The Treganna Poem

Picture yourself in a convoy on a wild September day,
Astern of a ship named Tregenna – just three cables away,
She’s steaming along at eight knots, with a cargo of steel in the hold,
Pitching heavy in head seas, into the spray and the cold.

When all of a sudden a U-boat dodging the escort screen,
Fired a salvo of tinfish, tracking through fast… unseen,
This lethal spread of torpedoes became Tregenna`s death knell,
Just as her bow descended, headlong into the swell.

It was a fatal plunge that the ship was in,
Breached below her deck-line, through the plates so thin,
Her freight stowed heavy and low, beneath an empty space,
Quickly led to foundering, when water took its place.

The ocean rushed in so quickly, leaving no time to prepare,
She dived on her nose and kept going, stern shot high in the air,
The watch on the bridge jumped clear, perchance or not to drown,
Only four abandoned her - as the ship went down.

Now you have the story when in the vessel astern,
Two minutes it took to reach there, horrified to learn,
There was no sign of Tregenna - just Atlantic waves,
Thirty three men within her, bound to deep sea graves.

Sinkings were so frequent on a convoy’s run,
But our merchant seamen still defied the Hun,
One reason why our monument stands there to remember,
Is for the likes of these men, who died here that September.

J.S.Earl Bristol M.N.A. Nov. `05