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This story is taken from an interview with Leo Patrick McHugh by Bill Black (July 2000), and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.
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If LEO Patrick McHugh had a nickname it would have to be 'The Cat' because no other would fit one of the only known Merchant Navy seamen to survive the sinking of three ships

Gunther Hessler, Lt. Commander of UB-107 was the son-in-law of the great German Admiral Karl Donitz. In 1941 Hessler would sink eight British ships in the Atlantic, the most successful, by tonnage, of World War 2. The 5,000 ton Colonial was to be one of them and Leo McHugh was its Radio Officer. The ship was in the hands of Captain J.J Devereaux though the vessel was the command ship for Commodore Rear Admiral Mackenzie, in overall charge of the 38 ship convoy. The convoy sailed from Liverpool bound for Port Elizabeth, South Africa. It was May 26th, 1941, 8-00am.
"It was like a huge hammer hitting the ship. Deafening. She leapt from the water. By the time we got on deck another torpedo hit. Flames filled the sky and the sea rose like a tidal wave. Two of the Starboard lifeboats were destroyed and all of us, 83 crew, piled into the other 2 boats," said Leo.
As the ship sank, the Captain, Commodore and his staff clambered onto the last raft. A third torpedo ripped the Colonial apart.
The survivors were out in the tropical sun, 200 miles off Freetown on the African coast. They attempted to row.
Leo, who learned to row in Bangor Bay, was one of the 4 oarsmen but the heat was crippling and suffered extreme sunburn.
Miraculously, 36 hours later, a strange battleship appeared. The 25,000 ton Centurion had been converted in 1924 to a wireless-controlled Target ship and then further converted to a make-shift battleship.
Landed in Freetown, Leo's painful blisters were lanced with the help of a tot of rum.
On Boxing Day 1942 he was on the bridge of the Empire Union, part of a 45 ship convoy bound for the Canadian port of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

I was dreaming of my girlfriend Helen. I'd promised her that if I survived the war we would get married. A terrible crash hit the ship and I knew immediately it was a torpedo. The ship listed right away, I couldn't believe it.
"Lightning doesn't strike twice. The roar of the water pouring in was awful. I grabbed the Aldis lamp and began signalling our position to other ships, the ship was sinking fast." (14 other ships in the convoy were also sunk). "I told the Captain that I could find no other ships to signal to, he told me to go 'over the wall'. I grabbed a life-jacket and leapt into the sea. I was the last man alive to leave the ship."
Now 84, Leo pauses at the thought of those last moments as the ship went beneath the waves.

"As I floated away I saw the Aldis lamp still flashing. The Captain and the 1st Officer went down with the ship."
Leo was hauled aboard a rubber liferaft and the survivors of the Empire Union were rescued by HMS Toward, a passenger vessel on the Clyde prior to the war. They were taken on to Halifax where Leo recuperated. The Toward, heading home in her next eastward bound convoy from Halifax, was sunk enroute.
A few months later he was offered either a voyage home I was a passenger or to go back to duty. He chose the latter and was given just an hour to join the Zouave. She was carrying 7,000 tons of iron and sailed on March 8, 1943 as part of a convoy SC122. Other convoys would join later, making 141 ships in total.

The attack began as U-Boat 338, commanded by Lt. Manfred Kinzel, fired a salvo of 5 torpedoes. Four ships were sunk and in the ensuing mayhem, the Zouave was among 97 out of 141 to be destroyed. All hell broke loose. The torpedo hit amidships. The boiler burst and no one from down below was able to get out. Only one heavily laden lifeboat got away and but for the action of a seaman on the boat deck who lowered It and ensured that It got free from the Ship, It would have been pulled down as the ship sank.
That unsung hero, to who all survivors owed their lives, was washed away, and although we could hear his calls for help he was not rescued."
Leo keeps a fading photo of the ship that rescued the Zouave crew, the corvette HMS Godetia.
He was taken to Scotland. On the gangway of the ship he was stopped and told "you can go to hospital or die at home," Leo remembers." I said I would die at home." He had leg injuries and the effects are still with him, but he wasn't finished yet.
After months recovering in Belfast, he tried to go to sea again but could not pass the medical. But a nod and a wink told him that if he could get a fake medical certificate and so he joined the Atlantic run again on a tanker and
later sailed on the troopship Empire Welland.
Leo 'The Cat' McHugh spent five years in the Merchant Navy during worst of the War years.
In 1968 a Belgian frigate sailed into Belfast. It was the Godetia, a replacement for the old corvette of the same name that had rescued him in the Atlantic.
More than 5,400 merchant ships and tens of thousands of seafarers' lives were lost during WW2, most of them in the Atlantic.
After the war, Leo did marry Helen and they had one son Gerry. He became a Civil Servant and worked for the rest of his career with the Department of Education in Bangor. Helen passed away some years ago and Leo now lives alone.

RESCUE Ship: The HMS Godetia rescued Leo McHugh and some of his shipmates after their ship SS Zouave had been torpedoed and sunk on the night of 11th March 1943
Leo passed away Jan 2005

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