SS Chulmleigh

She was in service during the first years of the Second World War and was lost in November 1942 on Operation FB, a series of individual sailings from Iceland to northern Russia.

Chulmleigh was built in 1938 by William Pickersgill & Sons Ltd. of Southwick for the Dulverton Steamship Co., one of W. J. Tatem's companies, registered in London and was intended for the movement of general cargo.

The outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 found her at Colón, Panama, having completed a voyage to British Columbia and was returning to the UK via the Caribbean.

[6] Operation FB was an attempt during the winter months of October to December 1942 to pass single ships with volunteer crews to north Russia.

The captain was prevented from celestial navigation by unbroken cloud and snowfalls; only dead reckoning was available to time the turn off Jan Mayen at midnight on 3 November 1942.

There had been a dead reckoning error of 20 nmi (37 km; 23 mi) north and on 6 November, at 12:30 a.m., Chulmleigh ran onto a reef off the South Cape and grounded at the stern, the bow floating in deeper water beyond.

The confidential books were jettisoned and the crew abandoned ship in haste but one of the four lifeboats was damaged and two men fell into the sea; one man was rescued but the other died of exposure.

[8][a] At 4:00 a.m. a distress call was transmitted and the crew waited in the lifeboats for twilight, the lightest conditions that occurred at that time of year, to negotiate the reefs around the ship.

Several attempts to find help failed in the winter blizzards and the crew were only discovered by two Norwegian ski troops from Gearbox II on 2 January 1943 despite Barentsburg being only 12 mi (19 km) from the landfall.