I Was a London Firefighter

By David C. Pike

What is a firefighter?
They are the person next door...
They are like you and me with warts and worries and unfulfilled dreams.
Yet they stand taller than most of us.

The latest book from author and retired fireman David Pike, I Was a London Firefighter is an anthology of factual narratives and fictional tales loosely based around the personal experiences of individual members of the London Fire Brigade. Ranging from the mid-19th century to the present day, the book includes direct reminiscences by former firefighters alongside descriptions of key historical figures like Massey Shaw, Sidney Gamble and Joe Milner. It takes in such subjects as the IRA’s 20‐year bombing campaign in London and the changing status of female firefighters.
Running through the book is a series of gripping historical narratives subtitled ‘Yesteryear’s Fires’, depicting the heroic professionalism of firefighters confronted by truly harrowing disasters. Some of these remain all-too-familiar, such as the King’s Cross fire of 1987 which claimed the lives of 31 people; others, no less terrible, have faded into distant memory. The book ends with a fresh and compelling description of a horrifying tragedy that no one can have forgotten: 2017’s Grenfell Tower fire.
I Was a London Firefighter shares with David’s previous works – Beyond the Flames, London Firefighters and Fire-Floats and Fireboats – a careful and comprehensive approach to historical research, an eye for striking and unusual narrative details and an understated humour. Above all, it shows an unwavering appreciation of and empathy for the concerns and drives of the ordinary firefighter, born of David’s own experiences as a fireman.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley
• Release date: Oct 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463137451

David C. Pike

Joining the London Fire Brigade as a cadet at the tender age of sixteen, David Pike was destined to become very much an operational firefighter. Awarded the Queen's Commendation for Brave Conduct as a young fireman, he rose steadily through the ranks during his thirty-plus years' service within the LFB. He commanded one of London's busiest and most challenging fire stations, Brixton. Heavily committed to raising monies for fire service charities, he rowed himself into The Guinness Book of Records whilst attracting many thousands of pounds through his, and his companions', endeavours. He retired in senior rank from the Brigade in 1996. David now lives in Devon.

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About the Author

Joining the London Fire Brigade as a cadet at the tender age of sixteen, David Pike was destined to become very much an operational firefighter. Awarded the Queen’s Commendation for Brave Conduct as a young fireman, he rose steadily through the ranks during his thirty-plus years’ service within the LFB. He commanded one of London’s busiest and most challenging fire stations, Brixton. Heavily committed to raising monies for fire service charities, he rowed himself into The Guinness Book of Records whilst attracting many thousands of pounds through his, and his companions’, endeavours. He retired in senior rank from the Brigade in 1996. David now lives in Devon.

Austin Macauley publishes David’s autobiography Beyond the Flames (2013), along with his previous histories of the London Fire Brigade, London Firefighters (2015) and Fire-Floats and Fireboats (2016).

David C. Pike

I Was A London

Firefighter

Fire Brigade Stories

Text selection and editorial text copyright © David C. Pike (2018)

The copyright details of the published images are given in the relevant captions.

The right of David C. Pike to be identified as selector and editor of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-52891-800-8 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-52891-801-5 (eBook)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2018)

Austin Macauley Publishers™ Ltd.

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5LQ

Dedication

To old firemen and former firefighters everywhere

and to today’s men and women of the London Fire Brigade.

Acknowledgements

The London Fire Brigade

The Massey Shaw Education Trust

Michael Gilbey

Sian Griffiths

Kevin McDermott

Carol Newton

Nigel Saunders

Darren Shirley

Harry Simmons

Garry Warren

David Waterman

Paul Wood

Kevin Wright

My Dad – Charlie Pike

A special mention, and enormous thank you, to Walter Stephenson (Austin Macauley) for having faith in this book and working so hard to make it happen.

Foreword

The latest work from the pen of former London fireman David Pike provides a fascinating mixture of real and fictitious stories from the London Fire Brigade ranging from Captain Eyre Massey Shaw, first Chief Officer of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade in 1866 to the recent horrific fire at Grenfell Tower. They shine a light on the heroism, dedication, selflessness and teamwork of the capital’s fire service in addition to providing a rich insight into how today’s firefighters – both male and female – and yesterday’s firemen handle the mental and physical demands engendered by that most terrifying and unpredictable of all events, a fire.

