A Reluctant Hero: The Life of Captain Robert Ryder VC

By Richard Hopton

A biography of one of the greatest naval heroes of World War II.
 
This is the first biography of Cpt. Robert Ryder VC, Royal Navy, one of the greatest naval heroes of the Second World War. Ryder led the audacious raid on St Nazaire in March 1942, which completely destroyed the port’s dry dock—depriving the Germans’ mighty pocket battleships of its use for the remainder of the war. The raid was one of the most brilliantly executed combined operations of the war, and much of the credit must go to Ryder’s outstanding planning and courageous leadership.
 
Ryder’s name will be forever linked with the raid on St Nazaire, for which he received a Victoria Cross— but the rest of his war service was no less distinguished. Torpedoed in a Q-ship in 1940, he was rescued after clinging to a piece of wreckage for four days. After St Nazaire, he was heavily involved in the planning of combined operations and took part in the ill-fated raid on Dieppe. On D-Day he led a naval assault party in the first wave of the invasion. For the rest of the war Ryder commanded a destroyer on the Arctic convoys.
 
This lively biography tells the story not only of his wartime heroics, but of the unusual and adventurous life that preceded the war—including serving in the Antarctic and taking part in some of the earliest ocean yacht races.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781844689736

Book preview

Prologue

As the sun set on 28 June 1940, HMS Willamette Valley was at position 49º 199 N, 15º 159 W, 300 miles off the south-west coast of Ireland, seventeen days out of Gibraltar bound for the Canadian port of Halifax. She was a ‘Q’ ship, a tramp steamer converted with concealed guns and torpedo tubes for operations against enemy surface raiders and U-boats. Disguised as Ambea, a Greek merchant vessel, the Willamette Valley was commanded by Lieutenant Commander Robert Ryder, with a ship’s company of about ninety men.

At about 2100, in gathering darkness and under a cloudy sky, the Willamette Valley, as she did every night, closed up to actions stations. At 2112 she was struck by a torpedo on the port side just forward of the bridge. It was too dark to see if the submarine had come to the surface. Moreover, the ship, silhouetted against the dying embers of the setting sun on the western horizon, presented a fine target for the U-boat’s cannon shells.

The torpedo, luckily, had not caused too much damage. As the main engine was intact and still functioning, Ryder decided to continue with the normal drill. Accordingly, the ‘panic party’ in two boats – an apparently hasty evacuation of the ship, in the hope of luring the U-boat to the surface – was ordered away. Meanwhile, the concealed gunports remained closed, to preserve the disguise. After about twenty minutes one of the ‘panic party’s’ boats, which had been damaged, returned to the ship. Ryder ordered the men on board to hide on the Willamette Valley’s decks so that they could not be seen were the U-boat to turn a searchlight on his ship. Ryder was at this stage still determined to continue the ruse in the hope of bringing the enemy to the surface where his concealed guns could get a shot at her. He had been crisscrossing the Atlantic for more than four months without making any substantial contact with the enemy. Now, finally, he had a U-boat in his sights.

Twenty-five minutes later, at around 2200, a second torpedo struck the Willamette Valley, smashing into the engine room on the starboard side. There was a blinding flash and a screech of tearing, flying steel. The engine room almost immediately burst into flames. Ryder ordered Michael Seymour, the First Lieutenant, to muster the hands he needed to tackle the fire, while the remainder removed as much unused ammunition as they could to safety. The centre of the ship was ablaze, great gouts of flame pouring from the engine room cowls and skylights. At one point a sheet of flame shot up the funnel, illuminating the whole ship. The fire main in the engine room was out of action so the crew fought the raging fire with buckets of water, sand and foam.

The crew was still fighting the fire, when, at 2216, the U-boat fired a third torpedo, which exploded under the Willamette Valley’s stern. Ryder, realizing that this was the killer blow, gave the order ‘All hands on deck’. Less than a minute later the ship sank by the stern, rolling through 90 degrees as she did so. Her bows remained above the water for half an hour before sinking altogether. As his ship slipped beneath the waves, Ryder heard a small explosion, possibly of the detonator tank. Mercifully, the depth-charges had been set to ‘safe’ and so did not explode.

