The notice below was issued to Thames Conservancy Officers.
At the end of May, 1940, Naiad Errant was lying at her usual mooring at Horace Clark's yard at Sunbury when the Admiralty requisitioned her. At the time her owner, Major Nightingale, was away in Bath. The very afternoon she was requisitioned, Horace Clark - assisted by members of Sunbury Fire Brigade - took her down river to Tough's yard at Teddington, where boats from the upper Thames were being assembled.
A crew from Tough's yard took Naiad Errant on down the tidal Thames to Sheerness, and on 30th May a Naval crew took her and other small boats from Sheerness to Ramsgate, arriving at midnight.
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Able Seaman Samuel Palmer (left) and five other naval crew were allocated a couple of the small boats
in Ramsgate harbour. Palmer chose to take Naiad Errant himself as she looked 'the better of the
two'. He provisioned her with food, water and fuel.
At 4 a.m. on 1st June, they joined six other small boats outside the breakwater at Ramsgate harbour and set off to Dunkirk. They took the 63-mile 'route X', the central of the three routes being used to avoid mined areas (see map below). |
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Naiad Errant is almost unique among the Little Ships that took part in Operation Dynamo in that her skipper, Samuel Palmer, wrote a complete account of his time at Dunkirk. The table below shows the main events of Naiad Errant's involvement.
| DATE | TIME | EVENT |
| June 1st | 04:00 | Naiad Errant departs Ramsgate for Dunkirk on 'route X'. |
| 13:00 | The french destroyer Foudroyant is bombed close to Naiad Errant. Palmer rescues most of the crew (about 20) and transfers them to a nearby dredger. | |
| 14:00 | Palmer starts ferrying troops from the beaches to a destroyer waiting offshore. | |
| 15:00 |
Palmer tries to tow off another motor boat that the ebbing tide has grounded. In the process
Naiad Errant gets a rope wrapped around her propellers and also goes aground. Soon after, the
destroyer goes aground too! While waiting for the boats to refloat on the rising tide, Palmer carries wounded troops out to a skiff still in use. He and his crew are then ordered to swim out to the destroyer. |
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| Some time later some British troops board Naiad Errant and try to get her going again. | ||
| 19:00 | The rising tide refloats both Naiad Errant and the destroyer. Seeing that Naiad Errant is going again, Palmer reboards her and takes control. He takes some petrol cans from another boat. | |
| 21:15 | The engines stop (possibly due to contaminated fuel) and Palmer instructs the soldiers to break off the cabin doors and use them as paddles to stop Naiad Errant being swept against the East Mole of Dunkirk harbour. | |
| 22:30 | The engineers on board manage to get one of the engines going, and they set off for Dover. | |
| June 2nd | 03:00 | Palmer lets one of the soldiers take the helm so he can get some rest. Within a few minutes Palmer realises they are heading in the wrong direction, so takes over again. |
| 08:30 | Naiad Errant arrives off Dover, but Palmer is told to go to Ramsgate where the small craft are being dealt with. | |
| 10:25 |
Naiad Errant finally arrives back at Ramsgate more than 30 hours after setting out. The soldiers
are disembarked - taking a few souvenirs with them ! Palmer gets an engineer to fix the engines. |
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| 14:30 | After a bath and a change of clothes, and against orders, Palmer sets off in Naiad Errant towards Dunkirk again. However, he is soon turned back. As the Germans could now fire on all shipping lanes to Dunkirk, slower boats were no longer used. |
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In recognition of Able Seaman Samuel Palmer's heroic efforts with Naiad Errant he was later awarded the Distinguished Service Medal (DSM). |
By June 5th it was all over. 385,000 troops (over 100,000 of them French) had been rescued from the beaches of Dunkirk.
Naiad Errant was brought back upstream (see photograph below) to Tough's boatyard at Teddington on 9th June.
From there she was returned to her old mooring at Horace Clark's yard at Sunbury. The photographs below were taken soon after this return, and show some of the ravages of Operation Dynamo.
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