Buccaneering Bonnie - a smuggler and a chancer

Every port has its archetypal old salt sporting a skipper's cap and telling tales of derring-do. While many are charlatans, Bill Bell found out that there was even more to Bonnie Newton than met the eye

BONNIE NEWTON was doubtless the most colourful and charismatic master mariner that the Channel Islands produced during the 20th century.

The buccaneering ginger-bearded old sea dog was physically diminutive, but otherwise larger than life.

Bonnie was well known as a sailor, fisherman and small-time smuggler, with an unsurpassed knowledge of the waters around Guernsey and Alderney.

He was envied and admired for an energy and resourcefulness which were no longer as common as when islanders lived by privateering and smuggling.

He characteristically always flew the Jolly Roger from the masthead.

Born in Alderney in 1903, John Louis Newton was nicknamed 'Bonnie' by a Scottish lady, saying he was a bonnie lad when he was a baby. The name stuck.

In June 1940, having volunteered for the navy, he was serving as a leading seaman in a minesweeper at Scapa Flow.

Ambrose Sherwill, the Guernsey Procureur, who had been appointed president of the newly formed Controlling Committee, sent a telegram to the admiralty asking that Newton be released from naval duties and returned to the island as he was considered to be the only man capable of smuggling food into the island during the inevitable German Occupation.

By the time Newton was located, having been transferred to the Royal Naval Patrol Service depot at Lowestoft, Guernsey had been occupied for some time.

He was interviewed by Ian Fleming, later of 007 fame, who was a special assistant to the director of naval intelligence.

Fleming immediately recognised that Newton was a skilled pilot with an outstanding knowledge of his home waters and that his buccaneering spirit deserved greater scope.

In October 1940 Captain Gerry Holdsworth had been authorised by the Special Operations Executive to recruit 12 volunteer naval ratings to man two further French vessels based at the Helford River and carry out clandestine missions to France. That was part of Winston Churchill's desire to 'Set Europe ablaze'.

Fleming sent Bonnie Newton to see Holdsworth and he became his first recruit. He was promoted to Skipper Lt.

When Bonnie had been transferred to Lowestoft, his wife had gone with him. She and their two boys, Peter and John, stayed in a local boarding house.

Being unaware of his interview with Fleming and his transfer to the Helford River, she was surprised to receive a letter from him telling her to come to Cornwall and enclosing rail tickets. The letter was signed John.

She was rather worried because he never signed his name John. However, he had sent the tickets so she and the boys went.

That was when she found out that he was in the SOE.

Bonnie spent the next two years of the war in command of the former French naval training vessel, the Mutin, a

21-metre, 60-ton yawl, which was fitted out as a French tuna fishing vessel.

Newton's crew were, typically of the SOE, a hard bunch and accountable to no one.

Disguised as French fishermen, he and his crew went back and forth to German occupied Brittany, rescuing Allied airmen who had been shot down over enemy territory, landing agents and supplies to aid the French resistance and also bringing back the occasional prisoner.

On one of his cloak-and-dagger missions, Bonnie rescued a French family being sought by the Gestapo.

Returning from one raid on the French coast, the Mutin was attacked by German aircraft and strafed with gun fire. One crew member was hit and died. The crew spent some considerable time back at their Helford River base digging out shrapnel from the decks, mast and boom.

In September 1942, Bonnie was part of the small-scale raiding force which spectacularly captured the entire seven-man German crew of the Casquets Lighthouse. Newton acted as pilot and guide and brought the boat right under the lee of the rocks.

Later that year he received the Distinguished Service Cross from the King at Buckingham Palace in recognition of his bravery, resource and undaunted devotion to duty.In December 1942, Newton and virtually the entire Helford River establishment were relocated to the western Mediterranean. The Mutin and Serenini went with them to set up a new SOE cloak-and-dagger sea-transport service to enemy-occupied southern France and Corsica.

On 6 April 1943 the submarine, Trident, was ordered to recover agents from Corsica and if possible take over an Italian schooner.

