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2nd Clarinet · Posted: Mon Mar 30, 2009 7:00 am Post subject: In Memory - HMS Trinidad

29th March 1942.

On the 29th March 1942, the following members of the Royal Marines Band Service gave their lives while serving onboard HMS Trinidad.

Bandmaster H.A. Davis
Musicians A.E.W. Field, A.E. Glass, L. Bonfield, S.B. Bennett, W. Collinge, C. Mason, R.G.S. Brewer and C.J.H. Sullivan.

I have posted below, the circumstances of that day.

HMS Trinidad was a Royal Navy Crown Colony-class cruiser (also known as the Fiji-class). She was lost while serving in the Arctic on convoy duty after being damaged escorting Convoy PQ-13 in 1942.

Trinidad was built by HM Dockyard Devonport.

She was laid down on 21 April 1938, launched 21 March 1941 and commissioned on 14 October 1941.

The ship served with the British Home Fleet during her brief career

While escorting Convoy PQ-13, on 29th March 1942, she and other escorts were in combat with German Narvik-class destroyers.

She hit and sank the German destroyer Z 26, and then launched a torpedo attack. One of her torpedoes had a faulty gyro mechanism possibly affected by the icy waters. The path of the torpedo formed a circular arc, striking the Trinidad and killing 32 men.

Trinidad was towed clear of the action, and was then able to proceed under her own power towards Murmansk.

The German submarine U-378 attempted to engage and sink the damaged cruiser, but was spotted and attacked by HMS Fury.

On arrival in Murmansk she underwent partial repairs.

She set out to return home on 13 May 1942, escorted by the destroyers HMS Foresight, HMS Forester, HMS Somali and HMS Matchless.

Other ships of the Home Fleet were providing a covering force nearby. Her speed was reduced to 20 knots owing to the damage she had sustained.

En route, she was attacked by more than twenty Ju-88 bombers on 15 May 1942.

All attacks missed, except for one bomb that struck near the previous damage starting a serious fire.

Sixty-three men were lost, including twenty survivors from HMS Edinburgh which had been sunk two weeks earlier.

The decision was taken to scuttle her and she was torpedoed by HMS Matchless and sank in the Arctic Ocean, north of North Cape.

One of the survivors was composer George Lloyd, who during his long recovery from shell-shock wrote his Fourth Symphony, entitled "The Arctic" which he prefaced with the description "… a world of darkness, storms, strange colours and a far-away peacefulness".

To those named above and the ships company who also died…..R.I.P.

Note
As an addendum I have posted below, the Wikipedia and Encarta entries on George Lloyd. Well worth a read.

Wikipedia

George Lloyd (28 June 1913 - 3 July 1998) was a Cornish composer of late-Romantic classical music.

George Walter Selwyn Lloyd was born in St Ives, Cornwall to a family with some money and great enthusiasm for music.

He was mainly home-schooled because of rheumatic fever.

He later studied violin with Albert Sammons and composition with Harry Farjeon.

George Lloyd showed his talent as a composer early. His first symphony, written at age 19, was premiered in 1933.

A second symphony had its premiere in 1935 and was soon followed by a third.

His first opera was performed in 1934 and his second was staged at Covent Garden when Lloyd was just 25.

The most extraordinary period in Lloyd's life began in World War II.

As a Royal Marine bandsman, he served in the cruiser HMS Trinidad, working in the Transmitting Station below the water line at Action Stations. Trinidad was serving on the notoriously dangerous Arctic convoys.

In 1942 the ship fired a faulty torpedo which travelled in a circular track and hit the ship, fracturing a large fuel oil tank.

Lloyd was the last man to escape from the compartment, most of his fellow bandsmen drowned in "the cold black oil".

The subsequent "shell shock" triggered a complete collapse. Today this would be called post-traumatic stress disorder.

George Lloyd attempted to keep going and wrote two symphonies and an opera but his health deteriorated further and in 1952 he withdrew to Dorset, where for 20 years he led a double life.

He was a market gardener growing mushrooms and carnations.

He continued to compose intermittently, rising at 4.30am and writing for three hours before the start of the working day.

When George Lloyd stopped market gardening and returned to composing full-time in the 1960s, he was like Rip Van Winkle who had slept for many years to awaken to a new world.

Musical tastes had changed.

The musical establishment was enchanted by serialism and modernism.

