Knit for Victory - The Story of the Dore & Totley Minesweeping Trawlers Comforts Fund. Published by Totley History Group, www.totleyhistorygroup.org uk. Available locally, price £5.
Pauline Burnett’s latest offering is a bit of a trip to the gas-lit end of local history. During the Second World War a group of local ladies came together to knit garments and provide other ‘comforts’ for the men working on the minesweeping trawlers out of North Shields.
They and memories of their activities would have been lost to us, were it not for a box-file of correspondence discovered last year at a house which had been in the Grayson family (of Grayson’s Solicitors) for eighty years. These had been stored away by Kathleen Grayson, a founder member and secretary of the Dore & Totiey Minesweeping Trawlers Comforts Fund, which became one of the most productive comforts groups during World War II and raised over £110,000 (today’s money) between 1941 and 1946.
Yet who remembers them today? Who even remembers the work of the minesweeping trawlers?
Keeping the shipping lanes open was, as we know paramount for the Royal Navy during the war. Later on, dedicated minesweepers were developed and deployed but reliance on these commandeered fishing boats continued throughout the war. They came with some of their original crew, supplemented by conscripts and regular Navy personnel, working round the clock in all weathers. They trailed steel cables to break the tethers of submerged mines, causing them to float to the surface where they could be dispatched by gunfire.
It was hard work, occasionally dangerous, usually cold and always wet. The men on the trawlers, at least in the initial stages of the war were inadequately supplied with protective clothing from government issues. Comforts groups were set up to fill this demand by converting government issue wool into stockings, jerseys, scarves and helmets. They also supplied books, games and cigarettes purchased from their fundraising activities on the Home Front.
It is the Home Front activities which are the centre of this book, as the author reveals correspondence between the Dore & Totley Fund and the layers of bureaucracy in the British military. Receipts, inventories and changes in the chain of command as the War moved from home defence to post-D-Day are all examined by the author to open up the way in which the Fund operated. By the end of their first year, the Dore & Totiey ladies numbered over 100, and had dispatched 500 garments to the crews of the 28 trawlers working the east coast from North Shields. They had also sent other items from gramophones to boxing gloves, and numerous games including cards, dominoes, halma and the newly-released British edition of Monopoly.
I have to say that I enjoyed this book. It’s not a long read at 80 pages, many of which have illustrations. But it's hard to think where it fits in terms of local history. That its subject is a piece of local history is undoubted, but sadly as the archive which inspired it contains official correspondence, too few of the local people involved are named. Aside from the formidable Mrs. Grayson and the few luminaries called around her to represent the public face of the charity, very little character comes out and there is not much in the way of local flavour, or the identities of the hundred or more Dore and Totiey ladies involved.
Perhaps you remember your mother or grandmother talking about ‘knitting for the Navy’ when you were a child?
John Eastwood
Dore to Door Issue No. 122 Summer 2016