Salisbury (Sarum) Probus Club
Sarum Probus Club is an organisation for retired men living in the Salisbury Area.
Previous Meetings 2024
Salisbury Rugby and Spitfire Fame -
Our club member
Alan Frener treated us to a fascinating and moving story of Salisbury
fame. As a longstanding coach of Salisbury Rugby Club he and his team of
youngsters were able to welcome
Richard Hill,
member of the 2003 World Champion team, to their Salisbury clubhouse. Hilly
hails from Salisbury and is still a frequent visitor to the club.
The second claim to fame is the, until recently, untold story of the
secret Spitfire factories in the City and its surroundings.
The Club was specially delighted to welcome as a guest Norman Parker,
author of “Secret Spitfires Memorial”
The original home of Spitfire development and manufacture was
Southampton. However, after the first devastating air attacks in September
1940 it was decided to disperse Spitfire production. Salisbury became the
biggest of several places of secret, dispersed production.
Factory number one was next to Salisbury Rugby Ground. It is now marked
out by the Spitfire Memorial just next to Castle Road.
There were factory sites all over town hidden in innocuous buildings .
Each factory worked autonomously producing complete planes. In total about
2500 Spitfires were produced by Salisbury factories. Alan’s presentation
included a wealth of video interviews of those who had played a part in this
highly secretive operation. Husband and wife would not know for years that
each worked in different branches of this secret operation.
The True Story of the African Queen
There was first a brief
sketch of German East Africa at the outbreak of WW I, surrounded by
British and Belgian colonies and blockaded by the British Navy.
Background
and Early Strategy: Von Lettow-Vorbeck, a seasoned military officer with
experience in China and German Southwest Africa, took command of the
German colonial forces in East Africa (modern-day Tanzania, Burundi,
and parts of Mozambique) in 1914. His forces were relatively small,
consisting of a few thousand German officers and a larger number of
Askari (African soldiers loyal to Germany). These he taught German
to overcome the linguistic divisions of African tribes and turned
them into a formidable fighting force.
The Germans had established a strong naval
presence on lake Tanganyika with armed ships, including the
notorious gunboat Graf von Götzen.
The British Plan:
The British plan to take control of Lake Tanganyika involved an
extraordinary and audacious feat of engineering and military
planning. Spearheaded by the eccentric British officer Geoffrey
Spicer-Simson and under the command of the Royal Navy, the mission
was to transport two small gunboats, HMS Mimi and HMS Toutou, from
Britain to South Africa and then overland through the jungle to Lake
Tanganyika—a journey of over 10,000 miles.
The
Overland Journey: The transportation of
the boats was a Herculean task. After arriving in South Africa, the
boats were transported by train and ox-cart through some of the most
challenging terrain on the continent, including dense forests and
mountains.
The British contingent
consisted of
28men and
60 tons with a train more than a mile long. The
task
also required hundreds of local labourers, many of them local women who
fetched and carried the enormous amounts of water needed for the steam
engines.
Combat on the Lake:
Once deployed on the lake in late 1915, Mimi and Toutou quickly made
an impact. In a series of daring raids and engagements, they managed
to sink the German ship Kingani in December 1915, and another, the
Hedwig von Wissmann, in February 1916.
Graf von
Götzen, built in 1913, was the most powerful of three
vessels the German Empire used to control Lake Tanganyika during the
early part of the First World War. Her captain had her scuttled
on 26 July 1916 in Katabe Bay during the German retreat from Kigoma.
Refloated, refurbished and renamed MV Liemba, she is now the oldest
“operating” passenger ship in the world. It's been sailing between
Kigoma, Tanzania and Mpulungu, Zambia, since 1915. Kevin was able to
visit her.
End of the Campaign:
Despite the spectacular British feat on the lake Lettow-Vorbeck’s
campaign continued even after the armistice in Europe on November
11, 1918. He finally surrendered on November 25, 1918, upon
receiving news of the armistice from British forces, making his East
African campaign one of the last to conclude in World War I.
Fictionalisation:
The author C S Forester picked up the
extraordinary story of the boat transport and naval engagements and
turned it into a novel. This he revised and republished twice.
In 1951 the book was adapted for the film directed by John
Huston and
produced by Sam
Spiegel. Ever since many stories abound as to where the film was shot and where
the boat dramatized in the film has ended up.
Kevin convinced us that most of the “water scenes” were not shot in
Wareham river but rather in the studio. The boat used in the film was
bought and restored by a German
enthusiast. It is now in the USA.
For more previous meetings 2019-21 2021 2021-2 2022 2023
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