THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE — www.findonvillage.com  created by Valerie Martin, contains scenes from her home village of Findon, West Sussex, U.K.

WERE THE MYSTERIOUS MULBERRIES SEEN FROM FINDON?

Copyright Valerie Martin 2004

Originally published in the Findon News in June 2004

Tony Hammond was a schoolboy residing in Findon during the dark days of the Second World War.  He lived in East Preston (still within sight of Cissbury Ring above Findon) before he died in the winter of 2006. 

He e-mailed me on Christmas Eve 2001, and wondered if wartime enthusiasts visiting my website would be interested in a new display at the Pagham Harbour Visitors' Centre.  This contained information about the artificial harbours constructed off Selsey prior to D-Day, known as Mulberries.

I was intrigued because those Mulberries have always been somewhat of an enigma to me.  Tony explained all and sent details and I continued to do some investigations on my own into the mysterious Mulberries.

During the early days of planning the invasion of Normandy, Allied forces commanders knew that no major port could be captured intact.  Any invading armies would have to disembark thousands of tons of equipment and supplies each day to enable the army to move forward.  The only answer was to construct two artificial harbours to enable cargo ships to unload quickly and efficiently. 

In June 1943, the British Army Royal Engineers were given the project of developing and constructing the required gigantic prefabricated harbours, each two miles long and one mile wide (code name: Mulberries). 

There was a long list of fascinating code names used for the various components.   These included —

PHOENIX   A concrete breakwater in sections.

LEVIATHAN   A ship which filled the Phoenix units with sand to give them extra weight.

CORNCOB   An old merchant ship sunk as a breakwater.

SPUD PIER   The landing wharf at which material was unloaded.

BEETLE  The pontoon on which the Whales were supported.

RHINO   The power-driven pontoon on which cargo was brought ashore.

This shows the familiar Portslade shoreline with giant sized pipes in readiness for the anticipated trials.

The Mulberry Harbours came off the drawing board taking the shape of six miles of flexible steel roadways (code-named Whales) that floated on steel or concrete pontoons (code named Beetles).  All cloak and dagger stuff this and there were many prototypes. 

This was called the Soft Lilo and was the forerunner of the Bombardon floating breakwater unit.    It is shown here under construction at the Southampton Docks just along the coast from Findon.

Eventually the Whales were fitted with personnel cabins and anti-aircraft guns.

I believe I am right in stating that there was a local Mulberry inventor who attended the nearby Lancing College.  His name was Ronald Hamilton and he was 15 years old when the First World War began. A broken right arm which had become crippled when he was still at Lancing, prevented him for playing sport at the college.

Ronald died in 1953 but he had a son, Peter, who if he is still alive would be about 80 now I guess.   It appears that Peter worked alongside his father on some of the experimental Mulberry projects.    (Peter was at Eton in the early 1940s).   Has anyone come across him, because he would have some interesting stories to tell. 

The above prompted Edward Allhusen to email me at the end of April 2008.......

The flexible steel roadways mentioned in my early narrative above were to terminate at pier heads (code named Spuds) anchored to the seabed so that the pier heads rose and fell with each tide.

These structures were to be sheltered from the battering sea by lines of 146 massive submerged caissons (code name: Phoenixes).  These were laid end to end to form two giant breakwaters which would take the pounding, one at the British landing point and one at the American.  Each string of Phoenixes formed one Mulberry.  An anti-aircraft gun emplacement topped each Phoenix. 

The two Mulberries were to be positioned along with breakwaters composed of scuttled ships just off the invasion beaches.   Well, that was the idea.  Could it be done?  Would it work?

It can not be imagined now but Selsey on the Sussex coast was a forbidden area during the war.  From January 1944, no visitors were allowed to enter the village and the residents were issued with passes and were prohibited from the Park Lane - Pagham harbour environs.  The Royal Artillery had already set up several batteries of heavy anti-aircraft guns in an arc around the north-east corner of Selsey and Church Norton. 

From Selsey mysterious work could be seen progressing on strange looking structures.  These grew larger and larger each day and could be seen rising out of the water.  It makes me wonder if they were visible on a clear day from the summit of Cissbury Ring above Findon but perhaps that is too much to hope for.

