A HARD FOUGHT SHIP

The story of HMS Venomous

Les Mortimer and Charley Stocker
The AB called 'Charley' who helped save Les Mortimer's life but lost his own

We swam into the night with little idea of the time which passed before Venomous came into view and stopped to pick up a float full of men; she misjudged, hitting the float, spilling men either side of the ship. We swam to the nets on the stern and hung on exhausted. There came a voice from the bridge shouting 'Let go aft I have a ping'. The seamen on Venomous told us to jump off the net and most of us did but I hung on and so did the AB behind me. Venomous took off dragging us in the net. How long I was in the net I do do not know. After screaming out I was untangled, dragged onboard and thrown on deck. Afterwards thrown into the hammock rack in the seamen's mess deck to recover.

When I came to I found myself lying alongside the seaman friend that had panicked and refused to let go of the rope on Hecla. He was raving mad, nobody could do anything for him. We were told to leave him, he would recuperate. At first light I was helping to clear up the mess on the quarter deck near the nets when they pulled a body out of the nets. It was the able seaman I had spent the night with."

Jack Bolton remembered this incident vividly:



Burial at Sea

By mid afternoon HMS Venomous was almost out of fuel and ignoring orders to head for Gibraltar just managed to make it to Casablanca soon after its capture by American forces. After two nights in Casablanca Venomous left on the 14 November for Gibraltar and four of the survivors who had died after rescue were sewn into canvas hammocks, weighted with shells at their feet and buried at sea from the stern. Cyril Hely photographed the burial and wrote on the reverse: "Thomas Luxton, George Taylor, Charles Odey and Alfred Dutton were buried at sea at latitude 34 degree 30 minutes North and longitude 7 degrees 30 minutes west." Lt Cdr "Harry" Alexander RN, the Navigating Officcer on HMS Hecla, read the brief service.

After arrival at Gibraltar another four survivors who died from their wounds were taken out to sea on a barge with volunteers from Venomous to bury them. The bodies of Jabez Skelhorne, Charles Stocker and Albert Thick were washed ashore on the Moroccan coast and now lie in the Santa Catalina cemetery in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. The grandsons of Albert Thick and Jabez Skelhorne spent years uncovering the story of how they died and Simon Skelhorne arranged for their graves to be restored by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

After survivor's leave Les Mortimer was sent on a course at the Whale Island Gunnery School and then joined the LCT (Landi0ng Craft Tanks) being built for the Normandy landings. AB Leslie Mortimer served on LCT-703 which made thirteen trips to the Normandy beach heads. After the war he worked at Austin Motors' Longbridge plant at Oxford before emmigrating to Australia in 1948. Les is 89 and lives in an outlying district of Melbourne where his children and grand children live.



Charley Stocker who lived for a day or two after being rescued and was buried at sea at Gibraltar but washed ashore and buried a second time in the Santa Catalina Cemetery in Ceuta, came from Blandford in Dorset and at 46 was prfobably the oldest man on the lower deck of HMS Hecla, "AB Charles Stocker (D/J17615), aged 46, son of John and Alice Stocker and husband of Minnie Stocker of Blandford, Dorsetshire" (Commonwealth War Graves Commission).

Charles William Odey was only 33, the son of Thomas Job and Mary Agnes Patrick Odey, of Buckland, Portsmouth.Les Mortimer described "at first light I was helping to clear up the mess on the quarter deck near the nets when they pulled a body out of the nets. It was the able seaman I had spent the night with." He was buried at sea off the stern of HMS Venomous while enroute from Casablanca to Gibraltar and his name is on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial on Southsea Common.

This leaves the identity of the AB who helped save Les Mortimer and became entangled in the scrambling net as Venomous accelerated away in pursuit of the U-boat open to doubt but the story of Charley Stocker is told below.







All the photographs on this page are from the album of Anne Stocker, Charley Stocker's elder sister (by an earlier marriage), and were scanned and sent to me by her grandson, Peter Bellinger, who was tracing his family's history and became interested in how his Great Uncle came to be killed when HMS Hecla was torpedoed 75 years ago this year.

The portrait top left is the only known photograph of Charley Stoker (signed, "with best wishes your service chum" on reverse) and the diver is Charles Wallace Mitchell with Fort Blockhouse at the entrance of Portsmouth harbour behind. Charles Mitchell served on the submarine depot ship HMS Titania when she was based at Hong Kong in the 1920s. The submarine L20 was one of her charges and was photographed in the Matsu Islands, five miles from the coast of China in the Taiwan Strait, in July 1920. The logbooks of the Titania can be viewed on the web and record several trips from Hong Hong to Matsu, the L20 submarine and the use of divers. The Stocker and Mitchel families were from the Axminster area and Charles Mitchell married Charles cousin on his Mother's side, Lilly Augusta.  The large photograph of submarines was taken at Malta on 3 November 1925 and incribed by Charles Mitchel on the reverse "My work as a Jazz artist".  In 1925 Charley Stocker was in HMS Queen Elizabeth, the Flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet, which was based in Malta and they were bound to have met.