Tag Archives: skippered by George Long

A ‘little ship’ of Dunkirk hero is being saved at its original home in Bideford, Devon.

In May 1940 the Jane Hannah MacDonald III (JHM), then known as Jane Hannah, set off from Blakeney in north Norfolk and became one of the little ships of Operation Dynamo. The ships rescued more than 300,000 British and Allied troops from the beaches of Dunkirk after the fall of France to Nazi Germany. The ship had been bought for fishing and leisure fishing trips out of Blakeney, after previously serving as a 35ft lifeboat at Flamborough, Yorkshire. It was owned by Bernard Chase and skippered by George Long, a 60-year-old Blakeney fisherman. Helped by Billy ‘Fat Freddie’ Long, the son of George’s brother William, he took the boat from Blakeney to Lowestoft and then on to Ramsgate in Kent, from where it was then requisitioned by the navy and taken across the choppy waters of the Channel on the night of June 5, 1940. >click to read< 09:30