THE LAST SAILOR OF ‘MALAYA’
ALEC King shares memories of his time on a warship bu lt with money from the Federated Malay States.
THE plaque on display in the reception area of Education Malaysia in London has long intrigued me. It is no doubt a piece of our history — it is the plaque of HMS Malaya , a Royal Navy Queen Elizabeth-class battleship that saw two world wars.
The plaque was one of many memorabilia that were saved when HMS Malaya was sent to the scrapyard in February 1948. It was during the official opening of the then Malaya Hall by the Duchess of Kent in 1949 that the plaque was presented. The ship’s bell, on the other hand, found its way home and is now housed at the National Hydrography Centre, Pulau Indah Naval Base, Selangor.
Others remained in museums and some, original or copies, are available on eBay.
I was recently introduced to exseaman Alec King, who, at 96, must be the last remaining survivor of the battleship. It has been 82 years since he joined the HMS Malaya and a few days before the 78th anniversary of the ship being hit by a German Uboat torpedo that I met him.
King’s memories of sailing in HMS Malaya during peacetime and during the more turbulent months of World War II were crystal clear; his reminiscence regularly jogged by black-and-white photographs he carefully kept in his albums and newspaper cuttings about the battles and voyages of what he described as a “happy and smart ship”.
He proudly showed a copy of a crest and a tie with the Federated Malay States’ colours which he received at one of the few reunions of HMS Malaya’s crew association.
After three reunions, the first in 1975 with about 250 members of the HMS Malaya Club, there were understandably no more after that.
Alec King was indeed the link I was looking for that would reveal the stories behind that plaque.
The sea had always held some kind of fascination for King, the youngest child of a Country Court bailiff. He read the adventures of Robinson Crusoe and devoured the history of Trafalgar, Waterloo and Lord Nelson at the age of 11.
When his family moved from Colchester where he was born to Porchester, near Portsmouth, a port city steeped in the history of the British navy and home to twothirds of the UK’s surface fleet, the pull was just too much.
So at the age of 15, he joined the navy as a boy seaman, earning five shillings and nine pence a week (enough to buy a couple of chocolates) and did his first year initial training on HMS St Vincent at Gosport.
He was later drafted on the light cruiser HMS Dunedin, then HMS Resource which took him to places like Malta and then Alexandria where he joined HMS Malaya in April 1939, almost 80 years ago.
LIFE ON HMS ‘MALAYA’
HMS Malaya posed much more of a challenge but exciting times were had too, where the crew enjoyed several cruises in the Mediterranean.
As an able seaman, King’s work would include polishing metal work on guns, scrubbing the upper deck and manning the gangway.
“I was impressed because the previous ship I was on was a light cruiser, but when I joined the Malaya, there was so much going on with a crew of 1,250 people and full of activities.
“It was also the first ship that I had been on that carried two aircraft — used to be catapulted and then recovered by a crane,” he reminisced, adding that it was in Alexandria that HMS Malaya took part in a regatta.
“We watched the flying fish, dived overboard for a swim or played water polo,” he said of peacetime activities when he first heard Ol’ Blue Eyes crooning his songs.
It wasn’t long before the war clouds appeared in the horizon in September.
“We were in Alexandria when war was declared. It wasn’t long before the Malaya and two destroyers were drafted through the Suez Canal into the Indian Ocean to be based at an island called Socotra.
“And it was from there that we were searching for the German pocket battleship, the Admiral Scheer, which finally turned out to be the Graff Spee,” he laughed gleefully, spitting out names of ships and destroyers as if it had happened only yesterday.
He recalled that in 1940, the war in the Mediterranean was hotting up.
“The Italians had just come in, the Germans were already in it. There were all sorts of fleet action, ships being sunk, and the navy supported the army campaign in Libya.
“We used our 15-inch guns to bombard an Italian fort in Cyrenaica. We had the Ark Royal, the Malaya and the Renown and various other ships to attack the Italian fleet. That was a successful operation,” recalled King.
A SECRET MISSION
King then remembered another exciting episode in the history of HMS Malaya, a mission done under a cloak of secrecy.
“It was Christmas eve 1940. We left Gibraltar and we made our way to Halifax in Nova Scotia and it was snowing when we arrived.
“I think the main objective there was to take a shipment of gold bullion over to Canada for safekeeping. Several trips were made. I don’t think Mr Churchill wanted the Germans to have it.”
The Malaya, he said, had somewhat of a reputation that frightened enemies away.
While escorting a convoy in early March 1941, she encountered two German capital ships, the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. According to reports, her presence alone forced them to withdraw rather than risk an attack.
However, the battleship was to suffer an attack on the evening of March 20, 1941. About 250 miles west-northwest of the Cape Verde Islands, HMS Malaya was hit by a German U-boat torpedo.
“The Germans were using a new method of attack, the Uboats. They were attacking in numbers. We lost two or three ships of the convoy. And then the following night, we lost seven ships. And sustained a hit ourselves,” he said of the event which happened almost 78 years ago.
“We were at our action stations when we were hit. It wasn’t long before the ship took a 12 degree list. I think there were seven compartments flooded. And they had to counter-balance the list by flooding the opposite torpedoed bridge.
“We were torpedoed on the port side and they had to flood the starboard side to bring the ship back on even keel,” said King, adding that it was a tremen-
dous shock for them.
“There were six of us, including myself, inside a unit which was known as an armoured director. The armour was four inches thick.
“And inside there, we had a master director which was to direct the 15-inch armament in that very confined area. Anyway, the engineer commander took over and dealt with the necessary flooding and adjustment to the ship to make it stable,” he added.
HMS Malaya then decided to leave the convoy and made her way to Trinidad where some minor repairs were done using what was known as collision mats which had to be secured under water.
“From Trinidad, we made our way to America to the Brooklyn Naval Yard and we were there for a total of three months for some major repair work,” he added.
COMING TO AMERICA
As the Americans were not drawn into the war yet, the then 19-year-old had a wonderful time making friends when the ship was in dry dock.
All too soon, HMS Malaya left for Hamilton in Bermuda, a British island territory in the North Atlantic, before sailing back to Scotland.
For King, that spelled the end of his 1937 to 1941 commission on board HMS Malaya.
“She may have been turned into an accommodation ship, or might have assisted some operation. She was never considered to be a front-line warship because of the damage. It was used for accommodation, bombardment, it also might have been used to tow target ships.
“Eventually, she was completely dismantled at one of the big shipyards. That was where the bells, crests and other things would have been removed and presented to cities and towns with naval cadets.”
Although King was nowhere near Malaya during the war, when he was working on the HMS Emperor operating in Tricomalee, in northern Sri Lanka, as an escort carrier, he remembered the surrender of the Japanese that signalled the end of the war.
“There was a great feeling of relief and joy and there was a huge fireworks display on the flight deck of these escort carriers. We left for Singapore for the surrendering ceremony.
“I don’t think everybody wanted to go ashore to see. Lord Louis Mountbatten was there as well as other big high-fliers. It was 12 September 1945,” he said.
King said he met his late wife, Jean Doreen Tingle, the person he reckoned was partly the reason why he left the navy.
The meeting with King, a few days just before the 78th anniversary of HMS Malaya being hit by the German U-boat, has given me a better understanding and appreciation of that plaque displayed in the reception area of Education Malaysia London. Page 1 pic: HMS ‘Malaya’ and its 15-inch guns. In the foreground is ex-seaman Alec King with a copy of the HMS ‘Malaya’ crest and a tie with the flag of the Federated Malay States.