大象传媒

Earnest Valentine Harland got his middle name because he was born on St.Valentine's Day.

People called him 'Val'.

He was an ordinary seaman (Able Seaman
was the term used then) in the Merchant Navy, during the Second World War. He was captured by the Japanese aboard the SS BENNEVIS and died in a POW camp.

My grandmother, his aunt, kept his pictures, his pay book and seaman's union card and telgrams fom the war office in the sandalwood box he brought her back from Singapore.

She used to show me these pictures and tell me stories about him. The photographs,show him and his shipmates at sea, at home and in several exotic ports.
His ship was SS Bennevis of the Ben Line.
I set up a website in 2001, mainly as an experiment.
^{About links}

I wanted to learn how to make WebPages and to share my children鈥檚 interest in computers. I also wanted to help stimulate interest in ICT and family history among adult learners in Hull.

I was surprised to get correspondence from so many interested parties.
The most interesting of all was from the unofficial Ben Line website. They were in contact with Ronald Hayter an shipmate of my uncle Valentine on the Ben Nevis and a fellow inmate of the Japanese POW camp. Mr Hayter survived to tell his tale and a fascinating tale it is.
I found the pictures taken of the crew together with their Japanese captors particularly interesting
(link: ^{About links} )
as was the story of how The Japanese nearly released the ship because they thought it was Scottish and could not find Scotland of their list of countries at war with Japan.

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