Newton was taken along on the submarine to skipper a prize crew and as conducting officer for SOE.

No schooner was sighted so Bonnie remained aboard the Trident. A small coastal tanker was spotted and rather than use a torpedo, the Trident surfaced and prepared to engage her with its guns. The coaster turned out to be an Italian Q-ship, which retaliated, almost causing the loss of the submarine.

Early in July 1943, Newton was the conducting officer when the Casablanca, the only serviceable French submarine to be operating in the Mediterranean, successfully delivered two agents and 13 tons of arms, ammunition and explosives to Curza Point, a remote part of the north coast of Corsica.

The arms were taken ashore in rubber dinghies, half-a-ton at a time. The operation was carried out without shore assistance. The arms were hidden for the resistance to recover later.

The Casablanca had escaped from Toulon when the French fleet was scuttled. Because of defective torpedo tubes, she was useless for naval purposes, but she had a large carrying capacity.

An attempt to deliver a further consignment of 20 tons by the Casablanca to the west coast of Corsica was made on the night of 29/30 July 1943. The conducting party was again led by Newton.

The submarine edged its way to within 100 metres of shore when its stern touched bottom. The landing boats were brought up on deck and lowered into the water. Before any stores could be transferred to the boats, all hell broke loose, with machine guns and other weapons opening up in all directions.

The Casablanca quickly withdrew and made for the north coast where the crew had successfully delivered their cargo some four weeks previously. Over the next two nights they landed and concealed their 20-ton cargo, again without the help of the resistance.

As skipper of the Serenini, Newton successfully transported arms and supplies to the French Maquis, Italian partisans and resistance fighters in Corsica. His ability to speak Guernsey patois, which is similar to the Corsican dialect, enabled him to spend a considerable time ashore working with the resistance. He got to know the Corsicans very well.

The Germans put a Nazi woman spy on his trail and at various times he had to go to earth with Corsican families.

The Italians awarded him the Italian Star, issued to partisans and volunteers for liberty, for having participated in the armed fight against Germans and Fascists.

France also conferred upon him the Croix de Guerre and Silver Star for outstanding courage in a special operation in enemy-held territory at Morigiou Bay in April 1944.

At the end of hostilities Bonnie Newton was attached to the RASC War Department with the rank of first class mariner. He was involved in the disposal at sea of large quantities of ammunition from Alderney.

On return to civilian life, Bonnie and his Jersey-born wife, Ellen, made their home in Guernsey. For many years they ran the Kestrels Guest House at Les Banques.

They had met in Jersey when he had been hospitalised with a broken leg as a result of an accident when playing football for Jersey Wanderers. Ellen had been visiting another patient.

Her family were very much against the marriage and offered her a car if she did not marry Bonnie. However, they eloped and were married in 1927, a few days after her 21st birthday. He was 23.

In 1952, to celebrate his silver wedding, he was given a signet ring which had a skull and crossbones in ivory, on a plain gold surface.

Even at the time of his marriage he already had a reputation as a ladies' man. He never turned down a lady and could say things to a woman that no one else could.

Boats and the sea were his life. He possessed an exceptional all-round knowledge of seamanship and a wealth of experience in all its phases which proved useful in both his lawful and illicit activities. One former crew member recalls Bonnie as 'a good seaman, but a chancer. His seamanship was good but he did not worry about things. There was an element of risk all the time.'

He owned or captained a variety of fishing boats and passenger craft from his first, the 30ft fishing boat Marie, later renamed the Hope, to the motor cruiser, Zaneita.

He operated the Blue Arrow speedboats to Herm and Sark, the Joycraft for freight and passengers to Sark, the Prada to Brecqhou and the Miss Rita, as well as the former Brighton beach boat, the Martha Gunn, and later the Ben Gunn.

The Joycraft carried everything and anything, including coal, to Sark. The coal was normally placed at the bottom of the boat, covered with a tarpaulin and other freight loaded on top. On arrival in Sark, the Sarkees willingly helped unload the cargo until they came to the coal, which they always left to Bonnie and his one-man crew.