Ryder was thrown into the water as the ship sank, grabbing the lifebuoy from the bridge as he went. Buffeted by pieces of debris breaking loose and bursting to the surface as the ship went down, Ryder was able to keep himself afloat, thanks to the lifebuoy and the inflatable waistcoat he was wearing. It was pitch dark. He soon found a small baulk of wood, on which he was joined by one of his men. However, it was not sufficiently buoyant for two men, so Ryder swam off and found another, larger, piece of floating debris. This he clung to until daybreak. Ryder kept calling out and, for a while, voices answered from the darkness but gradually the replies became fewer and weaker until there was silence.

As the dawn came up Ryder found himself alone apart from the corpses of some of his men, floating face down in the water. In the light, he was able to haul himself on to the wreckage, which turned out to be a pair of wooden chocks for the ship’s boats, joined by some broken planking. With the lifebuoy positioned as a seat, Ryder now had a raft, just substantial enough to keep him afloat, but not completely clear of the water. This makeshift raft was nevertheless perilously unsteady and liable to pitch Ryder into the water with the slightest loss of balance. He had also grabbed from the floating wreckage a 5ft length of planking, partly painted in red and white.

The sea was now much calmer than it had been the previous night. But as the sun rose the fuel oil in Ryder’s eyes was starting to become extremely painful and it was becoming more and more difficult for him to see. However, at around 1000 he spotted the distant masts of a ship steaming towards him. She must have intercepted the Willamette Valley’s distress call; he would be rescued. Half-blinded by the oil in his eyes, he watched the ship come within perhaps 2 miles of him and stop for half an hour before steaming off to the west.

Not long after this disappointment, the heat of the sun and the fuel oil caused Ryder’s eyes to become so inflamed and swollen that he was unable to see at all. Alone, covered in oil, wet and cold, hundreds of miles from land, with little chance of rescue – Ryder knew that since the fall of France the convoys were taking a course round the north of Ireland, well away from his position – apparently now blind, and without any food or water, he began to wonder whether he should not slip quietly off into the sea to drown. Unable to bring himself to do that, he tried to open an artery in his wrist with a bent, rusty nail from his plank. Then with the loss of blood he would loose consciousness painlessly. It proved more difficult than he expected to cut into the artery and he gave up. He steeled himself for his family’s sake not to give in and prayed; indeed divine intervention seemed the only thing that might save him. Many years later, Ryder, who was an accomplished artist, painted a picture of himself adrift in the Atlantic. In the middle of an endless expanse of sea and sky is a figure, sitting hunched on a flimsy-looking square of wood, utterly alone, apart from a passing seabird. He entitled the picture ‘Lord remember me in this vast ocean’.

Gradually, he drifted clear of the oil slick and was able to start trying to get the oil out of his hair and eyes. By the second morning, having bathed his eyes continuously throughout the night by using his handkerchief dipped in sea water, his sight had improved, although the glare of the sun on the water was still excruciatingly painful. With the return of his eyesight, Ryder’s morale began to improve. Although he had no idea how long he might expect to survive, he began to allow himself hope. He might be picked up by a German U-boat. If he could hold on for six or seven days, the North Atlantic drift might carry him into Irish waters where he would be seen by a coastal patrol. He might be spotted by an aircraft on anti-submarine sweep, a Sunderland or a Catalina. This, Ryder felt, was his best, most realistic hope and so, with great courage, he prepared to wait.

While sitting on his tiny raft, hoping against hope for rescue, Ryder had much time to think. Before leaving England with the Willamette Valley he had become engaged. Now, with life itself in the gravest peril, he realized that she was not the right girl for him. He determined that, should he survive, he would break off the engagement.

The days were not so bad; Ryder was cheered by the improvement in his eyesight; he was warmed by the sun and, of course, there was always the chance of being sighted. The nights were grim – bleak and cold, with no hope of being seen. Shivering continuously, he prayed for the dawn. While adrift Ryder had some visitors: a small, hammer-headed shark circled him and a John Dory passed close by. A friendly little storm petrel fluttered around the raft, returning several times as if encouraging him to hang on. A less welcome passer-by was a large, 30ft basking shark which swam just beneath the raft. ‘I drew up my feet’, he wrote later, ‘like Jeremy Fisher and was glad when he moved on.’