Bravery and a sense of duty often go hand in hand, but underlying them and supporting them is a rigorous training regime, part of which I have been lucky enough to have witnessed for myself at the Fire Service College at Moreton-in-Marsh, in Gloucestershire. To a layperson it seems a hard enough task to squeeze through tortuous passages in a mock-up building in broad daylight, but to consider having to do it fully kitted up and wearing breathing apparatus, in total darkness and dense smoke, was almost unimaginable. In another demonstration, the effects of heat were amply demonstrated by placing some of us in a sealed room representing a ship’s engine room and lighting a small fire in one corner. We were asked to see how long we could stay before having to evacuate and, with thick smoke rapidly descending from the ceiling, it cannot have been more than half a minute before we were forced to seek safety outside.

The most recent of the author’s books, a history of London’s fire-floats and fireboats, includes the story of the service of the iconic Massey Shaw fireboat. He was generous enough to donate all of the proceeds of that book towards her continued upkeep. He has kindly offered to do likewise with this work and once again I must thank him most warmly for such a magnanimous gesture which will mean so much to the supporters and volunteers of ‘The Massey’, as she is fondly known on the river Thames.

The 83-year old veteran fireboat again features here in the retelling of her involvement in the dramatic evacuation of Dunkirk in May 1940. She has returned to Dunkirk on several occasions since and, God willing, will do so again in 2020.

I wish the book well and hope that it will give pleasure to firefighters old and new as well as to the wider general public, who will learn more about the invaluable work of one of London’s oldest and most respected emergency services – the London Fire Brigade.

Lord Greenway

Chairman, Massey Shaw Education Trust

Introduction

This book is not a definitive history of the London Fire Brigade. Neither is it a detailed record, although some of the accounts printed here are highly detailed. It is ‘what it says on the tin’: a collection of fire brigade stories; stories, which are either factual accounts or tales of fiction. They are narratives, yarns from a fire brigade I was proud to be a member of for over 30 years.

In putting this collection together I have been assisted by those of a similar ilk. None of these have viewed or still view their time in this foremost of UK fire brigades through rose-tinted glasses. We served, at various times, over the period of the last 60 years, some starting in the late 1950s, others serving into the 21st century. The aim of this book is to provide a flavour of those times through a combination of individual chronicles. Combined, they offer a valuable insight into the life, and role, of London’s former firemen as well as an awareness of their modern counterparts, today’s firefighters in London’s Fire and Rescue Service.

The nature of the ‘fireman’s lot’ has changed dramatically over the years. What hasn’t? Today’s firefighters would be hard pressed to recognise some of the practices of their forebears who, in turn, would most likely be equally bemused by the practices of those currently serving on the front line of the capital’s blue-light services. So whilst the nature of fire has not changed, the manner in which it is tackled has, along with the way that many non-fire- related 999 emergency situations are dealt with today. This book highlights some of those changes through its true accounts; they are also woven into the fabric of the fictional storylines.

Kevin Wright was a former London fireman. He joined in 1969, rising to the heady heights of a Leading Fireman. He was congratulated for bravery not once but twice. Just an ordinary bloke doing an extraordinary job. He was once asked the question: ‘How to put a fireman’s lot into words?’ He answered the question his way.

"You know that adrenaline rush which sees every one of your senses go into overdrive. That sees you kneeling on the landing outside that top floor flat, having run up all the stairs because the bloody fire lift doesn’t work again! You paced yourself because you’re carrying a 40 pound breathing apparatus set on your back whilst wearing full fire gear. But you will still need to use up precious seconds as you try to get your breath back.

You know that you must control both your breathing and that adrenaline. Your heart is beating like an express train. You need to control your breathing because the harder, and faster, you breathe the quicker the air in your air cylinder will run out and reduce your ability to fight this fire. The contents of your cylinder are the only thing keeping you alive in the conditions you are entering.

You know that the heat you felt when touching the door, with the back of your ungloved hand, means you’re going to take a beating. You know, through experience and training, that this one might just ‘flash over’. But you trust your experience, firefighting skills learnt from, and passed down, by your mentors – plus, of course, a certain amount of luck.

You know that as soon as you force your entry you will be flat on the floor. You’re crawling along on your stomach due to the intense heat. The only way to move forward is slowly. Your body tries to compensate and adjust to the heat. It’s getting hotter and hotter, your pulse is climbing higher and higher. The near one thousand degree heat at ceiling level will turn your sweat into superheated steam. Given a chance it will search you out. It will attack you and scald any part of your unprotected body it can find.

