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1. The Dunedin Society marked the seventieth anniversary of the sinking of HMS Dunedin, in Southsea on 24th November. Great thanks go to David Allen, Karen Kebby and Anne Randall for making the day such a big success. Click here for the report and photos, including coverage in the Portsmouth News. .....if you attended the reunion and have any photos for this website, please e-mail them to me.
2. From April this year until now our On This Day feature has marked the daily movements and activities of HMS Dunedin during her last months. It begins on 8th April, 1941, when HMS Dunedin left the shores of England for the last time, heading for Gibraltar. It was around 8.00pm and the buzzes around the ship suggested she would be back in November or December. You can see, every day, where she was and what she was doing. Some days, very little happened, but at other times, Dunedin was kept very busy. Dunedin's story unfolds here: on this day. The final entry reads as follows: "24th November: The story of the events of this day is long, complex and tragic. At the break of day, Dunedin was seemingly on a routine patrol; by early afternoon, Dunedin had gone, taking many men with her. As we know from the movements of U-124 in the preceding days, Captain Mohr's sighting of HMS Dunedin was a chance affair. A mast in the distance, an underwater pursuit, and then three torpedoes fired at great distance, two of which slammed into Dunedin at 1326. The ship's end was a quick one - about a quarter of an hour from first hit to sinking. We don't know how many men went down with her, but the number will have been big. Perhaps two hundred and fifty made it to the rafts and the open water. Many were wounded and most would not make it home. Sailors, Marines, Officers, huddled on the Carley rafts and hoped for the best. On one raft, twenty-two men clung to each other and watched as Dunedin slid below the waves. Three days later, only three of those men were left to tell the tale. And it was a similar story on the other rafts. By the time the SS Nishmaha, a passing American merchant, came across the sorry flotilla of rafts on the 27th, only seventy-two men were left. The next night claimed five more, leaving sixty-seven. Today, 24th November 2011, three of those men will stand with relatives of their former comrades and pay homage to the men of Dunedin. We all do the same today: To the memory of the men of HMS Dunedin." 3. A small group gathered on 23rd July on Plymouth Sound to mark Dunedin's last voyage from England. In April 1941 Dunedin set sail for the Atlantic, leaving England behind for what would be the last time. Two of our survivors, Bill Gill and Jim Davis, and a few other members of the Dunedin Society toured the Naval Dockyard at Plymouth and took a boat trip into the Sound from where Dunedin last sailed English waters. The ashes of one of our other survivors, Able Seaman Bertie Jeffreys, were buried at sea from the boat. Click here for the report. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Message from Stuart Gill: as some of you will know, I left the UK in 2008 to take up a posting in Australia. This means I shall miss a few reunions, but I will continue to run the website and will stay very closely in touch with the Dunedin Society. I shall sorely miss those of you I won't be seeing for a while, but I know that the enduring strength of the Society will keep it going as a continuing memorial to the men of HMS Dunedin. I will see you all when I get back. I am operating the web site from Australia. Please e-mail me if you spot any problems (eg missing links, photos etc) and I will repair the damage. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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November 2011
saw the seventieth anniversary of
the loss of HMS Dunedin and 419 of her men.
