HMS MAURITIUS - NOW A MEMORY

by Lieutenant C.H. Walklett last OIC Commcen Mauritius

PERSONAL LETTER FROM THE LAST COMMANDING OFFICER

  It has been a sad privilege to preside over the final year of RN presence in this beautiful island, but I am glad to report that morale has been high right up to the end and all members oj the Ships’ Company have continued to make the most of the facilities of the base, and of the island, until almost the very moment of embarkation.

  One of the sadder aspects of the closure is the knowledge that “HMS”, as the base was always referred to in the island, was such a happy and well found establishment. In comparison with many other small overseas bases HMS had everything, school, hospital, magnificent playing fields, swimming pool, married quarters, chapel, clubs, nurses - the lot. In addition it was situated in a semi-tropical, semi-paradise. Who among the lucky thousands who have served here will ever forget the beauty of the island, its amazing mountains and fabulous beaches? Of course it was not all dance and skylark for everyone all the time, work intervened occasionally and there have been many problems from cyclones to riots to contend with. But the lasting memory will surely be of long lazy days at the beach, exciting moments on the sports fields or hazardous climbs in the mountains.

  But 'HMS' has been much more than just a Naval W/T Station. The founding members laid a firm base of understanding, co-operation and friendship with all aspects of the local community, and those who came after have built on this foundation so that HMS became respected by all as a ready source of help of every sort, charitable, technical, ceremonial, sporting or just social. So many Mauritians in all walks of life have said this to me in the last few weeks that I take this opportunity of passing their thanks on to all those Communicators who, by their efforts during their tours of duty in Mauritius, have so richly deserved it.

  As a local newspaper put it some years ago ...HMS MAURITIUS has found, by their actions, a new means of communication'. So, from the last Commanding Officer of HMS MAURITIUS, BRAVO ZULU and ZKJ 1.

P. LUCAS Captain Roval Navy

MAURITIUS A BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS HISTORY
by Lieutenant C.H. Walklctt last OIC Commcen Mauritius

   With the closure of HMS Mauritius on 31 March 1976. the Royal Navy will break a link with the island of Mauritius which goes back to the original British occupation of the island in 1810. However, for the sake of brevity I intend to continue my story to the communication aspects of the association.

  For those readers who have not visited the 'Jewel of the Indian Ocean’, Mauritius (or Ile Maurice) is set in the Indian Ocean roughly 20 degrees South, 50 degrees East. It has a land area of some 720 square miles, being about 38 miles long by 29 miles wide. The island was originally inhabited merely by birds and animals of which the Dode was the most well known. Arab and Portuguese sailors started using the island as a watering and revictualling stop of their voyages down the coast of Africa and to the ‘Spice Islands' respectively. The Dutch were the first to attempt to colonize the island in about 1638 but their occupation was beset by many problems and they eventually withdrew in 1710. The French then took over the island in 1715 and under the inspired leadership of Labourdannais the colony grew. The French introduced the sugar cane on which the island's present economy is largely based. The French also introduced slave labour from Africa to work the sugar plantations and thus laid the foundations of the Creole part of the population.

  Prior to the opening of the Suez Canal, Mauritius occupied an important position on the trade routes from Europe to the East and it was inevitable that it should become involved in the power struggle between the French and the British. After some initial reverses, which included the only major French naval victory of the period when a French fleet sank a small British squadron at the Battle of Grand Port in 1810, the British invaded the island and beat the French. The island remained a British colony until independence was granted in March 1968.

  With the opening of the Suez Canal the strategic value of the island fell but it was still visited by HM Ships and was used frequently during both World Wars.

  Naval communications ashore on the island began as far back as the first World War when in 1915 a wireless station was built on a site in Rose Belle. It is rumoured that the original surveyors recommended that the station should be built at Belle Rose on the high plateau of Plaine Wilhelm but the contractors, confused by the similarity of the place names, started construction in the wrong place. Be that as it may, the station at Rose Belle was in operation from 1915 to 1947 with the Navy occupying it until the mid 1920s.. A letter from CPO Tel. Sidney Perkins of the 1918 Telegraphists Association reveals that the station used high power MF Spark Transmitters and operated in a chain of stations consisting of Admiralty, Malta, Aden, .Seychelles, Mauritius, Durban, Port Nolloth (SWA). Bathurst, Gibraltar and Admiralty. Thus the whole of the Indian Ocean and South Atlantic was covered and HM Ships at sea could make use of the facilities provided. Unfortunately the letter does not mention the method of communication used but I assume that the old 'intercept' method was employed.

  CPO Tel Perkins also tells us that the staff at the station was one Warrant Officer, one CPO Tel, four Leading Tels, six Telegraphists, a CERA and a CEA. (Why did we ever change our title to Radio Operator? Telegraphist sounded so much better!)

  Round about 1923 the station was handed over to the Colonial Office as, with the introduction of HF, it had become surplus to naval requirements and, as far as I can discover, there was no naval communication on the island for a short period.