As time drew on, Ryder increasingly suffered from exhaustion: he would nod off, tipping up his precariously flimsy raft and slip into the water. He began to hallucinate too, as a result of hunger and lack of water and sleep. A small, white cabin cruiser would come alongside and a man in a white yachting cap would offer him a lift ashore, but as soon as he accepted he would wake up to the terrible reality of his situation.

At the end of the fourth day, as dusk was beginning to fall, Ryder experienced a different hallucination: a large ocean liner was steaming past him. At this point he came to, realizing that it was real. There were ships as far as the eye could see; it was a convoy. Frantically waving his red and white plank, he was soon spotted. The leading ship sounded four or five blasts on her horn but the column continued to steam relentlessly along, showing no signs of stopping. Perhaps, for the sake of one man, the convoy would not stop in waters where submarines were known to operate. Then Ryder noticed the last ship in the column, a tanker, pulling out of the line and slowing down. Eventually, at dead slow speed, she drifted close to Ryder, her huge sides towering over him, and threw down several ropes. One splashed down about 10ft from him and someone from the deck far above shouted, ‘Swim for it’. Ryder leapt off his raft and made for the floating line. But in his weakened state he could not find the line nor regain the relative safety of his raft. His inflatable waistcoat had perished and so it now merely weighed him down. The tanker was drifting inexorably away. Then the huge propeller began to churn the water; the ship was steaming off. Would she return? Would she abandon him to his fate? Would she return in time? For Ryder, after his ordeal, was now very weak and could not survive much longer in the water. He knew that it would take a ship of that size at least fifteen minutes to gather way once more, come about and stop. As he was coming up to the surface for what he felt must be the last time, a line splashed into the water right in front of him. This time he grabbed the rope and was hauled alongside. A sailor came down one of the ship’s lifelines to secure him in a bowline and he was lifted aboard. His ordeal was over. The ship was the SS Inverliffy, of the Bank Line, under the command of Captain T.E. Alexander.

Ryder had survived, alone on his tiny makeshift raft, without food or water, for three days and twenty-two hours.

The Port of St. Nazaire, March, 1942.

Up the River Loire from the sea: the approach to St Nazaire.

The Antarctic as it was known at the outset of the British Graham Land Expedition in 1934.

Graham Land as it was known before the sledge journeys of late 1936.

Graham Land as it appeared after the sledge journeys of late 1936 which proved that Graham Land was a peninsular of the Antarctic continent and that Alexander I Land was an island.

Chapter 1

Family and Childhood: India and England

Robert Edward Dudley Ryder was born at Dehra Dun in India on 16 February 1908. He was the third son and sixth child of Major (later Colonel) Charles Ryder, Royal Engineers, and his wife Ida (née Grigg). They had married in 1892 producing three daughters – Margaret (born 1893), Enid (1895) and Violet (1898) – and then three sons – Lisle (1902), Ernle (1906) and Robert, known by his doting parents as Bobby. At school he was known by some as ‘Chippy’. Later

in life, during his time in the Navy, he acquired, from his initials, the nickname ‘Red’ although thereafter most people knew him simply as Bob.

The Ryders were a distinguished family who numbered among their descendants an admiral and a bishop. The dynasty was founded by Dudley Ryder, the son of a nonconformist draper, who forged a successful career at the Bar and in politics, rising to become, successively, Solicitor-General, Attorney-General and, finally, in 1754, Lord Chief Justice. He was ennobled by George II in May 1756 but died the following day before the Letters Patent could be completed. His only son, Nathaniel, sat as MP for Tiverton 1756–76, before himself being, successfully this time, raised to the peerage in 1776. His son, Dudley, followed in his father’s footsteps as MP for Tiverton, enjoying a distinguished political career as an ardent supporter of Pitt the Younger. Indeed, he was sufficiently close to Pitt to act as his second in the Prime Minister’s duel with George Tierney on Putney Heath in May 1798. Having occupied a number of lesser government posts, Pitt appointed him Foreign Secretary in 1804. He was created Earl of Harrowby in 1809 and served as Lord President of the Council throughout Lord Liverpool’s long administration.¹

