# Tritonia LT188 G.Jones Telegraph Obituary



## dickjburton (Nov 17, 2008)

Geoffrey Jones 
Lieutenant-Commander Geoffrey Jones, who has died aged 95, was awarded a DSM for his service with the Royal Navy in 1940 and ended his career as a headmaster in Sussex. 

In April 1940 Jones was a signal rating in the Lowestoft drifter Tritonia which had been taken up from trade for minesweeping duties and was based at Scapa Flow) when the captured German trawler Schiff 26 was brought into harbour. 


Lieutenant-Commander Geoffrey Jones Disguised as a Dutch ship, Schiff 26 was carrying arms to the German Army which had invaded Norway when she was captured by a boarding party from the British destroyer Griffin. Naval intelligence officers found important papers, among them pages from an Enigma cipher pad. These presented one of the first major hauls of the German naval code, including the key for five days (April 22 to 27) and the procedures for scrambling the rotors on the encryption machines. 

Using clear text and cipher text found in Schiff 26, Bletchley Park was able to read April's naval Enigma traffic and tested the first bombe (a high speed key-finding aid). 

Jones recalled his delight at finding extra food and drink in the enemy ship, but he became uneasy when it was realised that Schiff 26's armament included two concealed guns, depth charges, two loaded torpedo tubes and four magnetic mines of a novel type. 

Schiff 26 was evacuated, but when two experts arrived from the mine warfare school at Portsmouth, Jones volunteered to accompany them back to the ship and act as their signalman, relaying the progress of their efforts to render the mines safe. Once, he had to summon Tritonia's engineer, who was able to advise that threads on the mines worked left-handed, rather than the usual right-handed, but he did not stay long and left Jones alone with the experts. 
Jones was awarded a Distinguished Service Medal. 
Geoffrey Holder Jones was born on September 12 1915 in Liverpool, the youngest son of a draper. After leaving school he eventually found work with a gentlemen's hatters and also joined the "weekend sailors" of the Mersey division of the RNVR. He specialised in signals, and in 1933 first went to sea


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