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This is one of the WW2 stories of IAN ANDERSON, my grandfather.
My grandfather served in the Merchant Navy during WW2. One particular journey was aboard the M.V. ‘Silvercedar’, owned by the Silver Line Ltd. (S. and J. Thompson, Sunderland) from New York to Manchester, carrying a cargo of heavy steel billets, a large amount of food and three Beaufighter planes secured on deck. The ship was loaded at Brooklyn then sailed for Sydney Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, to join a number of ships assembling for convoy to the UK. The convoy of 53 ships set sail early in October, 1941, unknowingly heading straight for a ‘Wolf Pack’ of 15 German U-boats that was eventually to sink 13 of them.
In the early hours of Wednesday 15th October 1941, my grandfather was at the wheel of the ship. At 4.35 am, there was a terrible explosion as the ship was torpedoed. The ship quickly sank leaving my grandfather and other crew members in the icy waters. Luckily my grandfather made it into a lifeboat.
Some time later my grandfather and others aboard the lifeboat (including Able Seaman Bill Hughes who became a life-long friend of my grandfather) spotted a large ship heading straight for them. They were later to learn it was the Free French corvette ‘Mimosa’ searching for survivors. Because of the terrible weather conditions and the fact that the lifeboat was partly submerged in a trough the ‘Mimosa’ failed to spot it and ploughed right through it — everyone was thrown into the water and the lifeboat was gashed and ended up floating upside-down. Everyone who was thrown out scrambled to try and get back to the overturned lifeboat and cling to it for support. At this point my grandfather performed an extremely heroic act — he gave his lifejacket to one of the young members of crew, Ordinary Seaman Kelly, who did not have his own. The ‘Mimosa’ then returned (a dangerous thing to do with U-boats in the vicinity) and lowered a whaler to pick everyone from the lifeboat up, which they succeeded in doing.
The U-boats continued to attack the convoy for three or four days sinking 13 ships in all (the ‘Silvercedar’ was the first of these to be sunk). The ‘Mimosa’ continued her search for survivors during daylight hours and eventually had more survivors (of various nationalities) than crew. Many of the dead had to be buried at sea.
The ‘Mimosa’ eventually landed at Reykjavik, Iceland, where my grandfather then spent 2 days at a British Army camp before being shipped home on a rescue vessel, which arrived at Gourock on 27th October 1941. Twenty-one men in all of the forty-eight strong crew died as a result of the enemy attack on the ‘Silvercedar’.

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