He got tired of this and when his cargo included a coffin, he put that on the bottom of the boat, covered it with sacks and a large tarpaulin, then the coal and other cargo.On arrival in Sark he was greeted by the undertaker and his team, standing on the quay awaiting the coffin.

They asked where the coffin was, only to be told that when they had unloaded the coal they would find it. Newton and his crewman revelled in the sight of these men, in top hats and tails, unloading the coal.

Bonnie Newton is not only remembered for his lawful activities in ferrying tens of thousands of visitors and mountains of freight between the islands of the Bailiwick, but also for his illicit nocturnal pursuits.

His smuggling activities included both people and goods.

When the price of coffee in France was significantly greater than in the Channel islands, Newton would take hundredweight sacks to little-known landing points on the French coast. He took anything that would make a few pounds on the side.

As a teenage schoolboy, Bill Ogier often crewed for Bonnie on many of his nocturnal trips to France. He remembers one particular occasion when they came into the steps at the end of the Albert Pier and picked up two gentlemen with polished black shoes, raincoats, trilby hats and briefcases, 'and away we went. I did not know what they were doing or what they were carrying. We asked no questions. They never said a word. They just walked off when we got into Cap de la Hague, in the pitch dark at 2 or 3 o'clock on this winter's morning in some pretty bad weather. We always got in all right but it was a tricky do sometimes.

'The chap at the cafe at the end of the quay knew Bonnie well. He would always open up for us and give us a meal and a few cups of coffee. Bonnie would have his regulation brandy or whisky. Then he would guide her out of port and I would bring the boat home to Guernsey. He would go to sleep.

I have a feeling that those chaps, who went ashore with briefcases unknown to the rest of the world, would have paid Bonnie very nicely. That was the sort of trade he loved doing and we did it quite regularly.'

On one occasion two people who were in trouble with the law in Guernsey desperately needed to get to Jersey. They then planned to go on to France. Bonnie and his passengers left St Peter Port late in the evening when it was blowing a south-westerly gale.

As he approached Sark he realised that they were never going to make it as far as Jersey.

Without telling the two chaps, who were under a tarpaulin in the boat, he went around and around in circles in the lee of Sark for a couple of hours and then, at about the time they expected to land in Jersey, put into Sark.

At 2am he landed his two passengers ashore, collected their 'fare' and sailed back to Guernsey. There is no record of their reaction when they realised they were not in Jersey, but Sark. That was Bonnie.

Bill remembers that in the winter when there were no tourists to transport between the islands he, Bonnie and his son, Peter, would take the Ben Gunn and head for Alderney to go ormering.

'Every spring tide we would go ormering for two or three days. Bonnie also bought ormers from Alderney fishermen. Each tide we would end up with roughly three tons, which we took to Jersey where we sold them for cash.

'We were paying the Alderney fishermen 2s 6d a dozen and were selling them in Jersey for 3s 9d a dozen. A good profit.

'On three tons it was good money and we used to do this every two weeks. That was Bonnie's living for two or three winters. Bonnie never had a lot of money - he used to drink his money as he had it.'

In 1951 Bonnie had a small part in the film, Appointment with Venus. He had the role of ship's cargo checker and was seen when the ship was brought alongside the quay in Sark. He also made an appearance in the film about the sinking of the Tirpitz, Above us the Waves, when a number of scenes were shot at St Peter Port Harbour.

Bill recalls that one cold December day in 1962, Bonnie collapsed as he was climbing aboard the motor cruiser Zaneita, which was lying alongside the quay in St Peter Port Harbour.

'He had a bad heart and in those days if you had a pain in the chest you did not bother to ask anybody. He had this pain for quite a long time. He used to go down when it was low tide, climb aboard the Zaneita and pump the boat out a bit. Someone from the pier saw him go chunk as he was climbing aboard.

'That was the end of Bonnie. He died as he lived, on board a boat.'