  The next occasion the island was considered for naval communications was in June 1935 when the Commander in Chief, East Indies recommended the erection of a wireless station in Mauritius. Tests were carried out on various low HF frequencies with HMS Norfolk (the old ‘two Players and a woodbine' Norfolk) who was visiting the island and it was decided as a result of these tests that a site at Bigara would be suitable for a transmitting station and that Vacoas, already the home of the army garrison, would serve as a receiver site and communication centre. A subsequent letter stated that four aerial towers should he built and sited so that rhombics could be erected for communication with Colombo, Mombasa and Capetown.

  The advent of the Second World War hurried these proposals along and new equipment and buildings were installed. Mr. Eddie Goldsmith, currently the Private Secretary to HE (His Excellency) the Governor General but then an H.O. sparker. recalls that in addition to a Commcen at Vacoas and a transmitting station at Bigara there was also a torpedo and stores organisation on the old race¬course at Floreal, an armament depot, a Naval Air Station at Plaisance on the site of the current International Airport, a Port War Signal Station at Fort George (Port Louis) and a flying boat station at Tombeau Bay close to the site of the present receiving station. In addition, of course, was the normal army garrison supplemented by batteries of artillery at Port Louis and Mahebourg. It is interesting to note that the receivers were on the site of the present chapel in Vacoas, presumably a case of replacing one communication system with another! It would appear that some 60 communicators were employed on the island at this time. Six or seven manned the PWSS, about ten were employed in an HF DF station situated on what is now a golf course and some forty in the Commcen and Bigara. Mr. Goldsmith remembers that the first officer in charge of the communications was a Warrant Telegraphist Clebben.

  When the war finished in 1945 a general run down began and the communications were put on a care and maintenance basis in about 1946. However weekly schedules, first with Colombo and then, when the station boundaries changed in about 1957, with Simonstown were operated by the C and M personnel of whom CRELs Taylor and McGrath, both ex-CPO Tels. were the last. In about 1958 the weekly schedules to Simonstown were taken over by the Mauritian- Local Volunteer Force operating from Port Louis. The Volunteer Force also provided services for visiting ships and became the only link with the outside world following the devastation caused by Cyclone Carol in 1960.

  Merchant Ships in Area III. At Christmas time a further morse broadcast (VC) was brought up to handle the immense amount of telegram traffic.

  As all ship-to-shore traffic was CW in those days, Mauritius (GXO) manned the 4, 6, 8,12,16 and 22 mHz components to deal with the high volume of telegram traffic, particularly telegrams from merchant ships. RS Acott, who was an R03 in Mauritius in 1962, recalls that the Ship Room was manned by seven locally employed civilian operators plus two naval sparkers to operate the morse broadcast. He also said that the Christmas period was so busy it became a nightmare I can find no records of the exact traffic loading for this period, but when it is considered that Mauritius also handled the telegram traffic from Kranji and Hong Kong (Area VIII) in addition to her own telegram traffic and all the naval originated traffic from the surrounding areas, it would appear that RS Acott's estimate of some 15,000 transactions per day would not be unrealistic. Certainly a traffic graph for 1972, when the Area Scheme was on its last legs, shows a daily transaction rate of some 8,500 per day.

  With the advent of the Defence Communication Network and the rationalisation ol all three Services communication networks in 1969, Mauritius took over an even greater importance and, together with Gan, became the hub of the DCN network to and from the East of all three Services. As the requirements of Government were altered our communication committments altered too. A circuit to Majunga was opened during the early days of Rhodesia UDI and the Beira Patrol and the service to Salisbury was closed at the same time! Bombay and Karachi were TARE terminated and after some initial procedural difficulties worked very well. Aden. Bahrain, Diego Suarez and Asmara were closed but circuits with KAF Eastleigh and Diego Garcia were opened. Technical progress also altered the scheme of things. RATT Ship-Shore was introduced and the CW Ship-Shore, very quiet after the closure of the Area Scheme, reduced to just 8 and I2 MHz. Broadcast VR, under the unwieldy title ot B11V, became TARE controlled and the MRLs also eventually TARE terminated. The increased use of TARE for the circuits which had previously been at bays highlighted the need for a review of the complement and TARE outage procedures. A revised MAUOUT procedure was devised and the complement of the station drastically reduced.

'THE HUB' —Commcen Mauritius in early 1975

  Perhaps the writing on the wall for stations such as Mauritius came not only from the defence cuts imposed by successive Governments, but also by the passage of HMS Intrepid through the Indian Ocean in July/August 1970. Intrepid fitted with Skynet, no longer required the traditional communication facilities of Broadcast and Ship-Shore (except when her satellite equipment became defective). Be that as it may, the final withdrawal from the Far East ordered by the Labour Government in early 1975 finally spelled out the demise of HMS Mauritius. Mr. Roy Mason, the Defence Secretary, visited the island in April 1975 to negotiate the termination of the Defence Agreement with the Mauritius Government and the final date of 31 March 1976 was decided upon. Commcen Mauritius closed at 302359Z November 1975 and ended a period of some 13 years of constant communication. By the time of closure our daily traffic load had dropped to under 3000 transactions a day.

