The Cruise of Naromis

In August 1939, five carefree Englishmen set off to the Baltic aboard a motor cruiser from the Norfolk Broads. The crew of Naromis - “Skip”, “Fattie”, Bill, Mike and “Honest George” Jones - drank beer, ogled flaxen-haired girls and caroused the streets of Cuxhaven singing “Horst Wessel” as their German companions bawled out “Land of Hope and Glory”. They also took many photographs of ships, bridges and naval yards which were later passed to Naval Intelligence.

It was the first time 21-year-old George Jones had travelled abroad, and when he returned to England on 2 September 1939 his call-up papers were already waiting. “It was as though I had been conducted through the scene of a great drama and just managed to get off the stage before the curtain went up.”

The Cruise of Naromis was found in an attic. The author, George Jones, was serving in the Second World War and stationed in Newfoundland when he found time to write up the odd little cruise that he and four others had made through the Kiel Canal to Germany in August 1939. By the time he’d completed this account and collected the photos to accompany it he was working in Freetown, Sierra Leone, even further away.

His daughter, Julia Jones, is a biographer and a writer of sailing adventure stories. She thought at first that it would make a nice pamphlet for the family at Christmas. As she researched more thoroughly, she began to see that it was something more than that. The Cruise of Naromis is the story of an ordinary young man coming of age at an extraordinary time. It’s of particular appeal to yachtsmen and also people interested in WW2 Naval history.