Charles Ryder, Robert’s father, a distinguished surveyor and cartographer, was an important influence on his youngest son, passing on to him an adventurous spirit and love of exploration and map-making. Colonel Ryder had spent much of his career tramping the mountains, valleys, deserts and jungles of the Middle and the Far East, exploring and mapping. He had been a member of the Mekong Boundary Commission (1898–1900), joined the expedition charged with mapping the Yunnan province of China (1901–02) and took part, as mapping officer, in Francis Younghusband’s notorious expedition to Tibet in 1904. After Younghusband’s expedition, Ryder commanded a party of five which mapped 40,000 sq. miles of Tibet and the borders of British India. In the process the party covered 1,000 miles of inhospitable, mountainous terrain. For this remarkable feat he was awarded the DSO and the Royal Geographical Society’s Gold Medal. In 1913 Ryder was appointed the Chief Surveying Officer to the Turko-Persian Boundary Commission, one of three attempts in the nineteenth and the early twentieth century to delineate the troublesome border between the two countries. By the autumn of 1914 he had surveyed the entire 1,180 miles of the frontier between the Persian Gulf and Mount Ararat.²

If Dehra Dun was a typical Raj garrison town, where life in the cantonment revolved around the club to the stifling rhythms of official protocol, Ryder was a typical child of British India. The much-loved and indulged youngest son of an extensive family, he was brought up largely by an ayah, who, by all accounts, greatly spoiled him. Families who served in British India endured as a matter of course prolonged separations nor were the Ryders any exception. As was the custom, young Bobby was packed off, aged six, to school in England with his brother Ernle. By November 1914 he was in England with his father, while his mother remained in India with the elder daughters. Charles was lodging in Eastbourne with his three sons, Violet and a French governess for the children. ‘Darling’, Charles wrote to his wife in India, ‘it would do your heart good to see Ernle & Bobby rushing about the place, full of spirits & fun.’³

By the autumn of 1915 Ida was in England with the children while Charles had returned to India. The strain on Charles and Ida and their family imposed by the lengthy separations, made worse by the war, is evident from their letters. In April 1916 Charles’s application for six months’ leave was refused on account of the war. ‘So that is the end of that’, he wrote despairingly to Ida, ‘& when I shall get home or see any of you again God alone knows.’⁴

By then Bobby had joined Ernle at Hazlehurst School at Frant near Tunbridge Wells. He seems to have been an unexceptional pupil. His father, far away in India, scrutinized his reports with an eagle eye. ‘Bobby I see for half-term is still bottom of his class. I fancy he is about the youngest; but all I want in his reports is doing his best or trying hard or something like that.’⁵ But there were also encouraging signs: Bobby was showing distinct promise at drawing and had managed to get in the football XI. According to the Headmaster’s wife, Bobby was ‘really very good, he is our best back in spite of his size.’⁶ In 1918 he won the drawing prize, an early sign of a talent that would develop throughout his life.

In March 1919 Charles Ryder took up his post as Surveyor-General of India, a fitting finale to a distinguished career. One of the conditions of his appointment was that he would agree not to take any home leave for the first year. As he had not seen his younger sons since 1914, this was not a condition he was happy to accept but he had little choice. ‘It is an awful blow to me having seen so little of my boys, but I don’t see that I could have helped it in any way.’⁷

In the summer of 1920 Charles, having completed his first year as Surveyor-General was at last allowed some home leave. Reunited with Ernle and little Bobby for the first time since 1914, he took them and Lisle off to the Brittany coast for a holiday. They had a wonderful time, fishing, drawing, playing on the beach, even having French lessons. The holiday also gave Colonel Ryder an opportunity to observe the sons he had not seen for five years as he reported to his wife in India:

[Bobby] has two weak points: if he can’t manage a thing he chucks it in the most utmost despair. Yesterday we were out fishing at Cancale & because he didn’t get bites at one time he was in tears & waving his hands about in the most dramatic manner. Then he is dreadful at cards, if his king is taken by an ace he weeps … The other great drawback is his selfishness.⁸

Ryder himself always claimed in later life that ‘he was brought up to be a good winner.’ But his youngest son had many redeeming features, too. ‘What is delightful about him is his keenness & energy, his great love & knowledge of natural history & his love of painting. He is very good looking.’

