This is the story of how a gallant but somewhat temperamental 'lady' of
the Merchant Navy, the English Trader, met her end during World War Two,
not at the hands of the Germans but of an older enemy - the sea. She had
survived two years of war hazards; mines, torpedoes and bombs; sailed
many thousands of miles (including 3,000 with all her four coal-filled
holds on fire); and fetched and carried thousands of tons of valuable
cargo to her U-boat threatened island home. It also tells what the crew
of two Royal National Lifeboat Institution lifeboats risked and suffered
to rescue forty-four of her crew from the fury of the North Sea, in what
Cromer's ex-coxswain Henry 'Shrimp' Davies now describes as 'the most
thrilling mission' of his experience. This mission was to test the
seamanship and character of Cromer's famous coxswain, Henry Blogg, to
the limit, but he survived the ordeal of near disaster and served
another six years before retiring. He died in 1954. The service to the
English Trader was his supreme trial, and the sea almost beat him. As
Henry Blogg said when the lifeboat was 'knocked down', 'The boat was hit
hardest abaft the fore cockpit. Had she been hit as hard along her whole
length there would be no lifeboat crew in Cromer today.' But the boat
did right herself and Henry Blogg finished the job.