140 CHALLENGER 



were floating dock berths, dredged areas and anchorages to be 

 sounded. 



At the end of 1943 the British XV Corps held Cox's Bazaar 

 on the Arakan coast and a survey to locate the channel over the 

 bar was required to admit supply vessels to that port. The enemy 

 was close at hand and it was decided that a detached party should 

 be sent from Challenger to do this work, taking with them one of 

 the ship's echo sounding launches. 



Volunteers for this expedition were quick to come forward 

 from the ship's company once they heard that Charles Grattan 

 was to be their leader, for he had earned a fine reputation for 

 cool deliberation in such enterprises. Leading Seaman Jimmy 

 Greenshields was to be the surveying recorder and second-in- 

 coinmand of the small party of five ratings . 



They left Trincomalee in November 1943, sailing with their 

 boat to Chittagong in a merchant ship. On arrival there Grattan 

 did some hard talking before he found himself in possession of 

 a base ship. She was the old river steamer Esther, her captain a 

 British Army sergeant and her crew twenty Indians, one of whom 

 was a cook who could disguise corned beef a hundred different 

 ways. 



Things went smoothly, there was no interference by the 

 Japanese and the channel \s^as surveyed and marked within 

 a week. Fast going, and Lieutenant Grattan flew direct to Delhi 

 with his work, there to have it printed as a chart. 



On 19th January, 1944, the British ^th Division commenced 

 an advance southwards along the coast and Tek Naaf, on the 

 western bank of the Naaf River, was occupied. A small bridge- 

 head was also established on the eastern bank but the Japanese 

 continued to hold the remainder of that bank, and the coast south- 

 wards from the river mouth. The Naaf River flows southwards 

 parallel to the coast and but a few miles inland from it. Inside 

 the river was deep and easily navigated, but to enter it supply 

 vessels would have to thread their way along the shifting channel 

 through the breakers and shallows of the Cypress Sands, which 

 stretched five miles to seaward. 



This channel had to be located and marked and Grattan' s party 



