Fireboat Massey Shaw 2015 Visit To Dunkirk
Massey Shaw is a London Fire Brigade fireboat which was built in 1935 and served until 1971. It has a huge amount of history, but is best known as one of the Dunkirk Little Ships.
During World War Two in 1940, the German military were sweeping through France pushing the British military and their Allies before them. The majority of forces ended up with their backs to the sea at Dunkirk with no obvious way of escaping to England. A miracle was needed, that miracle was the Dunkirk Little Ships.
Background To Operation Dynamo
The Dunkirk Little Ships rescued the British Army and Allied forces from the beaches of Dunkirk in a mission codenamed Operation Dynamo under the direction of Royal Navy Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay. The beaches of Dunkirk were shallow sloping meaning only smaller boats could get close enough to the shoreline to give the retreating soldiers a chance of getting aboard.
The Royal Navy scoured the ports of England for anything and everything that was capable of crossing the North Sea to pickup the armed forces and bring them back to England. Whilst huge amounts of military equipment was left behind, the manpower that escaped the German onslaught formed the nucleus of the forces that would eventually defeat Germany in World War Two. So the legend of the Little Ships was born.
The Massey Shaw Today
The fireboat Massey Shaw is maintained and operated by the Massey Shaw Education Trust. Part of their work is delivering an education program to keep alive the memory of Massey Shaw and the work that it did in its service life.
Association of Dunkirk Little Ships
The Association of Dunkirk Little Ships (ADLS) keeps alive the story of Dunkirk’s evacuation by the Little Ships and connects today’s owners of the Little Ships. The ADLS organise a crossing every five years for the Dunkirk Little Ships to commemorated the miracle of Dunkirk. The 2020 crossing was inevitably cancelled due to COVID, the next planned crossing is in May 2025.
More photographs of Dunkirk Little Ships
The 2015 Voyage
West India Dock to Queenborough
Monday 18th May 2015
The weather was downright miserable as Massey Shaw left its mooring’s at West India Dock, part of Canary Wharf to the East of central London.
A constant cold drizzle enveloped the boat as it sailed past the O2 (Millennium Dome), under the cable car at Silvertown and onwards through the Thames Barrier flood defence.
ADLS Burgee
Flying from the jack staff (flag pole on the front of the boat) was the ADLS burgee. A burgee is a nautical term for a flag. The ADLS Burgee is the cross of Saint George (England flag) with Dunkirk’s town badge overlaid on top. The proper vexillological (study of flags) term is the Cross of Saint George is defaced with the Dunkirk town badge.
Queenborough
The short journey to Queenborough on The Swale in North Kent took just a few hours, taking Massey Shaw within sight of the Richard Montgomery shipwreck at the entrance to the River Medway.
Queenborough to Ramsgate
Tuesday 19th May 2015
The crew woke to a bright and blustery day, a total contrast to the previous day’s weather. Charts were studied, the crew briefed and then it was time to ring down full ahead on the engine room telegraph. Massey Shaw is believed to be the only boar operating on the River Thames that uses a telegraph to relay commands to the engine room for speed – the captain has no direct control over the engine. Massey Shaw is also unusual in having two engine room telegraphs, one for movement and speed, the other to control the pumps.
Blustery meant rough seas as Massey Shaw headed into the Thames Estuary. As the North Sea came ever closer, Massey Shaw started rolling more. This was a boat designed for rivers with a draft of four feet and a flat bottom being taken out into the North Sea. In Ramsgate, Massey Shaw was tied up on a pontoon broadside on to the harbour’s entrance. The gentle rolling action of the waves was too much for some of the crew who decamped to a local hotel.
Ramsgate Open Day
Wednesday 20th May 2015
A day of events to mark the start of Operation Dynamo saw huge crowds of visitors descending on the harbour.
Ramsgate was the muster point for the flotilla of ADLS boats along with their escorts.
Ramsgate to Dunkirk
Thursday 21st May 2015
Thursday morning dawned bright and calm. Huge crowds had gathered on the harbour walls to wave off the flotilla of 60 Dunkirk Little Ships as it started on its voyage the 44 miles across the English Channel and North Sea to Dunkirk.
Two World War Two RAF fighter aircraft, a Hurricane and a Spitfire, flew over as the flotilla formed up off Ramsgate ready for the crossing. Royal Navy ratings joined each of the Little Ships for the crossing, just as they did in the original 1940 Operation Dynamo.
The flotilla of boats were treated as a very large ship by the traffic control at Dover to keep the ADLS safe from colliding with the English Channel’s normal commercial traffic. Two Royal Navy P2000 patrol boats provided an escort along with an RNLI lifeboat.
Arriving off Dunkirk, the flotilla of Little Ships manoeuvred into the giant lock at the entrance to Dunkirk’s harbour. After release from the lock it was another twenty minutes until the flotilla reached their moorings for the weekend.
Dunkirk
Friday 22nd May 2015 Until Sunday 24th May 2015
For three days Massey Shaw was open to the crowds who had flocked to visit the Dunkirk Little Ships in the harbour. Massey Shaw being a fireboat marked itself out as unusual so there was a never ending line of people waiting to come aboard and find out how it worked.
Although commemorating events 75 years previously, there were still a good number of Second World War veterans marked out by their WW2 campaign medals and the crew of Massey Shaw even got to welcome a German Luftwaffe (Air Force) veteran.
The engines were started regularly throughout the days to pump water through the main jet, taking great care to avoid swamping the many other boats tied up.
Back To Ramsgate
Monday 25th May 2015
The return voyage to Ramsgate was significantly more choppy than the outbound journey. By now though, the landlubbers in the crew had got their sea legs and enjoyed the crossing.
Crowds once again thronged the harbour walls of Ramsgate to welcome the Dunkirk Little Ships back to English shores.
Ramsgate to West India Dock
Tuesday 26th May 2015
Then it was the final day and only the voyage home remained. Another beautiful day to be out on the water. Ramsgate to West India Dock was completed in one day rather than the two days that had been taken on the outbound voyage.
A final leg of open sea cruising and then passing under the Dartford road bridge before the river banks became increasingly crowded with buildings as the Massey Shaw approached its home berth in West India Dock.
