Sydney T Charles, Bosun's Mate on HMS Venomous 1939-41

A HARD FOUGHT SHIP

The story of HMS Venomous

"Big Sid"

Sidney T Charles, Bosun's Mate, J104538

HMS Venomous, 1939-42

Sidney Thomas Charles was born at Birmingham in poor circumstances on the 5 July 1906, the son of James Thomas Charles, a cobalt grinder and his wife Beatrice Jane Sheldon, living in a Birmingham slum. Sid's father died soon afterwards and his Mother remarried and Sid acquired a half brother, Fred Bolton. Sid was a "tube drawer" when he joined the Navy as a Boy sailor in October 1921. In the studio photograph on the left he is wearing the cap of HMS Ganges, the boys training school at Shotley, opposite Harwich at the junction of the Rivers Stour and Orwell in Suffolk.

Most of his sea training as a boy sailor was on the Queen Elizabeth Class Battleship HMS Warspite first commissioned in 1915 which had fought at the Battle of Jutland in 1916. Sid Charles joined Warspite in August 1922 when he was 16, the same age as John Travers Cornwall VC when he was mortally wounded at Jutland and awarded the Victoria Cross for staying at his post on HMS Chester. Sid Charles signed on for 12 years service in the Royal Navy on his 18th birthday in 1924.

From September 1924 to the end of March 1927 Sid Charles served in HMS Viceroy, a V & W Class destroyer, with the Mediterranean Fleet. The last CO of HMS Viceroy, Lt Cdr John Manners RN (Ret), is aged 104 and describes his service in World War II on the website of the V & W Destroyer Association.

The photograph on the right taken aboard a sailing vessel is thought to have been taken on the River Dart when Sid Charles was based at HMS Britannia the former name of the Royal Navy College, Dartmouth.

From January 1933 to October 1934 he served in HMS Warwick, a V & W Class destroyer which had been the flagship of Vice Admiral Sir Roger Keyes Flag Ship during the famous raid on Zeebrugge 22-3 April 1918, an attempt to cut off the U-Boat Flotilla's access to the sea by sinking concrete filled block ships in the entrances to to the canal at Zeebrugge and Ostend. Last year was the centenary of the raid and this year is the 75th anniversary of the loss of HMS Warwick on Sunday 20 February 1944.

Sidney was a strong swimmer and I was told by his son Arthur that he was at one time a ship's diver but could not give me the name of the ship or a photograph of him in the hard hat diving suit used in those days. Since Victorian times divers were regarded by the general public with as much fascination as spacemen were in the 1970s. But despite this he remained a humble AB never aspiring to Petty Officer rank. After he married and left the Navy in 1936 he was a postman in Kenilworth.

Sidney Charles married Flo, Florence Mary Clarke, a few months before he left the Navy at the end of his 12 years service in July 1936
The sailor boys are her nephews and the man in sailors rig a mate of Sid's

Sid Charles was recalled by the Navy on 30 July 1939 and drafted to his third V & W Class destroyer, HMS Venomous, which apart from a few weeks during the Munich Crises had been laid up at Rosyth on the Firth of Forth as part of the Maintenance Reserve since 1933. Her first wartime CO, Lt Cdr Donald G.F.W. McIntyre RN joined his first wartime commission the next day. Sid Charles was a highly experienced three badge AB with twelve years service but most of the men joining Venomous from the barracks at Devonport, Plymouth, were raw recruits. Sid became one of four Bosun's Mates reporting to the Quartermaster William H. "Tubby" Nickless. Sid Compston, a Hostilities Only (HO) rating know to all as "Little Sid" to distinguish him from "Big Sid" Charles, also became a Bosun's Mate. Arthur Charles followed his father into the Navy in 1963 and retired as a CPO Naval Meteorologist. When he met "little Sid" Compston at the book launch at Portsmouth in 2010 for the previous edition of A Hard Fought Ship he told Arthur he worked for his father as a runner on the gangway. The third Bosun's mate was "Teddy" Weeks, a reservist from Oxfordshire who would be washed overboard in an Atlantic gale in October 1941. You can find out more about them and the work of the Bosuns' Mates on "Little Sid" Compston's page.

AB Sidney T Charles J104538 was photographed before the war as a two badegeman with eight years service (right) and with his Call hanging round his neck on HMS Venomous. When Teddy Weeks was washed overboard in an Atlantic gale on 8 October 1941 his personal belongings were auctioned to raise funds for his family in accordance with naval tradition. George A. ("Arnie") Birkin, a gunlayer on “A” Gun, who joined Venomous at the same time as Teddy Weeks, made the successful bid for his bosun’s call and his son, Malcolm Birkin, who lives in South Africa sent the photograph below.

A Bosun's mate wore his Call on a light chain round his neck and "piped" when he had a message to convey from the Quartermaster or the officer of the watch. There were certain standard "pipes" with set meanings such as "still" , a single long note used to bring hands on the upper deck to attention when saluting passing ships, and "pipe down" (eg lights out) with two high pips and a falling trill. The Call was also used for "piping the side", saluting a senior officer coming aboard or leaving. Sadly, the ability to pipe a Bosun's call in today's Navy is in rapid decline. To find out more about its use see The Boatswains Call Handbook.

