as a succession of 47 bombers came overhead. Near misses lifted the ship and those on deck were machine gunned. They suffered 14 deaths and 17 wounded, a lifeboat and an AA gun destroyed, but shot down one aircraft. Nurses had sheltered many of the already injured soldiers.
The next day, the killed were buried at sea. That evening, they carried out essential repairs off Jakarta’s port, sailing 48 hours later.
Empire Star slipped between the islands into the Indian Ocean to head south to Western Australia where they docked at Freemantle harbour, on February 23rd. Perth’s Red Cross met them with clothes and other essentials. Because of their conduct, many of the crew and officers later received awards, being mentioned in the ‘London Gazette’. Richard Francis being awarded an OBE for his organisation and keeping machinery and pumps operating.
‘Empire Star’ continued transporting food to Britain before taking armaments to our forces around the world, which leads to the tragic events of October 1942, where we started this account.
A tantalising piece of information appears on his final ‘Merchant Navy card’ of 1942: Richard was married to Dorothy. Their address is given as 4 Portland Terrace, Richmond. There the trail ends at present, with no marriage record showing.
Richard’s Cenotaph on Grave 2694, Area 15 FOC
Tower Hill Merchant Navy Memorial Panel 45
Lost at sea: Latitude 48.14 North x Longitude 26.22 West
Hopefully, a lead to Richard and Dorothy’s marriage will emerge in the future.
Written by Rob & Carole M.