You know you will hear glass shattering. Fixtures and fittings falling where the heat has melted whatever held them in place. The high pressure jet of water that you’re fighting this fire with is knocking things down like coconuts off a shy. It’s throwing everything around like confetti, all adding to the crescendo in your ears.

You know you must search for any persons involved. The neighbour said that there’s nobody in, but you still must search, room by room, hoping all the time that the neighbour is right.

You know, as you carry out your smoke-induced blind search, that every time your hand touches something – a cushion, a child’s toy – your heart will skip a beat. But you continue to search. Your heart has skipped a thousand beats over the years whilst carrying out such searches. You know what to expect; it will always be the way.

You know the noise of a fire as it consumes everything in its path. But you still jump and your heart beats so loudly that you can hear it in your head. It will feel as though it will burst through your chest as a light bulb explodes or a thousand and one everyday household items help to feed the fire.

You know as soon as you hit the fire with the water your already restricted visibility will disappear. The thick, black, evil smoke will drop. It drops down to floor level and the water spray that you are using will come back at you so hot it too will search you out and peel any unprotected skin it can find.

You know that the plaster on the walls and ceilings will hit you as you cool it and it shatters into thousands of pieces of all sizes. It will hinder your progress as it falls and forms more obstacles for you to negotiate. Your fire gear will be protecting you the best it can, but you know this wouldn’t be the first time something has managed to penetrate it.

You will know you have taken that beating. As the adrenaline wears off you feel drained and exhausted as you exit the fire. The steam is coming off of you, head to toe, as if you are enveloped in your own personal fog.

You know that you have done your job and done it well. It’s when those that you would follow anywhere say nothing but give you that special look. A look that speaks volumes and says more than a thousand words could ever say.

You know that others will still be here for a couple of hours, turning over and damping down, cutting away and ensuring that this fire is fully extinguished. You will eventually get back to the fire station, change the cylinder on your breathing apparatus set and hopefully get a shower, grab a cup of tea and a rest before you have to do it all over again.

You know that nobody makes you do it. That you love your job. That you don’t look for thanks or praise, and that there is no higher accolade than being part of that dedicated, professional, team. 

You know that your body can only take so much, and to still to be doing this at sixty is not an option.

You know it’s easier to fight the fire than to try and answer the question… what makes you do it?"

Eyre Massey Shaw

By David C. Pike*

Every story has a beginning: this happens to be ours. Captain Eyre Massey Shaw is considered by many to be the great-great grandfather of London’s Fire Brigade. Shaw was appointed as the first Chief Officer of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, which was founded in 1866. So it would be remiss not to include some words and images† of this iconic figure in our collection of fire brigade stories and to provide a glimpse of this eminent man of London society and his prodigious achievements in the early years of firefighting and later fire prevention.

Eyre Massey Shaw was born in Ireland in 1828 of a Scots-Irish family which had settled in Ireland in the seventeenth century. George Bernard Shaw, the playwright, was another member of the wider Shaw family. After attending Dr Coghlan’s school in Dublin, Shaw studied at Trinity College and took his MA there in 1854. It was intended by his family that he should enter the Church. However, when the time came for him to take Holy Orders he couldn’t face it and bolted to North America.

This is so unrepresentative of Shaw – to run away from something – that it deserves examination. Why should a serious- minded, intellectual type of man like Shaw refuse to enter a profession which seemed likely to prove congenial and where his family could secure him preferment? The answer might lie in family letters, but these, to my knowledge, do not exist. I can only speculate as to the true explanation.

Though the years of Shaw’s childhood and early manhood may have been happy enough for him personally – as the third son of Bernard Robert Shaw of Monkstown Castle, he is unlikely to have suffered any material hardship – they were far from kind to Ireland as a whole. The years between 1840 and 1850 were the years of famine. It is believed that as many as eight million people died from starvation in Ireland or emigrated to avoid it; approximately half the population. Villages and towns were emptied and corpses lined the roadsides. The effect on a sensitive boy – perhaps when riding home from school through villages where death and disease had carried off half their inhabitants, where starving women shook their fists at anyone on a horse, or were even too apathetic to protest – must have been disturbing. He might even have doubted the benevolence of his Maker and the value of the Protestant Church for which he was intended.

