Surgeon Lieutenant Peter Collinson

SURGEON LIEUTENANT PETER COLLINSON

            A graduate of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, Smithfields, Peter Collinson was appointed in May 1940 as Medical Officer of the destroyer Hurricane which had just completed construction at Barrow-in-Furness. After rapidly conducted sea trials, she commissioned for service in the Home Fleet on 21^st June and was immediately involved in multiple rescue operations in the Western Approaches, this being far and away the worst month of the Battle of the Atlantic to date, with 58 ships sunk by U-boats and 22 by aircraft.

            Between 25^th and 29^th June, Hurricane rescued survivors from the Empire Toucan, Lenda, Leticia and Saranac to a total of about 110, many in acute distress.  The first three of these ships were victims of the U-boat ace, Günther Prien, famous for sinking the battleship Royal Oak in the supposedly safe anchorage at Scapa Flow and, before his death while commanding U47 in March 1941, a total of 31 merchantmen with eight damaged.

            Just after midnight on September 18, Collinson, in his secondary duty as cypher officer, decoded an Admiralty message ordering Hurricane to proceed ‘with utmost despatch’ to rescue survivors from a ship 300 miles away.  A later signal broke the tragic news that this was the City of Benares carrying 90 evacuee children to Canada as part of the Children’s Overseas Reception Board (CORB) programme which aimed to send many young children to the Dominions away from the dangers of bombing at home. Hurricane arrived at the scene in the early afternoon, some 24 hours after the sinking, and was able to rescue 115 survivors including 15 children from twelve lifeboats. Of the 407 on board, 260 were lost.  City of Benares had been the lead ship of Convoy OB213 and amongst the dead were the convoy commodore, his three staff officers and the ship’s master.

            Of the 90 children, only 17 eventually survived, three small boys dying on board Hurricane. Commanding U48, Korvettenkapitan Heinrich Bleichrodt, a highly decorated ace who survived the war, had also sunk the steamer Marina in the same action and a muddle about whose lifeboat was whose resulted in Hurricane rescuing 20 from Marina but, as darkness fell, missing one of City of Benares’ lifeboats with about 40 on board including six CORB boys.  Sighted by an aircraft, they were rescued by the destroyer Anthony after eight terrifying days.

            Assisted by some of the passengers, Collinson and his two naval Sick Berth Attendants worked at this immensely distressing task without sleep for three days. Two older girls, Beth Walder and Bess Cummings, were seriously hypothermic having clung on to the upturned keel of a lifeboat for 17 hours.  They survived and both kept in contact with Collinson for many years.

            National reaction to this disaster halted the CORB programme.  Some of Bleichrodt’s crewmen reportedly wept when they heard the news, but the German high command parried Allied accusations by stating that it was culpable to send children to sea in a war zone and that the City of Benares would indubitably have returned with war materials.

            Besides convoy escort duty, Hurricane’s remarkable rescues continued with 99 survivors of the whale factory ship Terje Viken (again sunk by Prien) in March 1941; three from the motor ship HenryMory and the master, 170 crew, eight gunners and 273 passengers from the City of Nagpur between 27^th and 29^th April.  The overcrowding and problems of medical care and sustenance must have been acute; Hurricane was full enough with her own complement of 152 sailors.

            When Hurricane was damaged by bombing alongside in Liverpool in May, Collinson was sent to the naval training establishment HMS Royal Arthur at Skegness until appointment in early 1943 as medical officer to the 3,500 ton assault troopship Royal Ulsterman which took part in Allied landings on Sicily and the Italian mainland at Salerno and Anzio. Royal Ulsterman returned to the Home Fleet in early 1944 to take part in the D Day landings in Normandy in June. 

            His next posting was as Chief Medical Officer of a Royal Navy team working at the Kilcreggan Hospital on the Clyde.  Here he met his wife Desne Service, a Wren, and married her in April 1946 after his demobilisation.

            He became the third generation of Collinsons to work in his father’s practice at Wentworth, near Rotherham, continuing for the next 42 years until retirement aged 75 in 1988.    During this time it gave him great pride and pleasure to welcome his second son, Dr Charles Collinson, as the fourth generation.

            Amongst his other activities, he was a Police Surgeon for the West Riding of Yorkshire, medical officer of the Lady Mabel College and a Steward of the West Riding Medical Charitable Society and had a talent for watercolour painting.

            He is survived by his wife and their two sons and daughter.

Surgeon Lieutenant Peter Collinson, RNVR, Naval Doctor and General Practitioner,

was born on October 26th 1913. 

He died on September 23rd 2012 aged 98