Robert Evan SHERWOOD

Sister:  SHERWOOD, Dorothy Hannah (1910-1912)

Brother:  SHERWOOD, Owen (1915-1936)

Uncle:  SHERWOOD, Owen Edmund (1877-1912)

Aunt:  SHERWOOD, Louisa (1875-1917)

Robert Evan Sherwood was baptised at Hook on 31st March 1907.  He was the son of Robert Henry Hayes Sherwood and his wife, Nellie (Amy Norah, nee Pattison), who he married on 3rd July 1935, in Goole.  At the time of his birth his family were living at Mount Pleasant, Hook and Robert's father was working as a mariner. (FMP)

Robert Evan Sherwood, DSO, RD, RNR, began his career as a Reservist in the Royal Navy.  However, during the course of his career, he was possibly one of the most decorated servicemen and was even compared to Nelson in an article which appeared in the Sunday Times!

1931: Age 24: Promoted Lieutenant

1939: Age 32: Lieutenant in command of HMS Spurs (ASW Trawler); Promoted Lieutenant Commander

1940: Age 33: Lieutenant Commander in command of HMS Bluebell (Corvette)

• On 16th October 1940 HMS Bluebell picked up 14 survivors from the Canadian merchant, Trevisa, that was torpedoed and sunk by German U-boat U-124, 218 nautical miles west of Rockall.

• On the following day the Bluebell picked up 39 survivors from the British tanker, Languedoc, and 39 survivors from the British merchant, Scoresby, that were torpedoed and sunk by German U-boat U-48, about 160 nautical miles north-west of Rockall. 

• Two days later, on 19th October 1940, the ship picked up 37 survivors from the British merchant Beatus that was torpedoed and sunk the previous day by German U-boat U-46 about 100 nautical miles west by south of Barra Head.

• On the same day, they also picked up 35 survivors from the British merchant Empire Miniver that was torpedoed and sunk by German U-boat U-99 about 100 nautical miles west by south of Barra Head.

1941:

• On 16th March 1941 HMS Bluebell picked up 40 survivors from the British tanker Venetia that was torpedoed and sunk by German U-boat U-99, west-south-west of the Faroes.

• On 5th August 1941 they picked up 47 survivors from the British merchant Belgravian and 2 survivors from the British merchant Swiftpool that were torpedoed and sunk by German U-boat U-372 off Ireland.

1942: Age 35: Lieutenant Commander in command of HMS Tay (Frigate)

1943: Age 36: Awarded DSO

• On 5th May 1943 HMS Tay picked up 92 survivors from the British merchant Gharinda that was torpedoed and sunk by German U-boat U-266 south of Cape Farewell.

• On the same day the British merchant Selvistan was torpedoed and sunk south of Cape Farewell by German U-boat U-266. HMS Tay later picked up 40 survivors.

• HMS Tay also picked up 12 survivors from the Norwegian merchant Bonde that was also torpedoed and sunk south of Cape Farewell by German U-boat U-266.  (Source of event info:  https://uboat.net/allies/commanders/2264.html)

• On 6th May 1943 HMS Tay was part of convoy ONS-5 escort.  

• ONS-5 was a 43-ship convoy, nine miles wide by two long, with one destroyer, one frigate, three corvettes and two rescue tugs to defend it. It was attacked by around thirty U-boats, and lost thirteen ships in total, while seven U-boats were sunk by the escorts and supporting aircraft. It was a particularly bloody battle which marked the turning point in the Battle of the Atlantic, showing that while determined mass attack by U-boats could break through convoy defences, this would prove too expensive a tactic to make U-boat warfare a winning strategy for Germany. 

• The Commander of HMS Tay, Robert Sherwood, RNR, was given (from Cdr. Gretton, in destroyer HMS Duncan) the duty of Senior Officer Escort of the convoy, on May 3rd. 

• At 03:00 a.m. U-125 was located by radar in thick fog, rammed by HMS Oribi and disabled, and rendered unable to dive. At 03:54 the U-boat was sighted by the Flower-class corvettes Snowflake and Sunflower, and as Snowflake manoeuvred to attack, closing to 100 yards, the crew of U-125, realising their indefensible position, scuttled the boat. The captain of Snowflake signalled Lieutenant Commander Robert Sherwood, proposing to pick them up, and received the response: "Not approved to pick up survivors."  Robert made this decision presumably as he felt it was too dangerous, due to the fact as submarine U-125 was part of a wolf-pack.  Snowflake and Sunflower thereupon resumed their positions around the convoy, while the 54-man crew of U-125 died in the Atlantic over the next few hours.

