Thread by @cocteautriplets

Recent acquisitions. The Trinity House book is signed by the then Master of the House, Capt. William Thomson Dawson OBE.

Captain Dawson was master of the Leith tanker "Peder Bogen", a tanker owned by Leith's Christian Salvesen shipping line

The Peder Bogen was torpedoed off Bermuda on 24th March 1942 by the Italian submarine "Morosini", but due to the actions of Dawson and his crew, survived this attack

Dawson "showed splendid courage, resource and leadership and made determined efforts to save his ship in circumstances of great difficulty and danger". But it was to no avail: the submarine followed the Peder Boden and later sank her with gunfire

Dawson and all his crew and passengers, 52 souls in all, were picked up however. They were landed later in Portugal. Dawson was awarded with the OBE for his actions, 4 other crew were also decorated 🎖️

Peder Boden was a whaling tanker, that in peacetime supported the Salvesen-owned South Georgia Company in the remote whaling stations of Stromness and Leith Harbour. Fuel oil went south, whale.oil came north

Wartime saw her carrying oil across the Atlantic. When sunk she had 11,000t of bunker oil for the Admiralty on board, en route from Trinidad to the UK via Halifax, N.S. She was carrying the radio operator of the tanker Melpomene, who had recently survived the loss of that ship

When the 2 torpedoes hit, the crew abandoned ship. However it refused to go down, so Dawson and a skeleton grew re-boarded. It was then that the trailing submarine surfaced and opened fire. Her gunnery was poor, and it took over 40 rounds to get 5 hits from just a mile range

The lifeboats were well supplied, and after 4 days, Dawson's boat was rescued by the neutral Spanish ship "Gobeo" (which was built in Port Glasgow). The Spanish crew were said to be sympathetic to the British merchant mariners and treated them well, landing them in Portugal

The rest of the crew were saved by the Argentinian "Rio Gallegos" and taken to New York.

The submarine Morosini was lost at sea on August 8th 1942 to unknown causes.
Captain Dawson was Master of Trinity House from 1964-1977. His medals, cap and ephemera were sold at auction in December 2022.

Most of his crew came from Edinburgh, Leith and Granton. A handful were from Glasgow, Dunbar and as far away as Shetland and North Ronaldsay (there were strong seafaring connections between Leith and the North Isles).