Peter Archbold (now living in Ashburton on the South Island of New Zealand) told me in June 2003 that he can remember seeing "strange objects" being towed past Worthing towards the Isle of Wight when he was in the Home Guard and serving at the Coast Battery at the end of Grand Avenue 1943/4.   He thinks they were probably Phoenix Units.

A distance of some 90 miles across the English Channel to Normandy.

The peculiar giant objects were eventually to be towed away by an armada of small tugs to an inlet near Lee-on-Solent to await their voyage to Normandy.  It was still a while before the locals became aware that Selsey had been one of the main assembly lines for two of the artificial harbours used in the invasion of Normandy.

A Phoenix off Selsey.

On June 4th/5th, 1944 the tugs began quietly towing the Phoenixes at 3 or 4 knots towards Normandy.  The tugs halted in mid-Channel for a while when the invasion was postponed for a day, and on 6th June they anchored next to a battleship about 4 or 5 miles offshore.  The battleship continued to relentlessly shell the beaches day and night. 

A Phoenix being towed to its final destination by a tug.

Two days after D-Day, 6th June 1944, a fleet of 89 derelict merchant ships that had been damaged beyond repair, were scuttled parallel to the shore of Omaha Beach (the main American invasion point), and off Arromanches, (the larger of three landing points for British Commonwealth armies).  Explosives blew their bottoms  out and they sank in 12 ft of water and formed the required mile-long breakwaters (code name: Gooseberry).  Floating breakwaters, narrow steel floats, 200 ft. long, (code name: Bombardons) were moored outside the Mulberries to help break up the surging of the incoming waves.

A wartime harbour tug positioning a Phoenix off Normandy.

Here is a fascinating photograph depicting very nicely the cross-section of a Bombardon floating breakwater unit.

When completed, each Mulberry was about one mile long, and stood about 30 feet above sea level at low tide, 10 feet above sea level at high tide. Seven Liberty ships at a time could tie up at a Mulberry to unload their cargo on to landing craft.

The above is a photograph of the cruel sea depicts the Bombardon breakwater in position at Arromanches.   As far as I can make out, several sections of the Bombardon made up a Phoenix unit.

The two harbours built at Selsey were known merely as Mulberry A and Mulberry B.  Now that did surprise me.  I would have thought they should have highfalutin code names, but no, just plain Mulberry A and B.  They were both in use by 19th June 1944 and operational but neither were 100% complete.

A Mulberry in position off the Normandy beach.

Mulberry A was intended for use by the US forces and was established off Omaha beach.  A devastatingly fierce storm then hit the Channel between 19th and 23rd June 1944.  Winds of up to 32 knots piled up gigantic swelling waves that tore loose the breakwater's sunken ships and caissons and carried away the floating bridges and pier heads.  The three-day storm destroyed the American Mulberry.  It had been in use for less than 10 days.

Showing the general location of the Mulberries in position.

Mulberry B survived.  It had been established at Arromanches at Gold beach (once a quiet village in peace time) where it was used by the British troops.  Here it was sheltered by the nearby Calvados Reef, and suffered less in the storm.  Nevertheless, salvaged parts of the U.S. harbour helped repair the British one, which soon reached its 7,000-ton-per-day capacity for the Allies.

Two and a half million men, half a million vehicles and four million tons of supplies were landed on French soil through the artificial harbour at Arromanches.  There are scant remnants of Mulberry B still to be seen at Arromanches to remind us of the far off days when they were constructed on the Sussex coastline.

Thanks to the late Tony Hammond, who was a schoolboy living at Hermit Terrace in Findon during the Second World War, and started me off on this quest, I now know all about the mysterious Mulberries and the part that the Sussex coastline played in their construction — and so, now, do you.

In January 2003, I received an e-mail from Roy Collins with memories of the Mulberries —

Continue if you would like to read about Preparing for D-Day in Findon.

THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE — was launched by Valerie Martin in January 1999 and will grow to be a historical record of life in Findon, West Sussex, U.K.