Anyway, Shaw took ship to North America and stayed there for several months. One incident occurred during this time which is worthy of comment. While he was in New York, the hotel in which he was staying caught fire and the guests had to evacuate the building. There is little doubt that the incident made an indelible impression on Shaw. He returned home on the understanding that he might choose another career.

In 1855 a commission was obtained for him in the North Cork Rifles, a militia regiment, and he married a Portuguese lady from Lisbon. By 1859 he had risen to the rank of Captain and was the father of two children, but he had still to find a profession that suited him. In 1860 he left the Army to become Chief Constable and the Superintendent of Fire Services in Belfast and was at once a success. He quelled the riots between Sinn Feiners and Orangemen without forfeiting the respect of either party, and reorganised the Belfast Brigade which had been in very poor order. It was this latter achievement which led to his appointment to succeed James Braidwood who, as the first Superintendent of the London Fire Engine Establishment, was killed by a falling wall whilst directing his force of firefighters at a disastrous warehouse fire at Tooley Street in 1861.

The years from 1862 to 1865 were Shaw’s years of apprenticeship when he acquired a detailed knowledge of every aspect of firefighting. The London Fire Engine Establishment was a small and vastly overworked force paid for by the insurance companies. It never numbered more than 130 men or 19 stations, but it was well trained and completely professional. Under its first Superintendent it had won considerable popularity, with a remarkable reputation for efficiency.

The Tooley Street fire, however, had persuaded the insurance companies (who ran the London Fire Engine Establishment) and London’s public that the defence against fire should not be a matter for private enterprise. The Metropolitan Fire Brigade was established on 1 January 1866 and Captain Shaw was the natural choice as its first Chief Officer. The men from the London Fire Engine Establishment formed the core of the new Brigade, and added to them and their stations and equipment were the escapes and conductors of the Royal Society for the Protection of Life from Fire. Later, Shaw persuaded his employers, the Metropolitan Board of Works, to buy those fire engines of the London parishes which were in good working order.

The Brigade at this time was composed exclusively of seamen, from both the Royal and Merchant Navy, men who were used to irregular hours and living in confined quarters. Shaw was a stern but fair martinet, rising at 3 a.m. to drill and train his men when the streets were empty, but there was no doubt of his personal popularity. When men refer to a senior officer formally by name or rank it can imply a lack of acceptance, or even active dislike or disrespect; Shaw was universally known among his firemen as the Skipper or the Long ’Un.

At a fire in the basement of a big warehouse in Upper Thames Street, a fireman was struggling to drag a hose towards the centre of the fire when dimly through the smoke he noticed someone behind him. The fireman suggested quickly, and coarsely, that the ‘long’ person behind him should give him a useful hand with the heavy hose instead of aimlessly standing about doing absolutely nothing. The person in question, Shaw, merely told a fireman with him to take up the hose as suggested. There were no further repercussions following this incident. This story contrasts nicely with that of a subsequent London Chief Officer who, very early in his Brigade career, arrived at a fire and angrily demanded of the officer in charge why the firemen were not formed up on parade and awaiting his orders. It is not known what the officer said in reply but I imagine his expression would have been sufficient indication that London firefighters don’t wait to be told what to do at a fire.

Perhaps a further clue to Shaw’s personality lies in the care he showed for his men’s safety at fires. Warehouses at that time presented a particular risk. They were commonly built of brick with unprotected steel or iron girders to support the floors and roof. In a fierce fire the girders would expand with the heat and push out the walls of the building. The floors, laden with goods – many which could absorb large quantities of the water used to fight the blaze – added significantly to the fire loading, which in turn frequently caused floors to collapse in a fire. A fireman directing a hose through a lower window from the street was particularly exposed to danger from falling brickwork. Shaw took the greatest pains to see that his men were posted in positions where they would be safe.

On one occasion in the 1880s, at a very big fire at the King and Queen Granaries, Shaw was superintending firefighting operations when there was a crash of brickwork. The huge walls, bulging under the weight of swollen maize and tons of water, looked as if they were going to collapse. One of the firemen who was directing a jet from the centre of an escape ladder dropped his hose, slid down the escape, and started to run. Shaw caught him by the arm as he ran. Don’t run, he told him, you run into danger. Go and pick up your hose and carry on. I’ll tell you when to run. The fireman looked at the bulging walls, looked at his Chief Officer, who stood quietly on the very spot where the walls would crash if they did collapse, picked up the nozzle and resumed his work. The walls did collapse, but not until three days later.

