Height: 21.5cm (8.5in)
Replaced clapper and suspension loop. Strike marks to bell’s rim at 3 and 9 o’clock.
HM Motor Launch 138 was a Fairmile B Class Coastal Forces vessel which served in the ‘Battle of Narrow Seas’ between the British Isles and occupied Europe during the Second World War. She had a company of three officers and sixteen ratings, was 112 feet long, had a top speed of twenty knots and was armed with a three pounder deck gun and two anti-aircraft machine guns. She was commissioned in November 1940 and served with the 5th ML Flotilla, initially based at Dartmouth.
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From July 1941 she was deployed with the rest of the flotilla to Newhaven on Air Sea Rescue duties in the English Channel. In June 1944 she was detailed for minesweeping duties in Operation Neptune - the naval component of the Allied Invasion of Normandy (Operation Overlord) which ran from 6 June 1944 to D+24. With her shallow draft she was used on D-Day to sweep further inshore than the fleet minesweepers and cleared mines off Sword Beach under the exchange of fire between bombarding ships and German shore batteries.
In July the 5th ML Flotilla moved up the coast to Cherbourg where the German mine-laying operation had been designed to deny the port to the Allies. The harbour was strewn with no less than 268 mines including 74 control mines (all linked to the harbour forts) 107 moored contact mines, 14 magnetic influence mines, three acoustic mines and an unknown number of Küstenmine-A or ‘Katies’. Ten British and American minesweeping vessels were lost and three damaged during the clearance of the port but on 2 July 1944 ML 138 became the first Allied vessel to enter the harbour. HMML138 was allocated to the Royal Netherlands Navy at the war’s end.
The present bell was probably made by the clockmakers and bell founders Gillett & Johnston of Union Road, Croydon. The firm supplied Admiralty and Government contracts during the first half of the 20th century, and constructed the clock and bell for the RN Barracks at Devonport. During the Second World War the firm’s production was given over to war work which included the manufacture of ships’ bells for Coastal Forces vessels.