‘Never take your life jacket off!’
Colin Ryder Richardson’s mother’s instructions to him before sailing for America
The busy port seemed a far cry from the streets of St John’s Wood where Colin Ryder Richardson had lived pre-war, or the lanes of Sussex where he had spent the early months of war, or rural Wales where the family had then settled. However, as Colin and his mother emerged from Liverpool’s Lime Street station, the contrast could not have been greater. The city had recently been blighted by the Luftwaffe. In peacetime a young public-schoolboy like Colin would probably never had a reason to travel north to a grand yet tough city like Liverpool, which had become, for so many, the gateway to England. In a few short years its docks would become the entry-point for American servicemen heading to the Old World to join the struggle against Nazism. However, in 1940 it was still predominantly a port of exit, taking refugees like the eleven-year-old schoolboy across the Atlantic to safety.
Colin’s parents had decided he would join the SS City of Benares, a passenger liner due to depart for Canada, and from there it was agreed he would travel to America’s Long Island and live with a New York banker for the rest of the war. The reasons for the family’s decision to send Colin overseas were simple, practical ones. It was known that the Germans searched for Jews in occupied countries by checking who had been circumcised, making it likely the Nazis would use the same method if they ever occupied Britain. Colin had been circumcised and risked being wrongly identified as Jewish, so it would be safer to get him away.
However, such concerns were not upmost in the boy’s mind. He was delighted, particularly at the thought that he was heading to a land of cowboys and Indians: ‘I thought of the sun and the hills. The cowboys – eating around campfires: “Ride ’em cowboy!” When they said I was going to New York, I thought I’d bagged another town! My only concern was fitting in with the American children.’ Enthused by films, comic books and action stories, Colin believed adventure awaited him across the Atlantic. What he did not know then, however, was that the adventure – if it could be called that – would actually come in the cold, dark waters of that ocean.
The 485-foot long City of Benares was to carry 191 passengers, including 90 children – 46 boys and 44 girls – heading to North America to escape the incendiaries and high explosive raining down on British cities. Built in Glasgow, and launched in 1936, the Benares had served the imperial passenger trade between Liverpool and Bombay. Crewed by 215 sailors, many of them Indians, the 11,000-ton liner – with its fresh coat of paint and newly installed guns – was to be the home to children selected as part of a new evacuation scheme: the Children’s Overseas Reception Board (CORB). It was a proposed scheme that had initially met significant opposition, not least from the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, as opponents argued that dividing families and removing children across the Atlantic sent out a defeatist message. Churchill felt it was better to stand and fight together and damn the consequences. In ‘Total War’ children were, after all, a significant asset. Had King George himself not set such an example by keeping his wife and children at his side even as his capital – and eventually, his palace – came under aerial assault?
Despite such deep opposition, on 18 June 1940 the Cabinet had finally acquiesced and the scheme went ahead; it was ordered that all overseas evacuees should be between five and fifteen years old. The scheme proved highly popular as in just two weeks the CORB offices received more than 200,000 applications for just 20,000 places from parents eager to send their offspring to safety.
There was an emotional and rational dilemma for parents considering this option. Evacuating your children to the nearby countryside was a burden for most parents, but there was always the hope of weekend reunions. Those sending children overseas, however, would miss out on so much of their child’s development. A teenage girl might return home as a woman – even a married woman if the war lasted long enough. Yet the child would almost certainly be safe from war in Canada. In the cases of the Benares children, the argument for safety had triumphed over that of separation. Better a distant yet living child than the chance to visit a nearby grave.
Colin Ryder Richardson was travelling independently but the CORB children on the ship had an orderly introduction to evacuation. They had been summoned to Liverpool by letter telling their parents they had been granted a place in the programme. A visit from a CORB representative had followed to explain the details and announce that the children would depart within a week. Those chosen had travelled by train to Liverpool, and then were sent to a local school where they could form into a group, establish relationships and meet their adult escorts.
