•
Date of birth 6 March 1919,
• Date of marriage 12 July 1947
• Date of death 27 July 1977
“It was a grim situation; HMCS Chebogue had been
torpedoed by a U-boat in the mid-Atlantic. Eight of the
crew had been killed and the ship was being towed to Wales.
It was October, 1944.
Exactly one week later, after what seemed to be an eternity
of anxiety, the little frigate was caught in the teeth of
a 100 mile an hour hurricane and broke up on the shore of
Wales.
To Commander Ian A McPhee it was an experience he will
never forget. He remembers the wind and the violent sea,
and jumping overboard. He hit something and was knocked
unconscious. When he came to he was in a life boat operated
by members of the royal Life Saving Society. “it was
the name of the game…I was one of the lucky ones”
recalls the veteran naval office who on June 1st starts
retirement leave to end 27 years of naval service
Born in Yorkton, Sask., Cdr McPhee commenced his naval
service as a reservist in the summer of 1941. Five years
later he transferred to the regular force and subsequent
appointments on both coasts. He served as executive office
in the destroyer escort Crescent and as commanding officer
in both the coastal-escort Wallaceberg and the destroyer
escort Nootka. Between the summer of 1960 and that of 1962
he was Naval Member of the Joint Planning Staff at National
Defence Headquarters in Ottawa.
He commanded the fleet maintenance vessel Cape Breton here
between July of 1962 and February 1964.
Since that time he has served in HMC Dockyard, Esquimalt
on the staff of the commander of Pacific Maritime Forces
as Command Personnel and Training Officer and other senior
staff positions”
‘Maritime Command’
Pacific
Lookout
Friday May 24th 1968
Vo l13 No. 10
HMCS Chebouge
Photographic credit to ReadyAyeReady.com
- The Canadian Navy
“That’s me!” Lieut-Commander of the Royal
Canadian Navy, shows his two children the reference to himself
on a plaque commemorating the rescue of the frigate Chebouge
by the Mumbles Lifeboat in 1944.”
South Wales Evening Post
Aug 17 1956
Extract from Supplement to the Annual Reports of the RNLI
- Royal National Lifeboat Institution 1939-1946
GOLD MEDAL SERVICE AT THE MUMBLES
OCTOBER 11TH - 12TH. THE MUMBLES, GLAMORGANSHIRE.
The frigate Cheboque, of the Royal Canadian Navy, had been
torpedoed in the Atlantic eleven hundred miles away, with
the loss of one of her crew of forty-three, and severe damage
to her stern. She was towed by another ship into the Bristol
Channel and anchored in Swansea Bay. Her long peril seemed
ended, and the other ship went on her way, but a sudden
gale blew up and within a few hours the frigate began to
drag her anchors. By now a strong south-westerly gale was
blowing, with squalls of hail and heavy breaking seas, and
the Cheboque signalled for help. At 7.45 in the evening
of October 11th the motor life-boat Edward Prince of Wales
was launched and, as the coxswain said, "flew before
the gale to the rescue."
She found the Cheboque on the bar off Port Talbot with
her stern already aground. It was now pitch dark, with heavy
squalls of hail, and the frigate was so smothered in the
seas that it was very hard to find her. When the life-boat
did find her, the frigate's captain hailed her and asked
if she could take off all his crew of 42 men. The coxswain
shouted back, through the deafening noise of the wind and
sea, "Yes, if they keep their heads." It was impossible
for the life-boat to anchor and drop down on her cable from
windward, for it would have fouled the cables of the frigate's
two anchors. It was useless to fire the line-throwing gun,
and rig a breeches buoy, for the men of the frigate could
never have been hauled safely through that surf. The only
thing that the coxswain could do was to take the lifeboat,
with that gale behind her, right into the surf, past the
frigate, towards the shore, and, turning, come up against
the gale alongside her, near enough for the men to jump.
The life-boat could not remain alongside for more than
a few moments at a time, for the frigate's bows were swinging
to the seas, and the life-boat was one moment high above
her forecastle and the next below her waterline. In those
few moments no more than two or three men could jump. The
coxswain circled round and took the life-boat close to the
frigate not once but twelve separate times before the last
of the 42 men had been rescued. All but three of the men
jumped through the darkness and landed safely. Of the other
three one fell and broke his leg. The second dropped between
the life-boat and the frigate, but the coxswain left his
wheel, seized him and dragged him on board before he could
be crushed and killed between the two. The third crashed
down right on top of the coxswain and bruised him badly
against the wheel. It seemed little short of a miracle that
rescue had been carried out without the loss of a single
life. The life-boat herself, however, showed how heavily
she had been flung by the seas against the frigate, for
her chafing rubber, which is a two inch thickness of tough
Canadian Rock Elm, was crushed, splintered or torn away
from the side which was nearest the frigate. She also damaged
her bow and rudder.
The rescue had taken just an hour and a half, and the life-boat
returned to The Mumbles against the gale with the fullest
load on board which she could carry in those high and dangerous
seas. All the way the coxswain had to nurse her very carefully
through them in case any of the men should be washed out
of her. The rescued men were landed at The Mumbles, but
the life-boat could not be hauled up to her slipway again
and there was no shelter where she could lie, so she had
to make for Swansea. She arrived there at two in the morning.
A quarter of an hour later another call came for her help
and she was out again searching for three more hours. When
she got to Swansea the second time she had been out during
that cold and very stormy night for ten hours, and for the
whole of that time Coxswain Gammon himself had been at the
wheel. Shortly afterwards the flag officer-in charge at
Cardiff sent the following message : "Please convey
to coxswain and crew an expression of my appreciation of
what must have been a most exceptionally fine and difficult
piece of work." In a report on the rescue, the naval
officer-in-charge at Swansea wrote : "The commanding
officer of the frigate and all his officers are unanimous
in their admiration of the splendid way in which the life-boat
was handled by Coxswain Gammon and say that the whole crew
were magnificent. . . . The way in which the lifeboat crew
kept their boat from crushing the officer who fell between
the life-boat and the ship's side, and got him back on board,
was little short of miraculous."
It was a rescue carried out with the greatest courage,
coolness and skill in terrific conditions of weather, and
the achievement of the crew is all the more remarkable since
two of the men who endured that bitter and dangerous night
were over seventy, two more were in their sixties and the
youngest in the crew was forty.
The rescue recalls a disaster of 43 years ago, for the
frigate was wrecked near the spot where, in 1901, an earlier
life-boat from The Mumbles capsized and six of her crew
were drowned. One of the crew which rescued the 42 men from
the frigate, C. Davies, had been in that crew which was
capsized.
HMCS Wallaceburg
Photographic credit to ReadyAyeReady.com
- The Canadian Navy
HMCS Nootka
He Commanded HMCS Nootka 1957 to 1959
Photographic credit to ReadyAyeReady.com
- The Canadian Navy
HMCS Cape Breton
He was commander of the Cape Breton 1962 and 1964.
Photographic credit to ReadyAyeReady.com
- The Canadian Navy
Click
here to view sinking of the Cape Breton.
(CapeBretonSinking.mpg, 4mb)
The Cape Breton is now an artificial reef
in the Nanaimo, Vancouver Island area.
The web site of the organization which created this unique
and productive marine environment can be found at www.artificialreef.bc.ca
