Yachting Monthly & RNVR Journal

May 1940 - volume 69 issue 409 - marked a change to the YM masthead. The words ‘& RNVR Journal’ were added and a 7 page section towards the back was dedicated to RNVR news and information.

The editor (Kathleen Palmer) working from her home in Barnet wrote: ‘It will be recalled by our older readers that during the Great War of 1914 Yachting Monthly became the journal of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. It seems particularly appropriate, therefore, that now the country is engaged in what is generally recognised as the second part of that same struggle, Yachting Monthly is privileged to give the same service to the present officers of the RNVR.’

She noted that the Roll of Honour already contains names of yachtsmen who have given their lives while serving in the RNVR, and with our own General Manager an officer aboard and armed vessel somewhere in the Mediterranean and our Editor in command of drifters somewhere in the North,we are proud to think that the staff of YM is making its active contribution towards Allied aims.’

The two men who had died were Sub-Lieutenant Geoffrey Darlow of the Little Ship Club who had gone down with HMS Northern Rover, an armed trawler from Grimsby patrolling the Northern route. She’d been torpedoed in October 1939 — Geoffrey Darlow and the Commanding Officer Hugh McPherson RNR are the first names to inscribed on the Royal Naval Patrol Service Memorial in Lowestoft. Yet here in YM all that is said is ‘The vessel is presumed to be lost with all hands as she was so long overdue.’ It must have been a long sad period of uncertainly for Geoffrey Darlow’s parents, Hugh McPherson’s wife and all the other relatives and friends of Northern Rover’s crew.

The second name in the YM Roll of Honour was another Little Ship Club member, John Comfort. He must have died in plain sight. The minesweeper HMS Sphinx on which he was serving had been damaged by enemy air attack in February 1940 but it was when she was taken in tow, with the crew still on board, that she capsized with significant loss of life.

Both these men had been among the first to be called up as they had studied for their Board of Trade Yachtmaster’s certificate at the Little Ship Club and so had been give priority. Ironically the first advertisement on the inside front cover of this YM issue is from Captain OM Watts, urging the importance of this certificate for all who wish to gain promotion and serve at sea.

The same message is given in the first part of the new RNVR Journal pages where the well known writer Frank Carr has produced a text book to guide other yachtsmen through the exam.

Researchers will probably be more interested in the closely printed columns of names reprinted from the London Gazette, listing the RNVR officers most recently commissioned. The editor comments ‘ Some of them have been and we hope will continue to be contributors to this magazine whilst others will be remembered as ship mates or brother yachtsmen met in port both when cruising around these shores and ‘foreign’.

The main aim of the magazine however is not to provide war news but morale-boosting recreation ‘to keep alive the spirit of our sport through difficult times.’

The Cruising Association library in Limehouse has an almost complete run of Yachting Monthlies available to members or to visitors on payment of a fee. I found this invaluable for research.