In September 1921 Ryder followed his father and both his brothers to Cheltenham College. Being from an impeccably military background, Ryder entered the Military and Engineering side of the school, the preferred course for those intending to go on to Sandhurst or Woolwich. Ryder’s family have the impression that he was not a particularly assiduous pupil: ‘he needed motivation and, not getting it, he trundled along’, his daughter remarked. This is not entirely borne out by his results at Cheltenham. In his first three terms he finished successively second, first and third in his year. Throughout his time at the school he never (with the exception of his last term when, presumably, he was concentrating on the Navy entrance exams) finished lower than eighth, in a class the average size of which was seventeen. He was always at the top of the class, or near it, for drawing and continued to do well on the games field. In 1923 his father recorded that ‘Bobby [is] decidedly promising at games.’⁹

With their parents away in India – Ida did not return until the spring of 1923 – Ryder and Ernle were farmed out to relations during the holidays. Their favourite refuge was their uncle Wilfred’s house, Gratnar, near North Bovey on the edge of Dartmoor. Here the two boys were able to run wild in the Devon countryside.

[W]e took a young Wood pigeon from its nest and feed [sic] it on corn, which we had to force into its mouth one grain at a time, he was hideous when we got him but is getting prettier and prettier … He now feeds himself which is a great relief.¹⁰

Gratnar was a home from home. As Ryder happily told his parents in January 1923: for ‘our dinner we had Turkey & Christmas pudding which came in all flaming and we poured rum over it till it was blazing, when we ate it.’

Ryder seemed destined for a career in the Army: ‘It had always been assumed that I would become a soldier’, he wrote later. As he came from a formidably military family, this appeared to be a foregone conclusion. His father and uncle were serving officers; two of his mother’s brothers were Army officers, as were both his own brothers, while his three sisters were all married to Army officers. His family background and his youthful memories of the Great War had profoundly affected the young Ryder. ‘I was proud to be British and eager to serve my country.’¹¹ Meanwhile, Colonel Ryder, out in India, harboured ambitions that his youngest son might follow him into the Royal Engineers.

By then, however, Ryder’s thoughts had turned to a naval career. At the age of fourteen or fifteen he had been taken sailing by his brother Lisle, who owned Edith, a converted fishing smack. They sailed from the Thames Estuary round the North Foreland to Dungeness and back, making a night crossing of the Thames estuary, then quite a rarity, in the process. During that trip they experienced ‘just about everything – strong winds, fog and calms.’ For Ryder it was an epiphany, the start of a love for the sea and sailing that was to last all his life. In old age he described the ‘scintillating lights from the buoys and Light vessels, the fog horns, kedging when becalming off Walton, the sea fog setting in … all made a deep and exciting impression on my young mind.’ He also discovered that, despite the rough conditions, he did not suffer from seasickness. ‘I felt not a qualm which gave me a great advantage.’

A visit to HMS Valhalla, a destroyer lying at Devonport, further strengthened Ryder’s thoughts of the Navy. Joining it would also allow him to leave school a year early, an added, and not inconsiderable, bonus. However, others were not so encouraging. His family were worried that he would not be able to live on his Navy pay and, moreover, that he would find it difficult to pass the entrance examinations, a sentiment firmly endorsed by his school. ‘Back at Cheltenham my masters thought I had no chance of passing.’ But Ryder was nothing if not determined and set himself to pass the exams. He sat the Public School Special Entry in November 1925, before facing an intimidating interview board consisting of ‘a formidable array’ of ‘admirals, captains, civil servants and headmasters.’ Asked the inevitable question, ‘Why do you want to go into the Navy?’, Ryder waxed lyrical about the joys of sailing across the Thames Estuary at night.

When the results were published, Ryder had come top. This came as a great surprise to his masters at Cheltenham. After all, his final report in English had described him as ‘incredibly illiterate’. The head of the Military side of the school wrote: ‘my heartiest congratulations. It was a very pleasant surprise to find … [you] at the head of the Navy List.’ Lower down the list was a boy from Rugby, Sam Beattie, who was destined to win the Victoria Cross alongside Ryder at St Nazaire.¹²

Looking back many years later on his choice of career, Ryder wrote:

I don’t think it ever occurred to any of us to go into business. We came from a military background and were really proud of it. The thought of working in a city office in the hope of being rich one day had little appeal to our adventurous instincts. We just took it for granted that there was no better way of serving one’s country than in the armed forces of the crown.¹³

Chapter 2

Into the Navy (1926–31)

Ryder joined the Navy on 1 January 1926 and was posted to HMS Thunderer, a training ship moored off Devonport dockyard. For the new recruit the Royal Navy, steeped in arcane tradition, was an intimidating experience, with pitfalls at every turn for the unwary cadet. Ryder described his arrival at Thunderer in his first letter home.

