IN HARM’S WAY
SHIP'S STORY A TRIBUTE TO BRAVE CREW
Bristol garage owner and author Brian Crabb burned the
midnight oil researching his latest book – an epic history of the cruiser
HMS Kenya.
In Harm's Way (Paul Watkins, £19.95p) is the result of six years painstaking work trawling through naval records and ships' logs as well as countless interviews with survivors of the actions described. The Fiji class cruiser was involved in the sinking of the Bismarck and the commando raid at Vaagso in Norway not to mention convoy duties to Russia and Malta – amongst the most hazardous and costly operations in the entire war.
The ship's hair-raising history is meticulously described but the text is never short on the crucial human details which bring the ship's story vividly to life. As well as being a triumph of well-presented naval detail, the lavishly illustrated volume is full of anecdotes from a source very close to the author's heart – his father Percival. Percival, known as Buster to his shipmates, lived in Shirehampton, Bristol until his death in 1991 and served in HMS Kenya from its commission in 1940 until a football injury three years later resulted in a trip to 87th General Hospital in Nairobi.
Percival's next voyage, on the ill-fated troopship Khedive Ismail, has already been documented in Brian's first book Passage to Destiny. Brian, who lives in Portishead, produced the books the ‘wrong way round' as he feared several of the people he had interviewed – witnesses to the toopship's tragic sinking in the Indian Ocean early in 1944 – might not have lived to see the book completed.
HMS Kenya's war went on without popular ‘Jack the Lad' Buster. After arduous duties in the Med she saw further action in the East.
EXPLOITS
And she was still in the thick of things ten years later in the Korean War, before being decommissioned and finally scrapped in 1962.
In Harm's Way is a fascinating – and fitting
tribute to the men and women (although none sailed in her) involved in HMS Kenya's
exploits.
Review by Simon Harding – 14 January 1998.
Bristol Observer