大象传媒

THE 12dec 1946 we were just getting back into harbour after sea duties and going up to a buoy to tie up and have Christmas in harbour i was duty RADAR opperator and had just recieved instruction" FINISHED WITH RADAR CLOSE DOWN"ihad just finished closing down when suddenly the engines raced up to speed and the ship heeled over to starboard doing a tight turn and a message came over the tannoy "start radar close all water- tight doors -all dead lights -all air vents and secure any-thing lose we were all wondering what was happening when we were told we were going back out to sea to escort the ocean going tug HM Tug Enticer on the way to help the s s Rosebank as she had a damaged rudder and was floundering in the storm at first we thought nothing af it it was just a rough sea but we were soon to see what nature could do as we entered the typhoon you lost sight of each other as you went up and down the troughs 30-40foot deep at about midnight on the 15 dec we recieved a signal from the enticer that she was in trouble and was in fear of sinking oround 12,30 her mast head light sank below the waves and she was lost all tha night and allthe next day we searched for survivors, the only way we could manovour was back and forwards because of the huge troughs we dare not try to turn for fear of brouching and endangering ourselves,we eventually picked up 12 of the crew of 22 only one survived he was one of the officers and he had out a whistle in his mouth and every so often would blow it thats how we found him. one of the crew [if i remember right called les humphrey had a double heaving line tied round him and as a body came within reach he jumped off the stern and grabbed hold of the body the we waited till the stern end went under and we heaved him inboard with the body when we could find no more we went on to take the rosebank intow she was alot bigger than us so all we could do was keep her heado-on to the sea to stop her broaching,we could not make any headway as she was to big so it was arranged that the cruiser H M S Eyrylus who had been making her way up from singapore to hong-kong divert and take over the tow and we limped back to port[limped ] because every time the stern came out of water when we were towing the ship shook from stem to stern as the propelers came out of the water if the engine room didn't get it right the only hot meals we had till we got back to harbour was dehydrated vegetables that were heated up by a steam lance in a large cooking pot hanging up from a pipe swinging about with the movement of the ship rolling and pitching it was a mixture between soup and porrige but it was hot it's some thing i remember each year just before christmas

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.