If evidence were needed of the high regard and esteem in which Capt. Henry William (Bill) Phillips was held across the entire spectrum of Pembrokeshire life it was demonstrated by the capacity attendance at his funeral at Parc Gwyn Crematorium on Thursday December 29th.

Captain Phillips of Scarrowscant Lane, a member of an old Haverfordwest family, who died on Monday December 19th aged 90 after a long illness, was a leading figure in his native County for many years.

Eldest of four sons of local master builder Mr Harry Phillips, he joined the Merchant Navy at the age of 15 in 1936, and during World War Two served with great distinction as a Third Officer, and one of the unsung heroes of the Arctic convoys.

In July 1942 his ship, the Royal Fleet Auxiliary tanker Aldersdale, which was escorting the ill-fated PQ17 Arctic convoy to Russia, was sunk by a flight of three Junkers 88 bombers off Spitzbergen after the convoy had been forced to scatter and was abandoned by its Royal Naval escort.

With its Captain, Chief Officer, Chief Engineer and two other crew members, 21-years-old Third Officer Phillips discovered that the Aldersdale’s two lifeboats had gone, each of their crews assuming they were in the other boat. They had to launch the ship’s jollyboat to escape the sinking ship, and were rescued by the Minseweeper Salamander, eventually being landed ashore in Archangel. In a dramatic account of the disaster in the 1968 book "Convoy to Hell" Captain Phillips described with characteristic understatement and humour his experiences as a ‘refugee’ stranded for three months in the austerity of war-torn Archangel and Murmansk. The book’s flyleaf features a poem written by Captain Phillips in tribute to the men who perished in Convoy PQ17, from which a mere handful of the original 33 merchant ships survived.

After the war Captain Phillips became a Trinity House pilot and in 1960, while piloting tankers at the developing oil port at Milford Haven, he was honoured by appointment as a Younger Brother of Trinity House.
Fair winds Captain
(With acknowledgments to the Pembrokshire Western Telegraph)