However, it was during the two days they had spent at that school that Liverpool received its first visit from the Luftwaffe. As the bombs fell, the children listened to the pounding of the anti-aircraft guns and, for those who had not yet encountered modern warfare on their doorsteps, the impact of the bombs and the roar of the guns was a stark reminder of why their parents had applied for them to leave the country. On Thursday, 12 September, the gathered children left the school ready for their great adventure. The journey to the Benares took them through a landscape completely altered by war, as the city displayed the scars of the bombing. The children arrived at the dockside like the earlier evacuees, clutching small suitcases and gas masks, and with a cardboard label tied to their lapels. Some were already evacuation veterans who had been separated from their families at the outbreak of war.
From the moment the children walked up the gangplank to board the ship, they were in awe of their new home. The vast passenger liner, towering over the dockside, was an introduction to a world few had previously experienced. There was the mysteriously exotic crew of Indian stewards in their immaculately laundered jackets. Inside they found bunk beds, portholes, play rooms and deck games like something from Hollywood.
Dressed in a bright red jacket, Colin Ryder Richardson stood out from the other children. But it was no ordinary jacket. Instead, it had been specially created by his mother ready for his Atlantic journey. She had sewn a life jacket inside a red silk jacket, which in turn had been stuffed with kapok to provide extra insulation. As she had told him: ‘Never take your life jacket off.’ However, despite his mother’s obvious concern, there was no emotional farewell between them. Colin had handed over his gas mask and then she had handed him his passport, telling him: ‘There’s your ship. Goodbye, Colin.’ Then, she had given him a quick hug and departed, choosing not to hang around waving at the departing ship. In a way, the eleven year old felt relieved as he saw some of the other children engaged in tearful farewells which he knew were not for him.
The Benares was sailing into a dangerously uncertain world. Not only had the departure been delayed by sea mines dropped into the Mersey by the Luftwaffe two weeks earlier, but the very first CORB evacuation ship, the SS Volendam, had been torpedoed on the second day of its voyage. Luckily, all of its passengers, including 320 evacuee children, were saved. The impact of this near disaster had been obscured by the start of the Blitz. Every bomb that fell on British towns, blasting away the bricks and mortar across the land, threatened the nation’s children, so the news of 320 shipwrecked survivors had failed to deter the CORB parents. Indeed, two of the Benares children were actually veterans of the Volendam who had been shipwrecked in the Atlantic, had returned to England to find their homes destroyed by bombs and as a result had immediately been allowed to seek evacuation on the next available ship.
Once the convoy was underway the children soon found ways to entertain themselves. In the days ahead, the Benares’s decks played host to games including tug-of-war, tennis and even a lassoing contest, all of which helped to occupy the evacuees. Coming from a land already feeling the pinch of rationing, the children were thrilled to find they could purchase sweets, chocolate and lemonade and at meal times they ordered whatever they desired, with no need to surrender their ration books. Meat and milk, fresh fruit and vegetables, freshly baked bread – everything appeared on their tables at meal times.
Colin Ryder Richardson settled into his cabin and started to enjoy the crossing. His mother had packed his travelling trunk and he was astonished to find he had a dozen pairs of underwear. He liked the food onboard, was thrilled by the sight of barefoot Lascar seamen wearing traditional white Indian clothes and was fascinated to discover the ship had a gun mounted on the decks, although the gunners manning it told him they didn’t actually have any ammunition. He spent his time reading books and magazines in the library and playing games on the decks: ‘It was quite windy and we got deckchairs and, using the seat like a sail, would try to get them to go from one side of the ship to the other. Sometimes they went overboard. We would roar with laughter.’ Officially, Colin was sharing the cabin with Laszlo Raskai, a Hungarian journalist who was supposed to act as his guardian for the duration of the crossing. However, the two had little contact: Colin was free to do as he liked, whilst Raskai spent his time in the lounges and cocktail bar.
By 17 September, Convoy OB-213 and the SS Benares were 600 miles from land. Seemingly safe from German raiders, the Royal Navy withdrew and headed homewards to protect shipping nearer the coast. With the convoy spread through the waters, and now seemingly alone in the ocean, the Benares headed into a storm. The clouds had come down, the winds and rains had gathered and the waves were rolling, all portents of the rising storm. By nine o’clock that night a force-ten gale was blowing, with squalls rocking the ship. Yet the real danger was not the storm, but what lurked beneath the waves.
