GOOLE AT WAR
Volume One: 1939 – 1941
Within the merchant shipping community there was a sense of relief when it was learned that a local vessel commanded
by Captain Thomas Leslie Cross, of Dunhill Road, Goole, had survived a machine gun attack by a German aircraft off the North east Coast, the plane apparently driven away by fire from the ship's Lewis gun. This would be only one of several wartime incidents for Tom Cross.
He joined J Wharton (shipping), Ltd, as an able seaman in 1936, and spent much of the war as captain of the motorship Gadonia.
The vessel was attacked from the air several times and in two incidents was credited with shooting down an enemy aircraft.
Captain Cross was later decorated for the role he and his ship played in the Normandy landings, and he went on to become commodore master of the Wharton fleet. He died in 1954, at the age of 44.
By kind permission of Mike Marsh.
Volume One: 1939 – 1941
Within the merchant shipping community there was a sense of relief when it was learned that a local vessel commanded
by Captain Thomas Leslie Cross, of Dunhill Road, Goole, had survived a machine gun attack by a German aircraft off the North east Coast, the plane apparently driven away by fire from the ship's Lewis gun. This would be only one of several wartime incidents for Tom Cross.
He joined J Wharton (shipping), Ltd, as an able seaman in 1936, and spent much of the war as captain of the motorship Gadonia.
The vessel was attacked from the air several times and in two incidents was credited with shooting down an enemy aircraft.
Captain Cross was later decorated for the role he and his ship played in the Normandy landings, and he went on to become commodore master of the Wharton fleet. He died in 1954, at the age of 44.
By kind permission of Mike Marsh.