In 1942 I got a draft to one of the strangest ships of the Royal Navy, she was HMS Hopper 33, based in Ismoulia on the Suez Canal.

She was a coal burner built in 1912 on the Clyde and was a barge for taking the dredgings from the canal out to sea.

She had two tall funnels abeam of each other, we had a crew of about 30 and we were equipped as a minesweeper and swept the canal from Port Said to Port Suez, when at Port Said we used to anchor in the swept channel at night to spot German aircraft that were based on Crete and tried to drop mines in the canal.