Coventry’s Cross of Nails
By Ray Sinclair.
It was a cloudless night and close enough to a full moon on the evening of 14 November 1940, with the code name of Operation Moonlight Sonata (Unternehmen Mondscheinsonate) the Luftwaffe, the aerial-warfare branch of the WehrmachtIt sent a wave of 515 German bombers with the intension of destroying Coventry’s factories and industrial infrastructure. The bombing destroyed two-thirds of the city, with a loss of 568 people and some 4,000 homes destroyed.
Coventry Cathedral suffered extensive damage, with only the external stone walls defiantly standing in an otherwise pile of smouldering ruins. The morning after the bombing, Rev Arthur Philip Wales walked through the ruins; he found several large hand-forged medieval carpenters’ nails, each about 18 inches long. He used some wire to bind together three nails into the shape of a Latin cross, the original “Cross of Nails.” A symbol of love, sacrifice, hope, and redemption arose out of the ashes of destruction. Provost Howard, the leader of the Cathedral community, stepped into the devastated cathedral and wrote two words on the smoke-blackened wall behind the altar – ‘Father, forgive’.
The cross is the most widely recognised Christian symbol in the world. The original “Cross of Nails” fashioned by Reverand Arthur Philip Wales has come to symbolise the suffering of war, the hope of survival, and the desire for peace and reconciliation. After the war, the remaining medieval nails or roof spikes that fixed the massive 500-year-old roof structure in place were collected and manufactured into the “Crosses of Nails” The roof spikes welded together and silver plated and despatched to German cities that were extensively bombed by the allies, Dresden, Berlin, and Kiel in a gesture of reconciliation.
H.M.S. Coventry (D118) was a Type 42 (Sheffield-class) destroyer of the Royal Navy. She was launched on 21 June 1974 and accepted into service on 20 October 1978 at a cost of £37,900,000. As she carried the city’s name, the Coventry, it became a tradition onboard the “Cross of Nails” was used as a focal point for Sunday service onboard. On 25 May 1982, H.M.S. Coventry was engaged in a life-and-death battle with the Argentine Airforce. A battle she would unfortunately lose. Hit with three 250 kg bombs to her port side, two bombs detonating deep inside the ship in the proximity of the Computer room and Operations room. Within 23 minutes, the ship had been abandoned and capsized, eventually sinking 330ft to the seabed, taking 19 of the ship’s company with her. H.M.S. Coventry became and is a war grave.
Operation Blackleg was the code name for recovering NATO-sensitive cryptographic material and Top-Secret documents from within the wreck by Naval Party 2200, a Royal Navy Clearance Divers team. By no means a priority or a consideration by the Ministry of Defence, the “Cross of Nails” was destined to be recovered by the divers and returned to the Coventry Cathedral by H.M.S. Coventry’s ship’s Captain David Hart-Dyke. The cross was then in the keeping of the next H.M.S. Coventry (F98), a type 22 class frigate until she was decommissioned in 2002 and sold to the Romanian Navy.
This “Cross of Nails” is now with H.M.S. Daimond (D34), which is affiliated with Coventry City. She is was recently on active service in the Red Sea.
The history of this significant religious relic to the Royal Navy, H.M.S. Coventry (D118) and the city of Coventry cannot be understated. With that in mind, I commissioned award-winning South African artist Dave Coburn to capture the moment the cross was seen for the first time being carried out of the sacred war grave 42 years ago. In the brief to Dave, I wanted him to capture the light and the dark of the diving conditions the team worked in, but symbolically and spiritually to represent the, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” (John 1:5) The “Cross of Nails” had to be central and prominent to represent shared victory and triumph. I acknowledge there are more religious meanings, such as eternal life and resurrection.
The painting is dedicated first and foremost to the 19 Royal Navy sailors who paid the ultimate sacrifice and died in the Falklands War in 1982 for the high ideas of freedom and democracy. H.M.S. Coventry is their sacred war grave.
Secondly, to the divers who, in the most physically and psychologically demanding of circumstances, performed their duty and carried out all items on the M.O.D. manifest. The divers could only have completed the tasks with the Royal Navy and civilian support crew.
To this day, Operation Blackleg has been the Royal Navy’s finest achievement in deep saturation diving recovery from inside a warship. Without a doubt, on the same page, as the gold recovered from H.M.S. Edinburgh, both are worthy of merit. While one was for the security of NATO, the other was about treasure.
I hope the families of those sailors who remain forever on watch in the South Atlantic and the 20th crewman who died from injuries sustained much later find some comfort in the painting.
©️ Ray Sinclair 2024
