Bridges over troubled waters
CHRISTOPHER PROUDLOVE reviews a sale of treasures related to the man who helped make the D-Day landings a possibility
THE grandly named Colonel Vassal Charles Steer-Webster, is one of the many unsung heroes of two world wars. Now, an auction is to feature mementoes and his personal possessions charting his military career from the trenches in 1914 to his role as a colonel masterminding construction and delivery of the Mulberry Harbours that helped win the battle for Normandy.
The archive comprises letters to Steer-Webster from Churchill and other wartime leaders, his medals including his OBE, models, engineering designs and related documents, more than 150 photographs, as well as his First World War dog tags, silver cigarette case, 1914 Christmas tin and the .303 bullet removed from his left buttock.
It is being sold by Steer-Webster’s 87-year-old nephew who lives in Keswick. He has no family to leave it to and has asked Cockermouth auctioneers Mitchells to sell it as one lot so it will rightly remain together. Steer-Wilson died in 1970, aged 73.
Mitchells expects the archive to attract interest from private collectors and museums when it is offered on Wednesday, March 18. Their estimate is £10,000-£15,000, but I suspect it will fetch more.
The prefabricated Mulberry Harbours that provided vital lines for troops, vehicles and supplies for the invasion of Europe were one of the best kept secrets of the World War Two. The failure of the Dieppe Raid on August 19, 1942, showed Western Allies exactly what not to do. Seizing a major port required bombardment rendering it probably useless, so Churchill turned his attention to an amphibious landing.
However, supply ships needed deep water in order to unload, which could not be done in the shallows offshore. Additionally, the further away from land they were, the more likely they were to be protected from land-based enemy attack.
Churchill is said to have had the idea during his First World War service as First Sea Lord in 1917 in an attempt to capture two islands off the Dutch coastline. However, the plan was never put into action.
In a directive to Admiral Louis Mountbatten, titled ‘Piers for use on beaches’ and dated May 30, 1942, he wrote: “They must float up and down with the tide. The anchor problem must be mastered. Let me have the best solution worked out. Don’t argue the matter. The difficulties will argue for themselves.”
A number of suggestions were forthcoming, but engineer Hugh Iorys Hughes is credited with the design to go into production, chosen personally by Churchill.
Although living in London at the time, he was born in Bangor, North Wales, and interestingly, the Conwy Estuary was chosen as the site on which the floating harbour construction started.
Conwy Morfa became a huge War Department steelyard and the workforce of around 1,000 labourers began constructing the prototypes in absolute secrecy, unaware of what they were building or how important it would become.
The prefabricated parts built at Morfa were taken to Wigtown on the Solway Firth, where a military camp had been built nearby at Cairnhead to house the hundreds of engineers and construction workers on the project. Two harbours were built, codenamed Mulberry A and B, and from the summer of 1943, an estimated 45,000 workers were employed in the construction.
Mile-long piers were required that could withstand gale-force winds, allow large freighters and troopships to berth and be capable of holding tanks and lorries each carrying tons of supplies.
Morfa continued to produce pierheads and floating roadways, while other parts were made in dry docks on the Thames and the Clyde before being towed to the French coast in readiness for the invasion.
Mulberry A was intended for the American-led Omaha Beach landing, and Mulberry B, for the British and Canadian forces, at Arromanches.
Each was a massive construction covering an area of two square miles and comparable with the size of the harbour at Gibraltar.
Mulberry A was broken by a storm on June 19, three days after D-Day, but Mulberry B was operational for 10 months after the landings and able to land more than 2.5 million troops, 500,000 vehicles and four million tonnes of supplies on six miles of steel roadways floating on concrete pontoons.
Military historians reckon this shortened the war by months.
Colonel Steer-Webster supervised the entire operation, being in almost daily contact with Churchill throughout development. One letter sent on VE Day in 1945 with an initialled copy of the “Piers for use on beaches” memo and a photograph, reads: Herewith, an autographed photograph of myself as a gesture of thanks to you for helping me achieve it by your dedication of Mulberry”. All three pieces are in the archive.
Steer-Webster was a private in the 13th Battalion, London Regiment, but was invalided out after being wounded in action in April 1916. He was granted the Freedom of the City of London for his achievements, the certificate for which is included in the archive.
An interesting addition are plans, photographs and a silver model of the so-called “concrete mat”, assayed in London in 1942, and presented to Col Steer-Webster when he was a major, “As a tribute to his ingenuity and energy in discovering a simple solution to the battling problem that made Dieppe possible, NE Wates and RW Wates December 1942”.
Steer-Webster was deputy director of experimental engineering at the time and designed the mats – nicknamed “chocolate mattresses” because they looked like huge bars of chocolate – to allow lorries and heavy artillery to travel across beaches without getting bogged down.
He was awarded £1,000 for his invention from the Royal Commission on Awards.
A scrapbook of newspaper cuttings and photographs titled “Mulberry Mission” recalls his visit to Canada in 1946 when he was sent to allay misconceptions that the Canadian action at Dieppe was simply a tragic episode in the campaign, when in fact the action paved the way for the Allies’ brilliant success in the D Day Landings. Other letters are from Field Marshal Viscount Alanbrooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff and Churchill’s closest military adviser, Mountbatten, and President Eisenhower, who also sent him a Christmas card.