That night Colin Ryder Richardson went to bed in his usual manner. Unlike some of the other children, who had followed the instruction that they could take off their life jackets, Colin had continued to heed his mother’s warning and before retiring for the night, he pulled on the life jacket over his pyjamas. As he lay in bed reading a comic, the eleven year old listened to the rolling of a ball-bearing he had placed in his bedside drawer, beating out the movement of the ship. That night Colin’s ball-bearing crashed from side to side, telling him the ship was in dangerously heavy waters.
Below the waves, the convoy was being trailed by U-48, a German U-boat, captained by Heinrich Bleichrodt. He was waiting until the sea calmed enough for him to launch his attack. Finally, he gave the order to fire and two torpedoes erupted from their tubes, surging through the water. The crew listened for the signature crash of an explosion but nothing came. Then the captain gave another order and a third torpedo was fired. The 500-pound, explosive-packed weapon sped towards the ship. It was three minutes past ten on the evening of 17 September 1940 when the third torpedo crashed home, piercing hold number five, directly beneath the children’s quarters.
Colin Ryder Richardson remembered the moment the torpedo struck the Benares:
It was a bit late for me to be up, but I was by myself and took the opportunity to do some reading. I was sitting up in bed reading a comic – the Dandy or the Beano. I was listening to the ball-bearing and thinking we were another day into the journey, another day nearer America. But I knew we were going very slowly. Then I heard a bang. My first thought was that we’d collided with another ship. Then I smelled the explosives – it was an easy smell to recognize. That hastened me. I got out of bed.
Colin acted quickly. With his life jacket already on over his pyjamas, he stepped into his slippers and put on his dressing gown. He also grabbed the wallet his father had given him containing £10 and slipped it into his pocket.
Elsewhere, one of the girls awoke, uncertain of what had disturbed her, reached for the light switch and couldn’t understand why it wouldn’t work. But, stepping down from her bunk, she discovered why, as her bare feet were immediately submerged in a pool of water. Others heard the impact and were immediately stirred into action as the boat shuddered and shivered around them. The crashing and splintering they heard meant just one thing: they were in danger. The children who were quickest to react immediately roused their companions, forcing them from their beds, pressing life jackets into fumbling fingers and readying them for whatever awaited. Barefooted kids leapt from their bunks only to slice open their feet on broken glass, others fumbled in the darkness for their glasses. Some had to push debris away before they could rise. One boy was forced to break through the wall, hacking at the plaster with a chair leg, to escape his cabin.
As the children began to leave their cabins, older children began to assist the younger evacuees, checking their life jackets, hurrying them along corridors and making sure they knew where to go. Two of the older girls, Bess Walder and Beth Cummings, rushed to help Beth’s roommate Joan Irving who had been injured in the explosion. It wasn’t heroics: it was simply their duty.
Some of the survivors later recalled being gripped by a surge of adrenaline that spurred them on. Strangely, despite their fear, it just seemed like another new adventure. In the first days of the journey, despite some homesickness most of the children had been gripped by a sense of excitement at the thought of heading west but it was something far more violent and disturbing that now faced them.
Quickly, the children gathered at the prearranged points. Colin went up to the cocktail lounge where his lifeboat was to assemble. There was little panic. Instead, people were milling around wondering what had happened as the ship’s alarm bells rang in the background. Colin kept quiet, not wanting to alert the adults to the fact the ship had been torpedoed. Each lifeboat had its own position where groups assembled to meet their fellow passengers and the sailors who were to assist them and crew the boats. Most looked around and noted how calm everyone seemed to be. There were no crying children, just boys and girls quietly standing and shivering in their nightclothes and slippers as the storm raged around them. Slowly, the situation began to worsen. The weather grew increasingly harsh, soaking the children, some of whom were without coats or shoes. Then as a number of injured children, bloodied and bandaged, were brought on deck, fear grew and a few began to cry.
