Goodbye to all that: the siblings escaping from war in Portsmouth

EVACUEES The late Ronald and Sheila Farley, happy enough to be evacuated. I wonder what their mothers thoughts were?

She tells me the boy on the left is her late father Ronald Farley along with his sister Sheila.

They were surrounded by other children being evacuated to the Isle of Wight in the early years of the war.

No doubt many of you saw Harmony of the Seas, the largest liner ever built, arriving in Southampton earlier this week before leaving on her maiden cruise.

The former Cunard passenger/cargo liner Ausonia awaiting scrapping in Portsmouth Harbour, circa 1965.

Of course, liners have not always been this large and, at the bottom of the page, we see the Ausonia, a former Cunard passenger/cargo liner.

She was requisitioned by the Admiralty and converted as an Armed Merchant Cruiser in 1939. In 1942 she became a repair ship.

In her heyday she could accommodate 1,668 passengers along with 270 crew members.

She was laid up in Portsmouth from August 1964 and left the harbour under tow on September 13, 1965, for Castellon, Spain, to be broken up.

DENNIS OF THE MYNGS

Dennis Boryer aboard HMS Myngs in the early 1950s — DENNIS OF THE MYNGS Dennis Boryer aboard HMS Myngs in the early 1950s

I had never heard of a ship with such a strange name – HMS Myngs.

But to prove it, here we see Dennis Boryer, father of Richard a regular correspondent to this column wearing his HMS Myngs cap tally.

She was a Z-Class destroyer launched on the Tyne in 1943 and she spent the last years of the war in Norway and the Arctic Circle.

In 1953 she attended the Coronation Review at Spithead.

She was sold to the Egyptians in 1955 and renamed El Qaher after refitting at Whites of Cowes, Isle of Wight.

In 1970 she was sunk by fighters from the Israeli Air Force at Berenice, Egypt.

Here we see Dennis in winter rig with a sea jersey instead of a white front The chain around his neck carries a bosun’s call.