Finally, Shaw backed his men on every occasion when they made representations for improvements in their pay and conditions. For three shillings a day when he joined, a man was required to remain continuously on duty, fully dressed in uniform, boots, belt and axe. If he took off his boots, he was liable to be fined the best part of a day’s pay. Leave was allowed for a few hours during the day with the Station Officer’s agreement, but beyond this, or after 10 p.m., Shaw’s personal permission was necessary. When recruiting was poor and men fell ill, firemen might be on duty for six days at a time, never shifting out of their clothes.

In 1884 the position at last improved. Station officers could grant leave for 24 hours; District Officers could grant leave for 48 hours. However, this was a special privilege, not a right, and the firemen were still otherwise employed on continuous duty. The strain on the firemen was enormous. Shaw could ensure that few died on active duty – there were, in fact, only ten deaths in the 30 years he was Chief Officer – but he could not prevent the breakdown in health and early retirement into which many were forced.

It is difficult to estimate how much these conditions arose from public penny-pinching (the Metropolitan Board of Works ran the Brigade on a very cheap shoestring) and how much from the defects in Shaw’s own character. There is a modern tendency to look for feet of clay on every idol and Shaw had his faults. If nothing else, he had some of the defects of his many virtues. His powers of leadership almost certainly surpassed those of any other fireman in the world at that time, but he seems to have been quite unable to secure the backing of any elected body or committee with whom he had dealings.

He was an aristocrat by birth and an autocrat by nature. He expected implicit obedience from his subordinates. He never forgot for a single moment that he was a gentleman and on the friendliest terms with Royalty. When Shaw was injured at a fire in 1883, which left him with a permanent limp – he collected several injuries in the courses of his firefighting career – the Prince of Wales, a close personal friend, together with other members of the Royal family, drove in open carriages to the Brigade’s headquarters at Southwark, where Shaw was convalescing, through streets lined with cheering Londoners. There can be very few people who belonged to quite so many London clubs as Shaw. Besides the Carlton and Pratt’s there were at least five others. He was very much a member of London Society.

Shaw was a character to admire rather than to love. Throughout his life, apart from the single lapse when he preferred flight to America to Holy Orders, it seems doubtful that he ever flinched from the path of duty even in the full glare of publicity. He wrote of a fireman’s work: If he wants to do it well, he must show moral as well as physical courage; in short, he must harden his heart and act as if no one were looking on.

I have a suspicion that Shaw may have enjoyed disdaining public approval and flexing his moral muscles. It would probably have served his own interest, and those of the Fire Brigade, better if he had on occasion showed that he cared even a little what other people thought and felt. One would have thought, for example, that when the Metropolitan Board of Works gave way to the London County Council in 1889 he would have used his immense influence and personal authority, combined with his great popularity amongst the general public, to have persuaded the Fire Brigade Committee to expand the Brigade and improve working conditions for firemen. The financial restrictions which had bedevilled the Metropolitan Board of Works had disappeared; money could be found quite easily. Instead, matters went from bad to worse.

Two years after the London County Council was formed, Shaw abruptly retired. It is difficult to know exactly why. The Committee Clerk was notably discreet, and nothing of the true facts was allowed to infiltrate the minutes. The Committee, as a whole, was genuinely surprised and expressed their pain to see him go. They may also have secretly been relieved. He had become an institution, and institutions can be obstacles to evolution. But he departed with the Committee’s thanks, an inscribed marble clock from Queen Victoria, a fine silver tea service from the insurance companies and a knighthood.

He became Managing Director of the Palatine Insurance Company and Chairman of the Metropolitan Electricity Board. He was even appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Middlesex. But these are peripheral to his real achievement. He was the creator in his own time of the finest fire brigade in the world, and when he died in 1908, his legs amputated and approaching eighty years old, this was remembered by the thousands who followed his funeral cortège from Pimlico to Highgate Cemetery where he lies buried with his wife and children.

Shaw remained a potent influence in the London Fire Brigade right up until the late 1990s. His memory is perpetuated in the fireboat bearing his name. The Massey Shaw showed some of his indomitable courage in 1940 off the beaches of Dunkirk, but his was the moral fervour which makes firefighting in the London Fire Brigade more than a way of earning one’s livelihood. Even until more recent times the brigade brought with it membership of one of the most tightly-knit, morally-motivated groups of men in the world.