"Big Sid" spent 29 months in Venomous, the longest period he served in any ship. He served during the most exciting period of the war when Venomous brought the British "colony" which had lived in Calais for centuries back to England, evacuated the Guards from Boulogne after their short lived but heroic attempt to reinforce the harbour city which blocked the German advance and then took part in the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from the beaches and North Quay at Dunklrk. Sadly, he left no account of this period and his son had no stories to tell but the names of all the men in the ship's complement in May 1940 can be seen on this website and their story is told in Chapter Five and Chapter Six of the new edition of A Hard Fought Ship.

HMS Venomous as an Atlantic Escort
Photographed by lt Peter Kershaw RNVR

After Dunkirk Venomous was based at Harwich to "Hold the Narrow Sea" until the threat of invasion receded. In November 1940 with the Med an Axis lake she escorted the elderly aircraft Carrier HMS Argus to Takoradi on the Gold Coast where her aircraft took off across Africa for Egypt and then joined the First Escort Group at Londonderry protecting the Atlantic convoys from German U-Boats operating out of bases on the Atlantic coast of France. Venomous had "short legs" and refueled at Havelfjord in Iceland before meeting incoming convoys. On the 30 December 1940 she detonated a mine in Liverpool Bay and was under repair until late February and on 11 November 1941 collided with her escort Leader HMS Keppel but repaired and given new teeth she escorted Arctic Convoy PQ15 to Murmansk in Arctic Russia in May 1942. This was to be the first of many Arctic Convoys to Northern Russia for Sid Charles.

Sid left HMS Venomous on 2 January 1942 and after five months at HMS Raleigh, the Royal Navy's main shore based training establishment at Torpoint across the River Tamar from Plymouth, joined HMS Bermuda, a newly built Colony Class Light Cruiser on the Clyde at the beginning of her first Commission on 5 August 1942. After almost three months of acceptance trials, tests and working up HMS Bermuda was selected to support Operation Torch, the landing of British troops on the beaches near Algiers in North Africa. A detailed chronology of events can be seen on the Naval History website which includes the thirteen Arctic convoys escorted by HMS Bermuda. Sid had a wonderful story to tell about his wartime service in HMS Bermuda but he never recorded it in writing or told it to his son Arthur Charles.

Fortunately, Lt(E) Edwin "Teddie" Arthur Drew RN put on paper the events of his six and a half years War service as an RNVR rating (1937-1940) and as an officer in the Engine Room Branch in three cruisers, Norfolk (six months), Cornwall (sixteen months until sunk) and Bermuda (two years) before 18 months ashore as a Divisional Officer at RN Artificer Training Establishment, Rosyth. "Teddie" Drew died on 17 February 2015 aged 97 but his vivid first hand account of his time in HMS Bermuda 1942-4 can be read on the website of Les Burrell. Some of his fine photographs can be seen below but you can see more on this page of Les Burrell's website.

HMS Bermuda underway after commissioning on the Clyde and during Operation Torch in the Mediterranean
Left: RN Official Photographer, via Wikimedia Commons Right: Lt(E) Edwin A. Drew RN
Arctic Russia

Conditions on Arctic Convoys to Northern Russia
Photographed by Lt Edwin A. Drew RN

After leaving HMS Bermuda on 21 July 1944 Sid's war rather petered out with six months back at HMS Drake, Plymouth, followed by ten months at HMS Imperieuse, a floating training establishment at Plymouth comprising two obsolete Revenge-class battleships, HMS Resolution and HMS Revenge. He was released from the Navy on 3 November 1945 just days before his second son was born. He returned to his old job in the post office residing and working in Coventry. His younger son Arthur recalled "he was a Postman Higher Grade with an encyclopaedic knowledge of geography. I remember him in the sorting office in Coventry working in a large cage where he sorted the valuable post. A quiet man leading a quiet life, apart from the occasional family trips to see his older and much loved sister and her family in Birmingham." In his later years Sid suffered from illhealth, possibly caused by the dreadful conditions he experienced on Arctic Convoys. He was 65 when he died on 12 January 1972.

Arthur Charles married PO Wren Morse, the daughter of the late Lt Cdr Alan A. Dobson RN who joined the RN as a Rating Coder serving on the Flower Class Corvette Bergamot. Alan Dobson was the Chairman of the Nottingham Sea Cadets and must have known Bob Moore, the CO of TS Venomous, the Sea Cadet Unit at Loughborough and sole author (and publisher) of the first edition on A Hard Fought Ship in 1990. Arthur had two sons and a daughter. His eldest son also served in the RN as a Meteorologist becoming a Navigator.

Arthur Chales wearing his father's medals, Cenotaph 2014

Arthur Charles wearing a bowler hat and his father's medals including the Arctic Star at the Remembrance Day Parade to the Cenotaph on Sunday 9 November 2014
Arthur's "fifteen seconds of fame" came three years later when he was filmed by BBC Television marching at the Remembrance Day Parade in 2017

The story of HMS Venomous is told by Bob Moore and Captain John Rodgaard USN (Ret) in
A Hard Fought Ship
Buy the new hardback edition online for £35 post free in the UK
Take a look at the Contents Page and List of Illustrations

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