[I] didn’t know my way about the ship or who to ask; one has to be very careful to whom one speaks as it is a crime to speak to anyone on the lower deck, & it is not done to accost an officer. The Quarter deck is treated as hallowed ground; one is not allowed [to] walk on it, but only to double across it, & it has to be saluted whenever it is approached from any direction.¹

However, Ryder soon acclimatized to his new life and, in this stimulating environment, began to blossom. ‘I found navigation and seamanship of the greatest interest’, he recalled. He also managed to do as much sailing as possible, gathering up fellow cadets for trips around Plymouth Sound. There were weekly whaler races too, in which Ryder occasionally managed to come second; they were almost invariably won by the King’s Harbour Master. Occasionally he would take a cutter out of the Sound, round to Whitesand Bay.

His progress had been noted by the term Lieutenant, E.W. Bush, who arranged for Ryder and another cadet to crew on the Jolie Brise in that year’s Fastnet Race. Ocean racing was in 1926 a sport in its infancy; the inaugural Fastnet Race had taken place only the previous August. As the Jolie Brise, a converted Le Havre pilot cutter, had won the 1925 race, it was both a great honour and a wonderful opportunity for Ryder to be invited to crew her. Nine boats started in stormy conditions at Cowes. However, during the course of the race the Jolie Brise was forced to heave to by the weather, allowing the Ilex, a yacht crewed by the Royal Engineers, to win. His boat may not have won the race but the experience had been thrilling. He had also made his mark, as George Martin, the owner of the Jolie Brise, told Admiral Phillimore, the Commander-in-Chief, Plymouth: ‘Ryder was the best of them all. He said very little, but worked very hard. I think he will make a fine seaman: he is very keen.’ Admiral Phillimore, passing Martin’s remarks on to Colonel Ryder, added, ‘I feel very proud of my kinsman.’²

In his third and last term Ryder was appointed Senior Cadet Captain and awarded the King’s Dirk as the outstanding cadet of his year. He had made a better start to his career in the Navy than he could dared have hoped. On 1 January 1927 he was promoted Midshipman and, at the end of the month, joined his first ship. She was HMS Ramillies, a battleship of 29,350 tons, mounting eight 15in guns in four turrets, launched in 1916. When Ryder joined her she was refitting in a floating dock at Devonport. This gave Ryder a gentle introduction to life on a battleship as the ship’s company was reduced to about two-fifths of its normal size. Judging by his midshipman’s log of the period, Ryder and his fellow midshipmen were mainly occupied with lectures and courses, interspersed with drill sessions and the occasional game of hockey. They were also required to write descriptions of several new ships under construction in a basin adjoining Ramillies.³

Once the refit was complete, Ramillies joined the Atlantic Fleet for a summer cruise off Scotland before returning to Weymouth at the end of June for a regatta. Although Ramillies did not distinguish herself in the races, she did collect one consolation prize. In the sailing race for cutters crewed by midshipmen, the Ramillies’s boat, with Ryder in the crew, pulled off a most creditable victory. When the starting gun was fired the cutter was not only on the wrong side of the starting vessel but across the line as well. Having to beat back up to the starting line against the tide put her about five minutes behind the nearest boat. However, in very light winds, she was only about three cables (600yd) behind and steadily reeled in the leaders, before crossing the winning line comfortably ahead. The cutter, Ryder said proudly, ‘certainly showed herself to be a fast boat in light airs.’ The crew’s prize was a cup presented by the Royal Dorset Yacht Club and lunch in the clubhouse the following day.