I am none too sure what the ghost of Sir Eyre Massey Shaw would make of the policies and practices of today’s London Fire Brigade. His was a growing London. Fires were far more frequent and gave rise to genuine public concern. He worked during a period of growth with more firemen being employed and more fire stations built. Today’s Brigade is a very different ‘kettle of fish’. Recent reductions in the number of fires have led to consequential reductions in both staff and fire stations. (Ten London stations were closed in 2014.) The new brigade has a privatised control room, ‘out-sourced’ training regimes and even a for-profit offshoot, LFB Enterprises Ltd. LFB Enterprises provides a range of community safety, fire-related products and training tailored for organisations. It is a fact that Shaw was none too fond of the fledgling London County Council. He was a man of his time; today is in the now. Whilst many former London Fire Brigade staff find might find themselves in the same boat as he – unsure and occasionally ill at ease with this rapidly changing world – it is a world in which the modern London Fire Brigade must contend. With its first ever female Commissioner (Chief Officer) appointed in 2017, despite the fiscal challenges she faces, the Brigade continues to move forward. As with Shaw, it will take the passage of history to see what progress is actually made.

(Fact)

A Fire-Float Went to War

When the London fire-float Massey Shaw first left her river moorings for Dunkirk, she had only ever been to sea once before. That was on her maiden journey from the Isle of Wight to the Thames in 1935, after being constructed at the John Samuel White boatyard at a cost of £18,000. Following her final fitting out at Greenwich she was placed into operational service with the London Fire Brigade that summer.

Massey Shaw was never intended to be a sea-going vessel. She had, until the time of Dunkirk, been stationed at the Blackfriars river station, adjacent to Blackfriars Bridge in London. Her two massive 8-cylinder, 160 hp diesel engines had more than enough power to propel her up and down the Thames at 12 knots. However, they were principally intended to operate her 3,000 gallon-per-minute centrifugal pumps to put out fires along London’s river front.

She had been named after Captain Eyre Massey Shaw (1828–1908) who, at the age of thirty, was the first Chief Officer of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade. Her first major operational test was, literally, an ordeal by fire. An eight-storey riverside warehouse, Colonial Wharf, containing rubber products, and located in Wapping High Street, burned for four days from 27 September 1935. It had required 60 fire engines and three fire-floats to contain the blaze. This was the first major incident, and test, for the new fire-float and one where she greatly assisted land crews, who were hampered by very difficult access. The Massey Shaw‘s single monitor threw vast quantities of water high into the inferno, thus allowing the land crews to regroup and prevent the fire from spreading to adjoining warehouses.

However, that was not to be her most noticeable service achievement. Shortly after the start of World War II, the London Fire Brigade volunteer fire-float crew of the Massey Shaw would perform heroically as they joined the fleet of Little Ships that evacuated British soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk in Northern France. Navy sailors, volunteers with their small craft and London firemen all worked side by side to rescue members of the British Expeditionary Force trapped by the German Army on the French beaches.

On May 29 and 30, 1940 the Massey Shaw’s crew had seen tugs coming down the river towing strings of small boats, yachts, lifeboats and even dinghies. Then they heard that their destination was Dunkirk and that the Massey Shaw was to follow them from her mooring at Blackfriars. Her volunteer crew of 13 was chosen and with a formal send-off they departed from the Brigade Headquarters river station by the Albert Embankment in Lambeth.

Thirteen was more than her normal crew complement because they had expected to spend several days fighting fires off the French coast without relief. A river pilot took them to Greenwich and another onto Ramsgate. Her sparkling brass-work and fittings were covered with grey paint on the way. A young Royal Naval Sub-Lieutenant came aboard to take command of the Massey Shaw. He carried nothing more than his steel helmet and a chart to show him how to navigate through the minefields across the channel from North Goodwin Lightship to Bray Dunes, the beach where they were to pick up Allied troops.

The Massey Shaw did not even possess a ship’s compass, but the firemen had bought one hastily from a chandlery in Blackfriars. There was no time to swing and correct it, which made it rather unreliable since the large steel hull of the fire-float caused a massive deviation. As a result, despite the excellent landmark of smoke from Dunkirk’s burning oil tanks, they were well outside the swept channel when they got to the French coast. But the boat’s shallow draft enabled them to cross the hazardous sandbanks without grounding.