  A further link with the island was provided by the old Colony Class cruiser, HMS Mauritius. The last SCO of the present Wireless Station, Lieut. Cdr. (SD) (C) D.G. Pike served as a Boy Telegraphist in the cruiser in the early 1950s.

  In the early 1950s it became apparent that the communication station in Ceylon (GZP) which had served the old East Indies Fleet and the merchant ships of Area III so well for so long, would not be able to continue for ever in the newly independent Ceylon. It was therefore necessary to find an alternative location to cover the requirements of the Indian Ocean area and to act as a major relay station for communications between UK and East of Suez. Hitherto all communications between Whitehall and Singapore/ Australia had been direct circuits (FX6 and FX22 respectively) and they had suffered a great deal from propagation problems. It was quite usual for FX6 to revert to Morse for long periods during the night. This was obviously not good enough, so a ‘mid-way’ station was sought. I understand that several locations were considered including Nairobi, already the centre of army communications in East Africa. Presumably political considerations plus an acceptable setting eventually led to the choice of Mauritius in 1957. Building of the new station commenced in 1959 with the transmitter site at Bigara where the 1946 site had been, the receivers at Toinbeau Bay and the Commcen itself on the site of the old Commcen and Army HQ at Vaeoas. The three stations were linked by landline and by VHP link, the latter being particularly notable as it used the edge of one of the mountains as a reflector.

  The first naval personnel arrived in 1960 under the title of Naval Party 1212. AFO 2147/60 decreed that NP1212 would be administered by the Superintendent of Navy Works under CinC SASA, The Wireless Station took over from Ceylon on 28 February 1962 and was commissioned as HMS Mauritius on 19 March 1962 under the command of Commander D.L. Syms, with Lieut. Cdr. R.B. Keogh as the Execulive Officer and Lieut. (SD) (C) A.F. Howells as the communicator. HMS Mauritius chief claim to fame at the time of commissioning was the then brand new TARE installation, the first to be fitted in any naval Commcen. This new machine was capable of doing work previously done by any number of operators. However, it was not until much later that it became a great manpower saver as the station had to be complemented to allow all circuits to be terminated manually at bays should the TARE develop faults. Nevertheless it was one of the very first steps in the modernisation and automation of our communication systems and saved a lot of work if not personnel.

  In these early days Mauritius was an extremely busy station. Circuits to Singapore, Gan, Canberra, UK, Cape, Aden and Bahrain were TARE terminated while contact circuits were run with Mombasa, Ceylon, Karachi, Bombay, Asmara and Diego Suarez,. In addition a RATT Broadcast (VR) was radiated for suitably fitted ships and a CW Broadcast (VA) run on a time sharing basis at 25 wpm for HM ships.

  It would of course be wrong to write about a Wireless Station without mentioning the personnel who have served there and made it such a success, A look through the records shows that RS Jack French, DSM, of Amethyst fame was an RSOW in 1962 while the CRS at the same time was CRS Bill Mallaburn who had served in the old cruiser London during the Yangtze incident to try and recover Amethyst. FCRS Parkes, then an RS was also one of the first commission. Another CRS was Flwyn Jones, now a civilian in Australia, who prepared a superb ‘turn-over’ book which has provided me with a lot of the information contained in this article. The first WRNS sparkers, ten in number, arrived on the scene in May 1966. These girls, together with the Nursing Sisters and Naval Nurses provided a touch of glamour to the scene as well as doing a very good job. The local civilian operators, three of whom had done their initial training in Ceylon, also did a first class job. Some of them served in HMS throughout the whole period of the establishment’s existence, I am grateful to Mr. Farouk Hamajuddy, one of the operators who served the full 13 years, for much of the information about the early days of the station. It is very satisfying to know that all the civilian operators have been employed by the Mauiritian Government to man their new Met services.

  A look at the diagram shows what services Commcen Mauritius provided. Our closure will mean that HM ships transiting the Indian Ocean or visiting the Gulf will have to rely on MRLs to distant stations or satellite communications if they are so fitted, it also means that another excellent draft is no longer available!

  Many communications, previously handled by the Commcen, have been taken over by the Mauritian Government and they will continue to operate some of the old B13V and Ship-Shore frequencies under the root call sign 3BA - 3BZ using equipment that we have left for them, in good working order, at Tombeau and Bigara.

SOME SIGNALS OF APPRECIATION

From: Cincfleet. On this the last day of your radio support to the Fleet you can look back with satisfaction on a fine record spanning the last 15 years of RN owned HF communications in the Indian Ocean. There are many Fleet Communicators with fond memories of Mauritius WT derived from both ends of your circuits and rumour has it that there are still one or two to be found at the renuion who remember the original 1916 stations spark horse. In gratitude as we remember Ceylon West so we will remember you.

From: Commcen Whitehall. The final closure of the last “RN” major overseas trunk will be felt most strongly by ourselves and all those whom you have served so well. The friendly co¬operation provided by your station has been much appreciated. The very high standard of expertise achieved may be emulated by others but will never be surpassed. Good luck to you all and a safe journey home.

From: CDCN. As you cease to be a DCN Commcen and pack your bags we send our appreciation for the important part you have played in the network for many years.