The highlight of the rest of the summer was Cowes Week in early August. Although Ryder seems not to have done any sailing, he was able to watch the races and drink in the atmosphere. His midshipman’s log describes the comings and goings of the big yachts and the more exciting moments of some of the races. On the Thursday Ramillies’s officers gave a dance on board for 600 guests, comprising mostly parties from the yachts. The quarterdeck was hung with bunting, lights and greenery for the occasion, but the centrepiece was a salt-water fountain and pool alive with lobster. On the Sunday the King and Queen inspected Ramillies.

On 21 September Ramillies left Devonport bound for Malta, where she was to join the Mediterranean Fleet. Five days later she steamed through the Straits and into the harbour at Gibraltar, ‘in time’, Ryder noted, ‘to see a wonderful sunrise effect on the Atlas Mountains.’ From Gibraltar she made a stately progress east up the Mediterranean, putting in at the French colony of Bougie in Algeria. From Bougie Ryder took a motorcycle inland to the town of Serif. He was impressed by the ‘very fine’ Kerrata gorges and by the ‘road cut out of the hill in many places’. However, on the return journey, the motorcycle’s headlight failed so he had a fraught trip home, arriving back at Bougie, benighted, at 9.00 pm.

Having arrived at Malta, Ramillies began to prepare for her winter cruise in the tropics for which she departed, in company with HMS Barham, on 4 December. Ryder was not sorry to be leaving Malta, which ‘is a rummy place & depends entirely on which way the wind blows, we have just had the rains & followed by the Scirocco, the latter makes one feel wretched.’⁴ The cruise began eventfully, as Ryder told his parents. ‘On leaving Malta we missed going aground & hitting the pier by a series of flukes … Well on passage we nearly ran down a tramp. The same evening our gyro compass broke down & we nearly rammed Barham who was on our beam.’ But worse was to come as Ramillies came into Gibraltar:

We actually crashed into the mole; it was grand [sight] the ship heeled right over & we smashed a few pontoons but in some mysterious way we failed to damage our stem. I wish we had it would have been great we should probably have returned to Devonport.⁵

Ramillies and Barham left Gibraltar on 14 December to cruise down the west coast of Africa, reaching Freetown, Sierra Leone, just before Christmas and Lagos on 2 January. As she steamed south so the weather improved, and with it Ryder’s state of mind. ‘I feel peculiarly fit in the Tropics’, he told his parents from Lagos. ‘I think it’s because we play a very strenuous game of deck hockey at 1600 every evening and then plunge into our sail bath.’ And there was an additional benefit, too: ‘We have just steamed into the zone of extra pay, we get 1/- a day extra for 12 days.’ He enjoyed the warm tropical evenings at sea, too, when ‘we all sit back in deck chairs in pyjamas with the gramophone going, on the deck outside the gunroom.’⁶

During the passage north to the Mediterranean, Ramillies put into Accra in the Gold Coast where Ryder was able to see his brother Lisle who was serving there with the Royal West Africa Frontier Force. ‘Lisle looked very healthy’, Ryder told their parents, ‘he is rapidly assuming the air of a regular coaster as they call them out here.’⁷ On 6 February Ramillies berthed in the Grand Harbour at Malta.

Part of the Midshipman’s training was a spell in smaller ships, so at the end of March Ryder left Ramillies to join HMS Vanessa, a destroyer attached to the Mediterranean Fleet’s 2nd Destroyer Flotilla. On his third day in the ship he told his parents:

the life is quite different from that of a battleship; it’s altogether much more fun. Our captain – Hannay – is an amazing man – very fierce when on the bridge, very much the reverse in the wardroom and so long as one plays various games for the flotilla, and drinks one’s quota in the evenings he is pleased.⁸

In later years, however, Ryder looked back on these months with a more jaundiced eye. ‘It was bad luck too that during my four months in destroyers I was sent to a very hard drinking ship, Vanessa. I should have enjoyed this interlude but felt out of place in the gin drinking atmosphere of the wardroom.’⁹ However, as Vanessa was cruising in Greek waters during June and July there were compensations. Ryder and a fellow midshipman took themselves off to explore the coast one day. We sailed, he told his parents:

till we came to a bay, horseshoe in shape surrounded by sand dunes and guarded on either side of the entrance by cliffs and overlooked by the ruined castle and Nestor’s cave. The water is wonderfully clear here & one can see the bottom at considerable depths and this bay is surrounded by lovely white sand.¹⁰

After an uneventful four months