Lieutenant-Commander Geoffrey Holder-Jones DSM VRD RNVR

LIEUTENANT-COMMANDER GEOFFREY HOLDER-JONES

Geoffrey Holder-Jones’ father was a Liverpool draper and somewhat authoritarian. Amidst the economic depression of the early 1930s, the young Geoffrey complained of loneliness so was told to go and join the ‘weekend sailors’, thus becoming a signalman, or ‘bunting-tosser’, in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. His subsequent career in the smallest ships of the wartime navy exemplified the unsung fringes of the fleet so often neglected by the history books.
He first went to sea for training in the battlecruiser Renown. Mobilised in 1939, he joined the cruiser Adventure which was, at the outbreak of war, the navy’s only substantial minelayer. He was present at the remarkable and now largely forgotten event when HM King George VI reviewed in Weymouth Bay on August 9, 1939 no less than 133 warships of the Reserve Fleet before they dispersed to their war stations – a prescient Admiralty move as war was not declared until Sunday, September 3.
Adventure was badly damaged by a magnetic influence mine near the Tongue light vessel, suffering many casualties. Holder-Jones was flung out of his bunk, injuring his hand. He was then drafted to join a converted herring drifter called Tritonia in Scapa Flow. During his tour, a destroyer captured a German minelayer off the Norwegian coast and towed it into Scapa. Two ‘boffins’ from HMS Vernon, the enemy mine research centre at Portsmouth, wished to dismantle one of the magnetic mines so Holder-Jones volunteered to help, being subsequently awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for his contribution to this dangerous task.
Selected for officer training at Lancing College in Sussex, Holder-Jones met his wife Gladys at a dance on Brighton Pier in February 1941. Commissioned in March, he was sent to the 560 ton ‘Lake’ class armed whaler Grasmere, renamed Wastwater and based in Iceland. Here, under extreme weather conditions, Wastwater patrolled the Hvalfiord anchorage and in December 1941 escorted Russian convoy PQ7B part-way to Murmansk. In August 1941, Wastwater was one of the three trawlers involved in towing U570, the only U-boat to surrender to an aircraft during the war, to an Icelandic beach – subsequently re-named HMS Graph.
In February 1942 Wastwater was despatched to the eastern seaboard of the United States. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941 was followed by a declaration of war by Germany which found the United States totally unprepared to defend against U-boat attack the vulnerable coastwise merchant traffic, often silhouetted at night against waterfront lights and lacking escorts, aircraft and a convoy system. Thus Britain’s often-forgotten loan of 10 corvettes and 22 anti-submarine trawlers – with a good deal of sound advice based on experience – was very welcome.
Holder-Jones was given command of the better-armed ‘Isles’ class trawler Baffin, completed at Collingwood Shipyard, Ontario, in August 1942. Returning home after three years overseas, he was appointed an auxiliary naval pilot at Portsmouth, mustering landing craft for the D-Day invasion. Subsequently and up to the end of the war, he commanded the 1000-ton ‘Military’ class trawler Guardsman, the largest type built during the war. Highlights were a visit to Guardsman by the King and Queen at Wallasey and receiving the surrender of U-boat U2334. He was awarded the Volunteer Reserve Decoration.
Needing a job after demobilisation, he was employed painting Brighton Pier, assuring his employer that he was not frightened of heights or water. He recalled that he was paid more than his captain’s pay in Guardsman. He then trained as a teacher and taught in a number of schools around Brighton, finally for many years as the headmaster of St Andrews Church School, Hove. Known as a lively and engaging man, he worked for twenty years as a volunteer at Worthing Hospital. Written by author Tim Parker, his biography Signalman Jones appeared in 2010 with a forward by one of his pupils, Rear-Admiral John Lippiett, chief executive of the Mary Rose project.
He is survived by his wife Gladys whom he married in 1944 and their two daughters.

Lieutenant-Commander Geoffrey Holder-Jones DSM VRD RNVR,
wartime trawler captain and schoolmaster, was born on September 12, 1915.
He died on September 10 aged 95.