As the CORB children gathered at their lifeboat stations, the private passengers waited in the lounge, Colin Ryder Richardson among them. Eventually he moved out on to the decks. At first he hadn’t been frightened, but once on the deck the situation changed as he looked out to sea and thought to himself: ‘It’s going to be difficult for the lifeboats to get through that lot.’ What also struck him was the sight of the other children: ‘These little kids beside me – some of them were only five years old. They were in their dressing gowns with no life-belt, clutching teddy bears. They’d just woken up.’ In the commotion not all the lifeboats could be safely lowered. Lifeboat No. 8 was the first to go. As it slipped down towards the water, the boat lurched, one end jerked downwards and was smashed by a wall of water. Passengers were thrown into the water and scattered by the swirling sea. In seconds, they were gone.
As he waited to board his lifeboat, Colin was reunited with Mr Raskai, his Hungarian guardian, who was told for the moment it was ‘women and children first’: ‘Mr Raskai bravely helped me into the swinging lifeboat. This thing was crashing about against the ship and I had to climb over the rail. They didn’t have anyone at the ends holding it steady.’ Once filled, the lifeboat was quickly lowered into the raging seas. Whilst other boats were overturned, Lifeboat No. 2 stayed upright. However, it was soon filled with water as waves crashed over the bows and, as they tried to escape from the stricken ship, more poured in until the escaping passengers were sitting up to their chests in water. Only the lifeboat’s buoyancy tanks prevented it from slipping completely beneath the waves. As Colin later recalled, it was like sitting in a giant bathtub filled with freezing water.
An elderly nurse called Colin to her side, hoping to protect the small, lonely child. However, the situation soon became desperate. The heavy seas soon washed away the mast and oars. The sailors attempted to get the handle working to start the propeller designed to move the boat to safety. However, with so much water in the boat, the handle was of little use except to give people something to hang on to.
Lifeboat No. 5 seemed to keep level during its descent to the sea, but this was an illusion. It was level with the side of the ship, not with the water. With one lurch twelve passengers were thrown from the boat and lost in the darkness. Other lifeboats surrendered people to the ocean, leaving children floundering in the waters. They were terrified as they treaded water and looked up at the steel sides of the ship as the waves battered them. A few were lucky to reach out for rope ladders lowered down to them, climbing back to the decks where they shivered in their sodden clothes before being wrapped in blankets by crew members. However, the less fortunate were soon lost in the storm.
Once among the waves, the sturdy lifeboats were soon shown to be vulnerable to the power of the ocean. Having already lost some of its passengers, Lifeboat No. 5 soon took on water before being upended and its passengers were cast into the storm. In seconds many disappeared, scattered by the surging waves. Two among them, the evacuees Bess Walder and Beth Cummings, found themselves struggling to stay afloat just yards from the upturned keel. The desperate girls reached out for the boat, grabbed the keel and hung on for dear life. As they took stock of their surroundings they could see they were among a group of about a dozen survivors.
Those adrift in the waters were in immediate danger. At this temperature they might be expected to survive no more than three hours before hypothermia would set in and hasten their death. Some of the children kicked out, swimming towards the lifeboats and the twenty-two rafts that had been released from the decks. A few clung to driftwood in the hope it might keep them afloat. One desperate boy called out to his mother, seated safely in a nearby lifeboat. Others tried desperately to tread water before surrendering to the freezing water, their bodies washed away in the chaos. A fortunate few of the children were saved by adults who dived from the safety of their lifeboats, swam swiftly through the waves and pulled them to safety. One man alone pulled thirteen evacuees to safety. Colin’s escort, Laszlo Raskai, swam to safety with a child clinging to him. He then struck out to rescue another child but soon disappeared in the swirling seas.
