The Sea Takes It All

A Historical Fiction Narrative of HMS Formidable, 1945–46

The war was over. At least, that was what the newspapers said. Men still stood in uniform, ships still steamed across oceans, and orders still arrived sealed with Admiralty wax, but the thunder of war had ended. In its place came something quieter, stranger, and in many ways harder to fathom.
For Hubert Spencer, a young Stoker, assigned to HMS Formidable, the strangest days of his service were not in the Mediterranean or under the lash of kamikazes in the Pacific, but here, in the uneasy calm after VJ Day. The great carrier, a ship that had braved battle, now bore an odd cargo: not planes or munitions, but cars, trucks, and endless crates of surplus.
They were steaming deep into the Indian Ocean, away from ports in India and Ceylon, far from shipping lanes. The sun beat down mercilessly, hammering the steel decks until they radiated heat like a forge. The carrier’s crew, once taut with battle drill, now found themselves engaged in an act that felt almost like a betrayal: ordered to rid the world of what had won the war.

Orders from Whitehall
The men had heard rumours before the official word came. Lend-Lease was finished, cut off abruptly in September 1945, leaving Britain saddled with an impossible choice: return the mountains of American gear scattered across the globe, or pay for it. In truth, the country was bankrupt. The Treasury couldn’t pay.
So Admiralty orders were blunt: unserviceable or uneconomic equipment was to be scrapped, destroyed, or dumped.
That was how Formidable’s broad hangar decks came to groan beneath a cargo of foreign machines: Dodges and Jeeps, GMC trucks, Buicks, and, incredibly, Packard staff cars. Luxury sedans that had once carried generals and air marshals now stood stripped of glory, their chrome dulled by salt air, their whitewall tyres flecked with rust from the decks.
The sight of them unsettled Hubert. “We bled for steel and petrol,” he muttered one night in the mess, “and now we’re throwing it overboard.”
“Cheaper than shipping ’em back,” replied another seaman, with a shrug. “Besides, the Yanks won’t take ’em.”
Still, no one was ready for the first morning when the dumping began.

The Packard in the Crate
Hubert remembered it clearly. The crew had mustered on the forward hangar deck, the cranes already lifting. The first vehicles went with a kind of reluctant comedy: Jeeps rattling on their chains, tipping sideways before splashing into the endless blue. Men laughed uneasily, but their eyes followed the ripples until they vanished.
Then came the Packard.
It was housed in a reinforced packing case, mahogany planks bolted tight around the frame. The smell of resin and seasoned wood clung to it, a faint perfume of forests far from war. Hubert, who had experience of some carpentry before the Navy, ran his hand along the grain, admiring it. It seemed absurd — a car inside a crate inside a ship, bound for the bottom of the sea.
When the bosun’s party prised one panel loose to check the slings, Hubert’s eye caught something within: a chest, finely made, fitted against the side of the Packard’s crate. He recognised it at once — a tool chest, mahogany like the crate itself, the brass corners dulled but intact. Perhaps it had been intended for the car’s maintenance, perhaps for the officers who rode within.
Hubert hesitated only a moment before asking, “Mind if I take that, Chief? Be a shame to let it go.”
The bosun glanced at him, then at the chest. “Take it quick, lad. Nobody’s counting wood.”
And so Hubert salvaged it — a solid chest of drawers and compartments, smelling of linseed oil and long voyages. He tucked it away in his berth, not knowing that it would follow him the rest of his life.
The Packard, freed of its crate, was less lucky. The cranes groaned, the deck crew heaved, and with a lurching slide the luxury sedan toppled into the deep. For a moment its polished grille caught the sun, then it was gone, swallowed by the Indian Ocean without a sound.

Dumping the Empire’s Ghosts
Day after day the ritual continued. Trucks rolled, axles squealed, chains strained. Some vehicles went over in groups, lashed together like sacrificial offerings. The sea became a graveyard of engines and steel, a scrapyard without shorelines.
The men joked to hide their unease. “Maybe Neptune drives a Packard now,” one quipped as another sedan vanished. Another suggested the fish would soon be riding in Buicks, chauffeured to the bottom of the sea. But their laughter carried a bitter edge.
For they all knew what Britain looked like in 1946: rationing tighter than during the war, fuel scarce, streets filled with bicycles and weary buses. And here they were, sending gleaming machines into the abyss.
Hubert could not shake the image of those cars resting on the seabed, their chrome slowly turning green, fish drifting through their windows.

The Forklift Tragedy
The worst day came when they lost the forklift.
It had been their workhorse, an ungainly beast but essential for shifting the heavier crates. Painted dull Navy grey, its tyres worn bald, the forklift had laboured hour after hour as faithfully as any crewman.
That morning, the deck was slick with spilled oil and seawater. A crate containing aircraft parts was being nudged toward the crane’s slings when the forklift’s tyres slipped. Hubert saw it unfold in slow motion: the driver jerking the wheel, the machine slewing sideways, its weight dragging it relentlessly toward the edge.
“Jump!” someone roared, and the driver flung himself clear at the last instant.
The forklift teetered, hung a moment on the deck lip, then went over with a metallic shriek, plunging into the sea with a geyser of spray. The driver lay on the deck, gasping, his face grey with shock.
This time there was no laughter. The men stood in silence, staring at the widening ripples. The forklift had been theirs, useful, real. Losing it felt like losing a comrade.
Hubert thought grimly: We keep the useless ships afloat and drown the things we need.

Reflections in Salt and Sun
By the time Formidable turned back toward port, her decks were empty of surplus. The sea had taken it all. Only the scars remained: scraped paint, dents in the deck, and the silence of men who had seen wealth vanish like so much rubbish.
Hubert carried his mahogany tool chest ashore in Bombay, cradled like a relic. Inside he stored his chisels, gouges, and the brass dividers he had used since apprenticeship. Each time he opened it, the scent of wood and oil reminded him of the Packard, of the strange days when Britain threw its treasures to the ocean because it could not afford to keep them.
He would tell the story sometimes, in pubs or to his children: how the sea floor of the Indian Ocean was paved with cars, how Neptune drove a Packard, how the forklift truck had gone to its death with a scream of steel. Some listeners laughed, others shook their heads in disbelief. But Hubert knew it was true, for he had been there, standing on the deck of HMS Formidable, watching history sink beneath the waves.

Epilogue: The Tool Chest
Years later, long after Formidable herself was scrapped, Hubert sat in his garden shed in Portsmouth, the tool chest before him. Its mahogany gleamed in the afternoon light, polished by decades of use. Inside, the compartments still held his tools, worn smooth by work.
He sometimes imagined the Packard still down there, resting on the seabed, tyres long gone, its leather eaten by salt. Around it would lie Buicks, Dodges, GMCs, and the faithful forklift, all together in a silent convoy beneath the waves.
Britain had survived, but at a cost: empire diminished, fortunes drained, the future uncertain. And yet, in that chest, Hubert carried a fragment of what had been thrown away — a reminder that not all could be consigned to the sea.
The war had ended, but its waste, its strange beauty, and its quiet tragedies remained.
And in the smell of mahogany and oil, Hubert Spencer remembered.