How one 1930s pinnace went from the
Third Reich to a field in Kent
STORY CLARE MCCOMBHITLER’S
TENDER
I
t’s not the boat’s fault – everyone agrees with
that. Yet the thought of this streamlined motor
launch regularly ferrying Nazi leaders Göring,
Goebbels, von Ribbentrop, Himmler and Hitler
himself is still shocking. Apparently she was
intended to carry the victorious Führer upriver to
his new headquarters at Windsor Castle, if the projected
invasion of Britain, Operation Sea Lion, had been
successful. She really is one of those historic boats where
you only wish she could talk.
According to her previous owner, journalist Revel
Barker, Blohm & Voss laid down the keel of her
massive mothership, the Aviso Grille, at their Hamburg
shipyard in 1934. Grille was launched in December
that year as the largest yacht afloat at 443ft (135m)
overall. For the new German president, Herr Hitler,
this was a prestigious, almost ‘royal’ vessel, but she
was also equipped with cannon, guns and could carry
280 mines – an iron fist in a velvet glove.
At the same time, below decks, they were testing new
engine technology for German destroyers of the future.
One of the crew, Helmut Krämer, wrote in his diary “we
live in a constant state of stress”, presumably in case
something in the “untried power design” blew up.
Above decks her smart pinnaces were busy, ferrying VIPs
to and from high powered military policy meetings and
sumptuous diplomatic events. Hitler himself frequently
spent three or four nights aboard, but preferably when
she was in port. He was a rotten sailor and often seasick.
Not everything ran smoothly. Hitler regularly lectured
his sailors about drink and when he entered a room
unexpectedly to find a bottle of Champagne being
enjoyed by the crew, apparently he strode forward and
kicked it over, before storming out.
Aviso Grille came equipped with three motor
launches. The twin pinnaces, MB1 and MB2, were
carried on deck and lowered by a boom to the water.
Plus there was a ‘liberty boat’ for transporting the crew.
Motorboot 1 is the only vessel to have survived those
years. Now named Grillet, she is in England and about
to undergo a full restoration. She is long and narrow,
36ft (10.97m) LOA, 10ft (3.05m) beam, and although inneed of sensitive repair, her lines display a fine pedigree.
She was built by Lürssen in Bremen in 1934, designed
for harbour work, not the open sea.
What stories she could tell! She was there when
Hitler’s state yacht came in peace to the UK, bringing
Field Marshal von Blomberg to attend the coronation of
George VI in 1937. She was there when Grille returned
to British waters in 1939, to lay mines at the mouth of
the Thames. She was lowered to rescue survivors when
the heavily armed Grille rammed a merchant steamer,
carrying a cargo of 600 live pigs, off the Danish coast
during the war; this collision left the German flagship
holed and unable to lead the invasion of Norway as
planned. And she was there in 1945 when Grand-
Admiral Dönitz announced the death of Hitler from the
deck of the Aviso Grille, having assumed leadership of
the German nation and supreme command of the
fighting forces. She paid the price of defeat when, before
their surrender, the crew sabotaged Grillet’s engines by
pouring in seawater to corrode them and hurling the
cylinder heads into the bilges.
With peace came notoriety. Now the crippled Aviso
Grille was brought from Norway as a prize of war, first
to crowded Rosyth, and then to Hartlepool, where
curious locals queued in their thousands, paying to peer
at Hitler’s staterooms and his giant yacht’s conquered
glory. Meanwhile BBC wartime newsreader Alvar Liddell
had been given the demob task of selling off Grille’s
equipment to the highest bidder and news of this reached
the sharp ears of local Hartlepool businessman ‘Tot’
Richardson, owner of a fleet of coaches and also a
lifelong motorboat enthusiast. His pre-war Garwood
runabout was long gone and Grillet was the most
beautiful thing he had ever seen, her sleek lines and
narrow hull far above anything he could have hoped for.
He motored over to see if a decent bargain could be
struck and after a short discussion left minus his new car
(worth £300) as the proud owner of Motorboot 1.
A new chapter in Grillet’s life had begun.
Back at the coach workshops, Richardson tackled the
corroded 9.5 litre Mercedes Benz diesel engine,
re-machining its salt-damaged bores and shaping pistons