SHIPBOARD WORLD WAR II JOURNAL REPORTING A NAVAL BATTLE IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC ‘Carnarvon Times’

Two issues of an unrecorded shipboard magazine which was printed in the south Atlantic onboard HMS Carnarvon Castle, an ocean liner which was commissioned as an armed merchant cruiser in 1939. The second of the issues, Vol 3 No 13, December 14th, 1940, was produced in the aftermath of HMS Carnarvon’s five hour running battle with the German cruiser Thor in which she sustained 27 hits, 6 dead and, 7 with serious wounds (this magazine records a different total from Wikipedia) and another 30 ‘slightly wounded’. The imprint begins with a congratulatory message from Captain Hardy followed up by the First Sea Lord, Admiral Pound: ‘In view of superior armament of enemy vessel, the damage which you inflicted represents a most creditable performance.’ Shortly afterwards the Carnarvon put into Montevideo for repairs with steel plate reportedly salvaged from the German cruiser Admiral Graf Spee.

First issue, Vol 2, No 11, printed on rectos of 6 sheets of foolscap of different colours, stapled and numbered in pencil ‘245’. Contents a mixture of shipboard news and international bulletins together with comic vignettes and jokes aplenty.

Volume 3, No 13, Saturday December 14th, 1940, [pp] 11, printed on both sides of six sheets of yellow foolscap. Dominated by news of the recent action with Thor and the time spent in Montevideo under repair and concluding with a dignified Roll of Honour.