"I sent scores off to the BBC" he is reported as saying later. The BBC's music policy was then heavily influenced by William Glock, who had a preference for European modernism. "They came back, usually without comment. I never wrote 12-tone music because I didn't like the theory. I studied the blessed thing in the early 1930s and thought it was a cock-eyed idea that produced horrible sounds. It made composers forget how to sing."

Among the few who responded to his music were the conductors Charles Groves and Edward Downes, and the pianist John Ogdon. The tide began to turn ever so slowly. Eventually many of his works began to be performed and a fair number were recorded.

Lloyd had heart trouble toward the end of his life, but recovered sufficiently to resume work on a Requiem, which he completed three weeks before he died at the age of 85.

The score is inscribed, “Written in memory of Diana, Princess of Wales”, and the work is also a conscious leave-taking on the part of the composer.

He was survived by his Swiss wife Nancy. They married in 1937 and had no children.

Music

Lloyd wrote several operas, including Iernin performed at Penzance (1934), The Serf (1938) performed at Covent Garden, and John Socman (1951) performed at Bristol, all to librettos provided by his father William Lloyd.

Operas aside, George Lloyd composed much other music including 12 symphonies and 4 piano concertos, 2 violin concertos and a cello concerto, as well as several works for brass band and a large-scale choral-orchestral setting of the Latin poem Pervigilium Veneris, entitled The Vigil of Venus.

Towards the end of his life Lloyd and his works enjoyed a remarkable Indian summer.

The critic David Hurwitz observed in reviewing a recording of Lloyd's Symphony No. 11 for ClassicsToday.com that "George Lloyd composed one of the most impressive and appealing symphonic cycles of the 20th century.... All of Lloyd's music has great surface appeal, and this often conceals its intelligent organization and shrewd planning".

Encarta

George Lloyd (1913-1998), British composer and conductor, who enjoyed remarkable success at the beginning and end of his long career.

Born in Cornwall, he began composing at the age of ten, and studied violin and composition at the Royal Academy of Music and Trinity College of Music in London.

His first opera, Iernin, was produced in Penzance in 1934 and in London the following year; his second, The Serf, was premiered at Covent Garden in 1938. During his wartime service in the Royal Marines, he was severely shell-shocked.

The after-effects of this, combined with the difficulties surrounding the production of his Festival of Britain opera John Socman (1951), caused him to retire from music altogether, to grow carnations, and later mushrooms, in Dorset.

However, after a few years he started to compose again; and from 1977 his music began to be taken up by a new generation of performers, including the conductor Edward Downes and the pianist John Ogdon.

From 1984, recordings of his music began to be issued on the Albany label, with the orchestral and choral music being conducted by the composer himself.

Lloyd's music, written in a late-Romantic idiom owing little to 20th-century developments, was largely ignored by concert administrators and scorned by most critics; but it found an enthusiastic following among record-buyers in Britain and the United States.

In addition to the operas, his major works include 12 symphonies, 4 piano concertos, and for chorus and orchestra the cantata The Vigil of Venus (1980) as well as a Symphonic Mass (1993), and a Litany (1996).

He completed a Requiem for counter-tenor, chorus, and organ shortly before his death at the age of 85.

Tom Lambert also wrote an article about George Lloyd for the Blue Band Magazine.
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Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy marshmallows, which are kinda the same thing...!
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Hornblower · Posted: Mon Mar 30, 2009 10:33 am Post subject:

I was aware of George Lloyd's work and have a number of his symphonies in my collection. I like his sound and emotion...
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ITMA!

sticky blue · Posted: Mon Mar 30, 2009 1:38 pm Post subject:

RIP to all

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I love to cook with wine, sometimes I put it in the food.

StickyBlue · Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 5:35 pm Post subject:

What an amazing story.....RIP to all who lost their lives

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"Who needs the World as your Oyster,
When you've had the world as your cap Badge"

townsergeant · Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 5:39 pm Post subject:

We played a George Lloyd Symphony at a RMBS Memorial Service and Winter Concert, not forgetting his March, HMS Trinidad.
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Nill Illigitimi Carborundum

2nd Clarinet · Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 6:18 am Post subject:

Thinking back to the years I served, I cannot remember playing anything by George Lloyd (understandable if you knew 2 of the DOMs I served under).

It's a shame that not much was made of this mans music back then while he was still alive.
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Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy marshmallows, which are kinda the same thing...!
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