Page 175 - KBHA BULLETIN 6

Quintin Scrimgeour 69691 v
30.11.1919 - 30.11.1944

Quintin Scrimgeour was the younger brother of Frank. His high schooling was done at

Wynberg and then Rondebosch Boys High, and he matriculated from Villiersdorp High
School in 1938. He was good at cricket and rugby, and a strong swimmer and had been

instrumental in saving at least four lives on the False Bay coast. He enrolled for a degree in

Architecture at UCT and completed the first year before joining the SDF in 1940. He was
among the first to be posted to the Mediterranean in the "little ships" and spent most of

1941 and 1942 involved in mine-sweeping and anti-submarine activities there.

In 1943 he returned to South Africa to qualify as a Petty Officer and then returned to the

Mediterranean in 1944 where he joined HMSAS Bever, a former Norwegian whale-catcher
of 252 tons. She had been converted in Durban in 1941 into a magnetic minesweeper and

had already seen nearly two years of service in the Mediterranean. By 1944 the war, for
South African forces, had shifted from North Africa to the liberation of Italy and the

Balkans. On 15 October Bever, and her converted sister ships Gribb, Seksern, Treern, and

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