The following excerpt from "Battle of the Atlantic, Black May", by Michael Gannon, provides an interesting description of Robert Evan Sherwood and his amazing service:

'Sherwood’s credentials for leadership were longstanding and well-tested. At sea since 1922, when he served with the Merchant Navy, he joined the Royal Naval Reserve in 1929, became a sublieutenant in minesweepers, and served nine months on the battleship HMS Warspite. While continuing a member of the reserves, he resumed Merchant Navy duties with Holyhead-Dublin steamers until the outbreak of war, when he took an asdic course, spent a short stint with the Dover Patrol, and transferred to corvettes, assuming command in 1940 of HMS Bluebell, among whose fifty-two-man crew he found only three or four who were “capable of any real action of any kind at all.” In time he trained them to a high degree of seamanship and technical proficiency, and of himself he said that it was good training to have held command early of a vessel as difficult to handle as a “Flower” class corvette, a ship type that struggled against every wave and swell. HMS Bluebell, he said, “would do everything except turn over.” Advanced to command of HMS Tay in 1942, he was assigned to Gretton’s escort group, with which he captained the first ship on which B7’s Senior Officer Escort embarked.

Described as being of medium height and stocky build, Sherwood framed bright, humorous eyes within a full naval beard. Not very well spoken, one of his fellow Captains said of him, and lacking in the kind of presence that Gretton generated, he was nonetheless a fine seaman whose command decisions were swift and firm. Though he was a reservist and lower ranking than Gretton, the Support Group regulars accepted his orders. On every fighting bridge there was confidence that Sherwood had mastered Gretton’s painstaking game plan of search and sink. Now, as ONS.5 groped toward the unknown, with HF/DF contacts growing more numerous, and with all the original B7 group that remained damaged and worn by bitter weather and a running fight, it would take all of that mastery to see the convoy into port. Sherwood’s concern would have been all the greater had he known that fewer than 70 nautical miles dead ahead as large a wolfpack as any of the war would assemble to meet him ...

Rodger Winn, in the OIC Tracking Room, wrote sometime within two and a half years of the battle: “This was probably the most decisive of all convoy engagements. It represented the extreme and, as it happens, the last example of coordinated pack attacks.” The Most Secret documents containing Winn’s appreciation were not released to the Public Record Office until 1975. In the meantime, Captain Roskill’s assessment of the place that this individual battle occupied in the war against Germany underwent a striking transformation. Where the most that he was willing to say in 1956 was that ONS.5’s “adventurous passage” had led to “grave losses” for the U-boats, three years later, in a review of Karl Dönitz’s Memoirs in The Sunday Times, he was emboldened to state: “[Dönitz] considers that the passage of convoy ONS.5 in April-May 1943 marked the turning point in the long struggle, and I fully agree with him.” Comparing Gretton and Sherwood to the likes of Hawke and Nelson, Roskill added this flourish: “The seven-day battle fought against thirty U-boats is marked only by latitude and longitude and has no name by which it will be remembered; but it was, in its own way, as decisive as Quiberon Bay or the Nile.” Perhaps, when viewed on the larger stage of World War II, it would not be unreasonable to say that the set-piece Battle for ONS.5 was the Midway of the Atlantic ...

Every man who had been on board the B7 vessels, starting with Gretton, who drew up the game plan, and Sherwood, who executed it, down to the lowest ratings in the boiler and engine rooms, deserved the highest credit. Against all odds, the B7 ships and crews survived and prevailed. In the long Atlantic struggle against the U-boats, theirs truly was a sword-from-the-stone triumph. In looking through British naval/military annals for comparisons, one is tempted to recall Rorke’s Drift in 1879, where eighty men of the 24th Regiment of Foot defended the mission station against similarly overwhelming numbers. But Captain McCoy of EG3 will have the last word: “The skill, determination, and good drill displayed by all ships of B.7 Group during the time the Third Escort Group was supporting O.N.S.5 was beyond all praise."

(https://community.timeghost.tv/t/battle-of-atlantic-black-may-michael-gannon/8460/15)

1944: Age 37: Awarded Decoration for Officers of the Royal Naval Reserve

1945: Age 38: Promoted Commander

In 1954 Robert became Marine Superintendent for London Midlands Western and Scottish Region at Euston, and Chief Marine Superintendent of British Rail’s shipping and international services division in Liverpool Street.

Robert Evan Sherwood died on 18th December 1980 and was cremated, his ashes being deposited at Hook on 18th January 1981.  According to his probate details, at the time of his death he was living at Reannor Hale Road, Wendover, Buckinghamshire.  His estate amounted to £34,536.