Arctic Convoy Veterans

02/09/2025

We would like to congratulate Arctic Convoy veteran David Dunsmuir who celebrated his 100th birthday last weekend. David was born on 31st August 1925 in Blantyre. He was called up for naval service in 1943. After training at Portsmouth, he joined the crew of the Dido-class light cruiser HMS Diadem as a gunner. HMS Diadem took part in nine Arctic Convoys and David served in northern waters for much of his naval career. After his discharge in 1946 he became a company director in Edinburgh.

Reaching a century of life is an extraordinary achievement and we wish David continued happiness and health in the year to come. Thank you to David's son Colin for the photograph of the birthday celebrations.

19/06/2025

Please get in touch if you can help with this query.

The Lower Hutt Memorial Returned and Services Association (LHMRSA) in Wellington New Zealand is looking to contact relatives of William (Bill) Leitch who served on the Duke of York during the Arctic Convoys period. Bill emigrated to NZ from the UK many years ago and died with no family in NZ. If you have any information that could help us find Bill's family, please get in touch via Facebook or email [email protected].

12/05/2025

On this day...
On the night of 14th /15th May 1942, Charles Ideson (1912-2003) was one of the last men off HMS Trinidad before she was scuttled by a torpedo from HMS Matchless. Two weeks previously, she had been damaged by one of her own torpedos, whilst escorting convoy PQ13. On 13th May, Trinidad set sail for the USA for repairs. Unable to go faster than 20 knots due to temporary iron sheeting covering the torpedo hole, she was an easy target. Trinidad was attacked relentlessly by German planes and U-boats in the Barents Sea. A single bomb hit in the area of the previous damage, blowing off the repair plates and causing a fire to rage out of control. Listing 14 degrees to starboard, the decision was made to abandon ship and survivors were rescued by Trinidad's escorts. However 63 men were lost, including 20 survivors from HMS Edinburgh, which had been sunk a couple of weeks previously. An amazing account of the attack, giving an idea of the horror of the oil, water, flames, smoke and chaos of Trinidad's final few hours from some of the survivors, can be found at https://www.world-war.co.uk/trinidad_loss.php, where Charles is mentioned by name.

14/02/2025

We took some of our museum objects along to Poolewe Primary School yesterday to encourage the pupils to think about climate change. The theme was Rising Seas, Raising Hopes. The pupils had fun crafting their own climate message with materials kindly sent to us by National Museums Scotland. The panels they made will eventually be incorporated into a climate quilt for display.