Children joined in the rescues, with one thirteen-year-old boy helping to haul a child into the boat. Seconds later the boat was hit by a wave, throwing the boy overboard. As his fellow passengers reached out, more waves crashed against the boat and the hero disappeared from sight. As the survivors scrambled for lifeboats, clung on to rafts or desperately tried to steer the lifeboats away from the stricken liner, the Benares finally slipped beneath the waters. From the half-submerged Lifeboat No. 2, Colin Ryder Richardson watched the scene:
The ship’s emergency lights were still on. You could see people running around on the decks. I could see people trying to get down a ladder into the sea. People were jumping. We were still quite near the Benares when suddenly you could see she was sinking by the stern. It was extraordinary to see your temporary home sinking under the water. Up went the bows and down she went! Up until then we had the comfort of the ship in the water beside us.
It was a staggering sight for the children who had expected the ship to sweep them over the sea to safety. The liner groaned and stood almost vertical, its bow rising from the water; the emergency lights went out and then it was gone. The survivors were all alone in the storm.
Colin took stock of his situation. He was on a lifeboat submerged up to his chest in freezing cold water. At first those onboard had tried to bail out the water, but it was hopeless: as soon as water was thrown over the side, more crashed back in with the waves. The one consolation was that the water in the boat helped keep it steady, so it was not tossed as roughly as it might have been. Colin also realized he was better off than some of his fellow passengers, who were poorly dressed for their circumstances. He had his life jacket, with its buoyancy device sewn within padded silk, a balaclava that had been specially knitted for him and he had even found a pair of gloves his mother had put in his pockets. These would be essential in the hours ahead as he gripped the gunwales of the half-submerged boat.
As the night engulfed them, Colin noticed some of the Indian sailors shaking from the cold, their thin cotton uniforms doing little to protect them from the storm. The situation on the lifeboat seemed hopeless, they were all freezing and soaked to the skin. As Colin recalled, comfort only came from urinating in the water: for a few brief seconds he could feel a bit of warm water swirling around his legs. ‘We couldn’t sing at all. You couldn’t communicate – you had to keep your mouth shut because of the water. The waves were pouring over us.’ Within half an hour, Colin watched as four sailors slipped into unconsciousness and died. Now a grim task awaited the young boy as he helped release the corpses, pushing them quietly from the lifeboat and consigning them to a watery grave.
With the corpses pushed out, Colin turned his attention to a woman beside him: ‘This elderly nurse sitting next to me – that had earlier been comforting me, as an elderly lady would do – became distressed. I realized she was sinking into the water so I put my arm around her and tried to keep her head above the water.’ Colin held on to the nurse, comforting her in her hour of need. Stroking her hair and lifting her head, the brave boy did his best to preserve her morale and her life. He whispered to her, telling her that they would soon be rescued but he couldn’t really do much for her. He was freezing cold, his balaclava helmet had slipped from his head and he couldn’t pull the sodden wool back in place: ‘I couldn’t do much for her, I was only eleven and I had my own problems! Luckily I had string gloves so I could keep a grip.’ Grip was exactly what he needed, as being a small child the waves were threatening to pick him up and wash him out into the sea. If Colin didn’t hold on tightly he knew he would soon be lost.
During the night Colin looked out to sea and spotted a light. His spirits immediately lifted: surely it was a rescue boat. He was wrong. What he had seen was the conning tower of the submarine, which had surfaced to catch sight of the damage it had caused. As the night progressed, many of those who had escaped the sinking ship succumbed to the elements. Sitting in their sodden clothes, body temperatures began to fall. Those who succumbed to sleep soon joined the growing numbers of dead whose bodies were cast overboard. Aboard one of the lifeboats a freezing boy drifted into unconsciousness, lost his grip, and somehow slipped into the sea as the boat rolled on the waves. He was saved by a fellow passenger who, summoning up energy from somewhere, leaned over the boat’s edge and dragged the boy to safety. However, his efforts were wasted, as within minutes the boy died. In a touching scene on another lifeboat, a sailor and one of the adult passengers were each seen bouncing some small children on their lap but it too was an illusion. The children had been travelling with their mother who was on the same boat. As the mother reached the end of her endurance, and appeared to give up the will to live, the men were attempting to raise her spirits. By seemingly playing with the children they hoped it might give the woman strength. She could not be allowed to know the truth: the children on the laps of the men were already dead. The ruse was unsuccessful, too, as the mother joined the growing list of the victims.
