James Gordon Melville Turner

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James Gordon Melville Turner GC (1907–5 November 1967) was a British merchant seaman. He received the Empire Gallantry Medal for bravery on the cargo ship Manaar on 6 September 1939—the first British merchant ship to fire at a U-boat in World War II. Manaar was one of the first British merchant ships sunk in the war. The EGM was gazetted on 13 October 1939 and later exchanged for theGeorge Cross in 1943. Turner also received Lloyd’s War Medal for Bravery at Sea and a gold medal from the Liverpool Shipwreck and Humane Society.

Turner was the radio officer on Manaar, a 7,000-ton Brocklebank Line cargo ship built in 1917. When U-38 attacked Manaar near Cape St Vincent, the ship returned fire. Turner stayed at his post, sent an SOS, and refused to abandon ship until the two wounded crewmen (lascar stokers) were rescued. He tried to launch lifeboats under heavy fire; one boat filled with water and the other was destroyed with a wounded man aboard. He helped the other man into a lifeboat, and they escaped to the master’s boat. Manaar was sunk by torpedoes; seven of the 62 crew were killed. Survivors were rescued by the ships Carvalho Araujo, Castelbianco and Mars.

Later in the war, after serving on another ship that was torpedoed, Turner lost a leg and spent the rest of the war as a German prisoner of war. He survived the war but was killed in the Hither Green rail crash on 5 November 1967, while living in Staplecross, Sussex. He left a wife and two children. A painting of Turner by Bernard Hailstone hangs in the Government Art Collection at the Ministry of Defence in London.