The fires ashore were what the Massey Shaw’s firemen crew were used to, but the bursts of high-explosive shells, bombs and anti-aircraft fire were a new experience. As they steamed parallel to the beach, they saw columns of men wading out in the shallows, waiting to be picked up by a host of small boats. Late that afternoon, they anchored off Bray Dunes.

They used a light skiff, picked up at Ramsgate Harbour, to go ashore and collect the first of the men. Most of the soldiers were non-swimmers and, at first, too many of them tried to get aboard so they swamped and sank the skiff. There were many other small boats operating from the beach, but each of them already had its own ship to fill. After many attempts to find a suitable way of ferrying soldiers to the Massey Shaw a line was made fast to a derelict lorry and a small boat was used to ferry altogether 40 of a company of Royal Engineers aboard the Massey Shaw.

The young Royal naval officer, having spent most of the day in the water between the fire-float and the beach, then safely navigated her back to Ramsgate where they arrived next morning. They escaped major damage despite an attack by a German bomber, which had spotted the Massey Shaw’s phosphorescent wake, but whose bombs missed by a boat’s length.

The crew of the Massey Shaw re-fuelled hastily, got some food and left for another trip. Some of the exhausted firemen were replaced by naval ratings and they brought a Lewis gun on-board as a defence against air attack, although this was never used. Another RN officer, this time a Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve Lieutenant, came aboard to command the ship and they brought two stokers to take care of the engines plus a beach party, commanded by a second young naval officer, to handle the embarkation on the other side. They also took a 30-foot ship’s lifeboat in tow as a tender.

At 11 p.m. they arrived and anchored off Bray Dunes in ten feet of water with their prow facing the shore. The fires of Dunkirk gave them enough light to work by and the thick blanket of smoke provided some cover from air attack. But the shelling from German guns was relentless. The two naval officers set a splendid example of calm and the beach party rowed ashore, fixing a line to maintain contact with the fireboat. After four or five journeys, the Massey Shaw was full once more with troops pressed together in the cabin and standing shoulder-to-shoulder on deck. Her load of nearly l00 men was transferred to a troopship at anchor in the channel and she returned to be re-loaded. This was only possible after some engine trouble that the naval stokers, who were unused to the Massey Shaw’s machinery, eventually managed to overcome.

Stretcher cases now began to arrive; these were hard to handle and transfer to the troopship. The Massey Shaw crew made about five journeys from the beach to a paddle steamer and it was estimated that they embarked 500 men in this way. As dawn broke, the troopship was full and left for England. The Massey Shaw returned to the beach and started loading again. At this point, on a falling tide, the boat began to bump on the sands and was in danger of damaging her propellers but, with the engines throbbing at full power, the crew just managed to get back into deep water. At 3.30 a.m. she was the last boat to leave that part of the beach. Halfway across the channel, the naval skipper began to have doubts about the compass, but then, to his relief, they came across a drifter towing two small boats packed with troops. They followed the drifter into Ramsgate where they arrived at 8.00 a.m. on Sunday 2 June, landing 30 or 40 more soldiers.

The Massey Shaw returned to Dunkirk again the next evening with a London Fire Brigade crew. This time they went to the jetty off Dunkirk harbour. It was difficult for soldiers to board her from the towering jetty and she came away empty. After returning to Ramsgate, she was ordered back to London. Off Margate the Emile de Champs, a French ship, which had sailed to England from Dunkirk laden with troops the previous night, was passing her at a distance of 200 yards when it struck a mine and sank almost immediately. The Massey Shaw picked up 40 men, all severely injured, and took them back to Ramsgate.

Early on Wednesday 5 June, she finally returned to London. As she came up the River Thames she was cheered as she passed each fire station. Finally, the wives and families of all those on board were waiting at the Lambeth Headquarters when the boat docked at the Lambeth river station to great jubilation. The crew were given a splendid reception at the Headquarters station.

Footnotes

Sub-Officer A. J. May was subsequently awarded the Royal Navy’s Distinguished Service Medal, a rare honour for any civilian. Two of the Massey Shaw’s firemen, Henry Ray and Edmond Wright, were also mentioned in the Royal Navy’s account of the evacuation and both awarded the King’s Commendation for Gallantry.