Memories of George Henry Ridalls, Dart Harbour Pilot
Memories of George Henry Ridalls, Dart Harbour Pilot
George Henry Ridalls was born in Sligo in Ireland in 1901, where his father was a coastguard, then part of the Royal Navy. His father was then given a promotion and moved, with his whole family, to the Coastguard Cottages above Compass Cove as Chief Station Officer.
George was at school until 1915, when he then joined the Merchant Navy going to sea with the Union Castle line. Starting as an Able Seaman, he worked his way up to Quartermaster, becoming an accomplished sailor.
“He came back to Dartmouth in 1920,” says Brian, “and got a job on the harbour tug, which was called ‘Berne’. In 1924, he married my mother and, in 1926, they started a family when they had me.
“In 1930, a job came up – the Trinity House was looking for a harbour pilot for Dartmouth. Trinity House licensed most of the pilots in the country as well as looking after Lighthouses and large sea buoys, as they still do. My father was an accomplished sailor and having been on the harbour tug for ten years he knew the Dart like the back of his hand, so he got the job.”
George joined a small team of four pilots who were charged with piloting ships safely into harbour. This was no easy task, not least because of the nature of the river at the time.
“The river was based around steam ships using coal,” recalls Brian. “There were many ships coming in and out each day, with colliers coming from the Tyne to fill up three large hulks on the river. These were old Ironclad sailing vessels that had been stripped down to just the hull. Thanks to three large floating grab cranes that we had on the river, the hulks were filled with coal by the colliers. They were massive cranes, and their grabs could hold five tonnes of coal.
“Ships would come from the Baltic, fill up with coal in Germany, then stop in Dartmouth and then travel down to Casablanca, before doing it in reverse back to the Baltic.
“My father and his colleagues were piloting ships to Tuckenhay, delivering wood pulp for the paper mill and cider apples too and going all the way to Totnes with timber to what became known as Baltic Wharf so named because of the huge amount of timber from the Baltic that was delivered there.”
But the world was changing and coal was being phased out as a fuel.
“There were fewer and fewer ships coming into the harbour for coaling, as more ships started to use oil,” says Brian. “The pilots were professional people and if there were no ships they didn’t get paid. The other three pilots all went back to working for the Merchant Navy but Dad didn’t want to as he had a young family.”
George was left as the sole pilot as the war started and the harbour filled up with trawlers from the continent. Brian was 13 and recalls it well.
“It was incredible: these trawlers, about 80 of them, came into harbour full of men and women with all their belongings on board, “ he said. “They were escaping the Nazis. A lot of them settled here too. But because we were so close to the continent, that was the last really busy time in the harbour. People were too scared to use the channel and stopped coming. He had no work.”
The Port Officer threw work his way when he could, asking him to pilot small trawlers when his services weren’t really needed, just to make sure he had some income coming in. But it wasn’t enough.
“My Dad went to see the Port Officer in 1940 and told him that we were down to our last £5 and he would have to leave to join the Merchant Navy again,” says Brian. “The officer looked at him and asked him just to stay one more week.”
One more week lasted longer than he thought.
“We were one of the few homes to have a phone because of Dad’s job,” says Brian, “and the next week the phone rang. I’ll never forget him putting down the receiver and saying, ‘I’ve got to go to the Navy Headquarters’, which was where the Angel restaurant is today. He went and was told the supply convoys would be stopping in Dartmouth from then on. They asked my father to find another nine pilots.”
His immediate future secured, George brought in the best men he could find (including a Scoble I’m pleased to report) and then got on with the job at hand – sometimes helping to pilot more than 30 vessels in a convoy into the Dart for safe harbouring – first from the U Boats and then from dive bombers as the war progressed.
“They did shifts from 1am till 1pm,” he says, “He worked hard and they all had to be very skilful bringing in so many ships. In those days, there were some very big ships coming into the Dart, up to 400 feet and they didn’t have bow thrusters and the like as they do today. They had to use the tide, the wind and even use the anchor to bring the ships into position. I’ve been told my father was an extremely good pilot and I don’t doubt it with the ships he had to navigate up the river.”
George piloted boats involved in the infamous Exercise Tiger back into harbour after they were attacked in Lyme Bay. When asked about the ship he had just brought in, with half its stern blown to smithereens, he simply told his family, “there’s something big going on out there”.
“War to me was exciting, because I was in my teens,” says Brian, “but my father worked with the Yanks and helped in the preparations for D-Day – he saw the tanks and heavy machinery which they took to France come down Victoria Road and across the Royal Avenue Gardens. It was a difficult thing they did.”
George carried on as pilot until 1966 when he retired, a content and well-respected man of the sea and the River Dart.
“I was very proud of him, of course I was. He was a good sailor and a great pilot,” said Brian.
First Published August 2013 By The Dart