Between October 1941 and the end of
March 1942, Warships Weeks were organised in cities, towns and villages
throughout Great Britain. The intention was to raise a sum by
investment or deposit in all types of war savings representing the cost
of building one of His Majesty’s ships ranging from the smallest to the
largest vessels. Once the target had been raised the community adopted
the vessel along with its crew and the bond was strengthened by
presentations in recognition of the money raised. Adoption plaques were
presented by the Admiralty to the community and a plaque presented by
the community to the adopted vessel. Links were maintained by the
writing of letters and the provision of comforts and whenever possible
visits were arranged to the adopting area.
Most of the V&W Class
destroyers in commission with the Royal Navy were adopted during the
Warship Week scheme and in a number of cases local sea cadet units
later took the name of the ship. To
find more about Warship Weeks see Peter Schofield’s article on‘National Savings and Warship Weeks’.
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News reports from local papers
The attractive village of
Winteringham one mile south of the Humber and eight miles north of
Scunthorpe has a scroll hanging on the wall of its vilage hall
recording its adoption of HMS Vanity
in December 1941. The village had a population of about seven hundred
and most
men worked on local farms and in iron ore mines but since then the
population has increased to just over a thousand and villagers commute
to jobs in Scunthorpe or Hull and at least
one works four days a week in Canary Wharf, London. Despite this the
village retains its pride in having adopted a wartime V & W Class
destroyer escorting east coast convoys from the Firth of Forth to the
Thames estuary and some refuse to accept that Winteringham was just one
of many villages which contributed a three figure sum to the
£400,000 pounds raised by Scunthorpe and the surrounding area.
But even Scunthorpe was only part of a much larger picture.
Lincolnshire as a whole set out to raise £7, 437,566 enough to build a
fleet of three cruisers, four destroyers, two submarines and nineteen
other craft:
Lincolnshire Echo, Wednesday, 3 December 1941
News of Warship Weeks, and preparations for them throughout
Lincolnshire, given in News Bulletin No. 6, issued by Mr. H. Green for
the County Publicity Committee, indicate that the tide is flowing
strongly. Scunthorpe gets off the mark with its Warship Week
opening this Saturday, 6 December. The aim is £210,000, the price of a
destroyer. This enterprising district should do it easily. In addition,
the weekly aim is £15,000 (ordinary savings). As a matter of fact
Scunthorpe was assured of half its aim beforehand by the investments
promised from large contributors. Amounts forthcoming from banks and
companies before last weekend totalled £123,000. At the end of
the winter’s campaign Scunthorpe hopes to have Invested £700.000, the
cost of HMS Vanity, a naval destroyer which is to adopt the Scunthorpe
coat of arms. Captain A. M. Hudson, Civil Lord of the Admiralty, is to
open the week.
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The successful Warships Week held
in Scunthorpe and surrounding villages in December 1941 raised the cost of building the
hull of a destroyer and led to the adoption of HMS Vanity
which escorted convoys along the east coast from Rosyth on the Firth of
Forth to the Thames Estuary. Scunthorpe raised £402,319 in National Savings which
worked out at £6 16s 9d per head.
The Admiralty presented a replica of the crest of HMS Vanity mounted on wooden shield to the municipal borough of Scuthorpe with an engraved plate recording the adoption of HMS Vanity
which can be seen in the North Lincolnshire Museum at Scunthorpe. The
surrounding villages which contributed to this huge sum received
inscribed paper scrolls but the only one I know of is the one hanging
on the wall of the village hall in Winteringham. Did your village raise
money to adopt HMS Vanity in Warships Week 1941? And if so do you know where its scroll is now?
Most of these scrolls were produced for the Admiralty by John Buchanan,
who was born without hands in 1908 and was put into care at the age of
9. His creative ability was nurtured at the Oxford Art School and he
excelled at lettering. The Board of Admiralty had undertaken to present
to each parish which reached its target of National Savings a
certificate with the name of the parish, the ship adopted, and the week
in which the effort was made, duly engrossed upon it. John Buchanan was
eventually given the bulk of the work, and completed over 3,500
certificates in considerably under twelve months.
