HMS Dreel Castle? Titanic Link?

[oneandall]

Hi all,

I've been researching my paternal great grandads RNR service records and I'm having trouble with the handwriting of one particular entry as to identify it as possibly HMS Dreel Castle. He was on HMS Talbot, Vivid Depot, HMS Diamond, HMS Dreel Castle?, HMS Diamond again, Vivid Depot again, HMS Caesar, then Vivid at the end of the war.  To me the fourth entry looks like Dreel Castle but I wonder if it was the ship, not the base which was commanded by Titanics second officer who famously was replaced 2 days before its ill fated voyage. 

 

 

 

[KizmeRD]

You are obviously aware that DREEL CASTLE was a Grimsby trawler taken into naval service and which gave its name to the Auxiliary Patrol base at Falmouth (Dreel Castle being the designated ‘accounting base’ - home to a large number of Auxiliary Patrol craft). Without knowing the name of your GGF it’s unlikely that anyone will be able to add much more. However in the case of minor war vessels, it was the convention to append the name of the actual ship a man served in parenthesis after the name of the accounting base, and absence on any appendage could point towards him serving on the actual ship itself, or more likely one of the more numerous shoreside roles supporting the operations of the auxiliary patrol.

MB

 

Edited 19 April by KizmeRD

[MerchantOldSalt]

Second Officer, and at this stage in his career, Lt.Cdr (Ty). David Blair OBE RD RNR, was attached to HMS DREEL CASTLE "additional as SNO for charge of Naval Sub Base at Penzance" according to his ADM 240 record, so neither Commanded the trawler DREEL CASTLE nor the AP base at Falmouth but was attached for accounting purposes as MB suggests.  An interesting man, his record takes a bit of reading but worthwhile.

Tony

[KizmeRD]

My apologies for an overly hasty reply, rather than being a Grimsby trawler, DREEL CASTLE was in fact a Kirkcaldy drifter (KY 71).

David Blair was a pre-war RNR officer and employee of White Star Line. At the start of the war he was a Lieutenant RNR serving as navigating officer on HMS OCEANIC (armed merchant cruiser) which ran aground off the Shetland Islands, after which he volunteered for service with the auxiliary patrol and was initially based at Penzance (later Falmouth) - Auxiliary Patrol Area XIV (Western Approaches). 

He received an OBE in the 1918 New Year’s Honours and picked up his RD in 1919, retiring in the rank of Cdr. RNR.

MB

https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/D8288976
 

Edited 20 April by KizmeRD

[oneandall]

Thank you for the very informative replies Tony & MB. I have somewhere a painting of HMS Dreel Castle and by the look of her she couldn't of had many crew.  I note that my GG was on HMS Talbot in September 1914 when it captured a German merchant vessel, but he left her before she went to Gallipoli in 1915. Interestingly two members of Captain Scotts ill fated expedition Patrick Keohane and Edward Evans served on her pre war. 

 

Oad

 

 

[KizmeRD]

1 hour ago, oneandall said:

I have somewhere a painting of HMS Dreel Castle and by the look of her she couldn't of had many crew.  

Plenty of other ships were notionally home to an impossible number of ‘crew’ - take HMS Victory in Portsmouth, not only flagship of Lord Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar, but also a very significant naval dockyard, naval barracks and training facility - or HMS President, on whose books most officers and men serving at the Admiralty and in other London based units were placed. Most of those men attached to such ‘ships’ (more accurately ‘accounting bases’) are unlikely to have even stepped foot aboard the parent ship itself.

Given that DREEL CASTLE was only a small drifter and not a Tardis, it couldn’t physically contain all the various activities being undertaken under the umbrella of its name. Bear in mind that the auxiliary patrol base/depot ship was providing command, control and logistics support for a large flotilla of small ships - supplying coal bunkering, oil, ammunition and food stores, quarters for officers and men, pay and administration offices, and yet more offices for such things as signals, intelligence, minesweeping and anti-submarine operations, plus important engineering workshops, dockyard and repair facilities - collectively involving hundreds of men (all officially serving on the tiny DREEL CASTLE).

MB

Edited 20 April by KizmeRD