Another way to tackle this question is to look at the As Fitted plans for Waterhen. These are available to view online at the National Archives of Australia. You can see which areas were originally steel deck, which areas had Corticene (“Linoleum”) laid on top of that steel, and which areas had coir matting either over the Corticene or over bare steel. (The arrangement varied a bit between different V&W’s.) This link may or may not take you straight there: Digital Item Page Gallery (naa.gov.au) If not, using their Advanced Search option input the Item ID number 32368745 at the relevant box and click search, then click through to the digital view copy. Unfortunately the resolution is not perfect but I have found that by saving the image to my PC I can zoom in and just about read enough of the writing to make out “Extent of Linoleum” (ie Corticene), “Extent of Coir Matting”, and “Extent of Coir Matting and Linoleum” etc but beware of confusion with “Extent of Catch Netting”. (Vendetta’s As Fitted’s Digital Item Page Gallery (naa.gov.au) (ID 4994340) are much clearer and may assist in interpreting Waterhen’s plans).
The As Fitted’s date back to the construction of the ships. A legitimate question would of course be did the RN or RAN make any ‘structural’ changes to the original deck covering arrangements during the interwar years prior to the ships joining the Med Fleet in WW2? I cannot see why they would have done so but someone with extensive access to Australian photo collections may be able to prove that they did. The arrangements were similar on RN V&W’s. The problem with the coir matting though was that it was impermanent. Coir matting was notoriously difficult to keep lashed down as a sea would rip the lashings. You see numerous photos of bare steel ‘iron’ decks (the central section of deck past the funnels and torpedo tubes) on V&W’s which according to the As Fitteds were laid with coir matting. Has the coir matting been swept away by a heavy sea, or disintegrated through wear and tear and not yet been replaced, or in calm, harbour or peacetime conditions has the coir matting simply been temporarily taken up and stored away to preserve it? In the Gordon Hill collection of photos of Vendetta you will find images of her with bare steel deck at exactly the same area of the iron deck shown in Brett’s photo above laid with a strip of lashed down coir matting. Likewise areas where the coir matting was supposed to have been laid over Corticene often seem in photos of V&W’s to be just bare Corticene. There is even a peacetime photo which appears to show coir matting lying half folded up on Waterhen’s B gun deck.
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Waterhen coir folded.jpg [ 363.03 KiB | Viewed 2760 times ]
Different people will interpret the evidence re Waterhen in different ways. I would suggest that the “ground tackle Foc’s’le” was bare steel (painted) as per the As Fitteds. I interpret the sun ray of metal strips and other individual metal strips in that area as tread strips rather than (the continuous runs of) edging/holding down strips associated with Corticene. I think Corticene would have been quite impractical in that area. It became very slippery when wet which would have rendered things treacherous for the crew during anchor work. Nor can I see it withstanding the heavy wear and tear it would have got in that location. I am struggling to think of any RN destroyer that had Corticene in that area.
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Waterhen Norton.jpg [ 235 KiB | Viewed 2760 times ]
Aft of that you are going to have to decide if Norton’s painting is evidence that when sunk Waterhen had some clean new golden tan-coloured coir matting (perhaps easy to procure locally in Egypt?) laid over large areas of her decks.The questioning of Norton’s depiction of Waterhen is partly because of the way he has coloured these decks but also because Norton painted her with a list to port. It is true that photos of Waterhen after the Army passengers had been taken off and she had been abandoned by her crew show her listing to starboard. But a couple of photos said to have been taken earlier (but after the bombing) with soldiers crowded on her decks seem to show her listing to port, as in the painting, and in the painting her decks are still crowded with khaki. The account of Waterhen’s sinking in “Scrap Iron Destroyers”, Lind and Payne, published by the Naval Historical Society of Australia in 1976 may provide the answer: After the bombing “The ship slowly lost way and stopped……WATERHEN was listing heavily to port and the stores began to slide down the sloping deck into the water. The troops on the exposed deck had shown great calm during the attack. They now assisted the crew to jettison the remainder of the stores on the port side and the ship slowly came on an even keel. However, the water pouring into her innards later caused her to list to the starboard.”
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