In some life boats children drifting into unconsciousness were revived with a nip of brandy. Soaked to skin, battered by the winds and on the verge of freezing to death, this might have been just the thing to keep them alive. The spirit had an instantaneous effect, rousing them from their dangerous slumbers and giving them brief hope. Yet the change was fleeting: almost as soon as the brandy had brought them back from the verge of death, it helped magnify their exhaustion. Instead of shivering and shaking as they froze to death, they were soothed into a deadly sleep in an alcoholic haze.
As the hours passed and dawn finally broke, somehow Bess Walder and Beth Cummings had managed to cling on to the upturned lifeboat. Out of the dozen or so souls who had clung on to the keel the previous evening, just the two girls and two sailors remained. As every second passed it seemed it would be easier just to give up, let go and drift off to sleep in the water. However, between them their spirits helped maintain their strength, preserving their morale. It was clear to both girls that if one died, they would both die and somehow they maintained their grip.
As dawn rose Colin Ryder Richardson was still comforting his neighbour who was now silent and one of the sailors quietly told the boy the woman was dead. Eventually he realized there was nothing more he could do for her:
The old lady died in my arms. By that time I had no strength to move, to let her go, because of the stiffness and the cold. Others suggested I push her away but I couldn’t. Also she offered me a bit of physical support against the sea.
In the end he realized he would have to let her go:
She was slipping down into the boat, lying on her back in front of me. Then she was moving in and out of the boat, with all the others who were dying, who were floating up on their lifebelts. They were floating out to sea and then floating back into the lifeboat. They were a bloody menace – they were like bits of flotsam you didn’t want to be hit by. You didn’t want a fourteen-stone corpse banging into you.
It was time to push the old lady overboard to join those who had died in the night. The boy was hardly able to move. As he had gripped the woman his arms had stiffened leaving him with hardly enough strength to move himself, let alone shift the woman. Somehow, aided by one of the sailors, he was able to lift her from the water, edge her corpse over the edge of the boat and into the sea. With so many bodies around them, the sailor in charge eventually asked Colin to help him with the other corpses. The eleven year old was worried about letting go of the lifeboat but also knew they had to get rid of the dead. Not only were they a nuisance, but their close proximity was affecting the survivors’ morale. So Colin helped the sailor push the rest of the corpses from the boat, and tried to get them far enough away so they wouldn’t float back in again: ‘We were all becoming very sleepy, delirious, just mentally drifting. This was dangerous. I had seen this happen to others, who then succumbed.’
For Colin, this was a sudden and violent introduction to the realities of life – and death:
I had nothing on my mind except staying alive. I could see people dying around me. I felt worried, I felt drowsy and I knew that if I fell asleep I would die. I thought, ‘Wake up, Colin! You must stay awake.’ But it’s a natural thing to want to go to sleep. When you are sitting still, there isn’t much you can do to stay awake. I had an internal fight to keep myself to keep active, awake and alive. Some others didn’t seem to want to stay alive – they seemed irrational.
With the numbers of dead growing, the survivors clung to whatever small hope they could muster. Above all, it was the growing light of dawn that lifted their spirits. As the horizon slowly became clearer, Colin told himself he would live. Surely now a ship would save them. Yet the dawn brought something else: a clear knowledge of how perilous was their situation. In the light of day it was easier to see who was alive and who was dead. More than that, the lifeboats were drifting on a sea that revealed the true nature of the previous night’s tragedy. There was wreckage floating in the water amidst swirling patches of oil. Worst of all were the floating corpses all around the lifeboats. Where the sea took the boats, so it took the bodies. Just to add to their misery, hail and rain continued to fall.
In this gloomy world, Colin’s conviction they would be saved suffered many blows. The dawn saw just fourteen living souls in his boat, which had begun its journey with thirty-eight. They remained half-submerged with no way of bailing out the water. In the distance he could see other lifeboats, and he watched as one young man descended into madness, threatening his fellow passengers, screaming at those around him. Then finally, and mercifully, the man threw himself overboard.