The display board in Winteringham Village Hall was cleaned and rehung by Martin Bell who organised a talk by Havard Phillips, a 92 year old veteran of HMS Vanity, at Winteringham in 2017 Click the image of the plaque in North Lincs Museum (left) and the scroll presented to Winteringham (right) to view full size in separate windows The photograph of the plaque presented by the Admiralty to Scunthorpe is provided courtesy of North Lincolnshire Museum
On 10 June
1995 Ken Ashton, a local historian in Winteringham, wrote to his Member of
Parliament, Elliott Morley, enquiring about the adoption of HMS Vanity
by Winteringham. Morley passed his enquiry to the Hon
Nicholas Soames MP, the Minister of State for the Armed Forces in the government of John Major from
1994 to 1997. Click on the link to read the letter written by Nicholas Soames in reply. He included a list of convoys escorted by HMS Vanityand the National Archives ADM reference for the Reports of Proceedings written by the CO of HMS Vanity when Vanity
was the Leader of the Escort Force and he was the Senior Officer. These documents are linked to from this
page as PDFs as an aid to future research in the National Archives at Kew. Ken Ashton arranged for the
scroll awarded on the adoption of HMS Vanity by Winteringham and the
letter from Nicolas Soames and other related documents to be framed and
hung in the Village Hall where they can still be seen today.
The unofficial adoption of HMS Vanity by Gipton School in Leeds
Unofficial adoptions unconnected with the fund raising efforts of the
Warship Weeks programme occasionally took place and the bonds made
were on occasions closer and more personal as in the case of Gipton
Bord School in Leeds. Yorkshire Post and Intelligencer, Wednesday, 10 December 1941. Leeds School Children Adopt Destroyer
Regular investments in National Savings, and the adoption of a
destroyer form part of the war effort made by the children of Gipton
Council School, Leeds. Nearly £5OO has already been raised for various
charities, including £100 for Dr. Barnardo's Homes. The number of
savings certificates bought by the 600 pupils is steadily increasing
and an indicator in the main hall shows that the total now stands at
2,422.
On the suggestion of their teacher Miss E. Overend, a class of 40 ten-year old girls adopted the crew of a destroyer HMS Vanity.
They send parcels of comforts, knitted by themselves, and for Christmas
the men will receive welcome additions to their usual rations. In
return, the girls have been given a picture of the ship and, what Is
yet unknown to them, a cheque so that they can have a Christmas party.
Members of the crew and the children correspond regularly.
Yorkshire Evening Post, 11 December 1941
"Nineteen Christmas cakes are among the good things sent by the ten
year old girls in a class at Gipton Council School, Leeds, to the crew
of HMS Vanity, a destroyer
which brought down a German bomber during the summer. The class adpted
the destroyer over a year ago. The girls tell members of the crew about
Leeds, Roundhay Park and Temple Newsam, and the sailors describe their
pet (the ship's cat, right), their homes and their own children, and
give occasional glimpses of their own life at sea."
Gipton Board School on Harehills
Road, Leeds, was designed by architect Walter Samual Braithwaite and
built by Leeds School Board in 1897. It was later known as Harehills
Middle School and provided education for boys and girls between the
ages of four and 14. It closed in 1986 and was refurbished and opened
as Shine Business Centre in 2007, a state-of-the-arts centre for the
community. Former pupils held a reunion there in 2017. If you know more about Miss Overend and the links she established between the former school and HMS Vanity please Get in touch
If
you want to find out more about the wartime service of a member of your
family who served on HMS Vanity
you should first obtain a copy of their service record To
find out how follow this link:
http://www.holywellhousepublishing.co.uk/servicerecords.html
If
you have stories or photographs of HMS Vanity you would like to
contribute to the web site please contactBill Forster
Return
to the Home Page for HMS Vanity Return to the Home Page of the V & W Destroyer Association Return to the Index Page for the 69
V & W Class Destroyers
Return to the Home Page for Warship Weeks
Yorkshire Evening Post, 11 December 1941