As the day broke, Colin continued to believe that salvation would come but he also knew if he fell asleep he would die before the rescuers arrived. Every element of his being was thrown into staying awake. He concentrated on the brave singing of the adults around him, as they too attempted to raise their spirits. He continued with the grim task of pushing away the corpses that endlessly rolled from the waters into the ailing lifeboat. All the time he knew that a single heavy wave might be enough finally to submerge them.
By late morning the rains ceased and the survivors attempted to use the weak sun to dry their clothes and revive their numb flesh. Clothing and blankets were laid out to dry, ready in case the storm rose again. For some there was nothing to be done. Bess and Beth, the two girls hanging on to the upturned lifeboat, had no relief from the waters. There was nowhere for them to go. At one point they spotted a lifeboat and tried to call out, but could not raise a sound. Their exertions the previous night had left their throats dry. Yet they had been spotted, though as fast as the sailors on the nearby lifeboat attempted to work the vessel towards them, the waves beat them back. By the time the waves had finally subsided, the girls were out of sight again. Nonetheless, the girls hung on and were not alone in their fortitude.
In the aftermath of the sinking, many of the children had displayed mental and physical courage. Colin had amazed the adults by his efforts to help his fellow passengers and keep the dead from rolling back into the boat. Elsewhere, a girl urged her mother to keep awake and stay alive. The desperate mother suggested they take off their lifebelts, slip over the side of the boat and go to sleep in the water. It was a touching invitation to suicide, a way that mother and daughter might at least die together. Yet the girl shouted at her mother, urging her to see sense, insisting that rescue would come and they should be alive to see it. On one of the rafts, an evacuee and a sailor toiled to rescue a sailor who had slipped overboard. Grabbing the man under his arms they somehow managed to pull him back to safety. The sailor was amazed at the strength of the child who, despite a freezing night perched atop a life raft, had summoned from somewhere the energy to help pull the man to safety.
And so the day continued: some people died whilst others defied death, fighting back through the cold and the pain to keep themselves alive, just hoping a rescue boat might be on its way. All day, this thought filled their minds: stay awake long enough and surely a boat must come. It was simple: the mentally strong would live, the weak would die. Yet with the light slowly fading even the strongest among them began to wilt. Through the night and the morning, they had been pitching over the waves, desperate to be rescued, yet no one had come. Certainly some of the survivors claimed they had seen boats, whether they were real or imagined was anybody’s guess.
Yet someone out there was searching for them. Detached from its convoy duties, HMS Hurricane, a Royal Navy destroyer, had been ordered to find the Benares survivors. The ship’s captain had headed through the storm, coaxing as much speed as was wise to reach the position of the lifeboats. Spurring him on was the knowledge that so many children had been aboard the ship. Captain Simms ordered all lookouts into position and set the ship on a course to conduct a ‘box search’ that would cover the entire area in which survivors might be expected to be found.
At first the Hurricane found nothing but then the sea began to reveal a lucky few. The first boat to be spotted contained survivors from a merchant vessel that had been sunk the same night. As fortune had it, two of the children from the Benares were aboard the craft, the first of the evacuees to be rescued. The next lifeboat spotted from the Hurricane proved less encouraging. The warship launched her whaler, sending sailors to investigate. They struck out through the waves to reach the lifeboat, on which they had counted twenty survivors. But it was an illusion. The lifeboat carried twenty corpses: all had succumbed to the elements during the night.
However, as the search continued, the news began to improve and, one by one, the lifeboats were located. It was not a quick process, as a box search requires skilful navigation and endless patience, but it was worthwhile. The sailors steered carefully, ensuring the destroyer did not swamp the lifeboats and rafts as it approached. On one occasion, as it was alongside a raft while a young boy was being pulled up from below, a sudden movement of the warship swamped the raft, washing two sailors overboard. The two exhausted men were saved by a trio of sailors who dived overboard before the sea could sweep them away. The eight-year-old boy who had been lifted to safety was taken to the Hurricane’s engine room where he was revived.
On Lifeboat No. 10, just one child had survived and fourteen had died. As they reached Lifeboat No. 11, the sailors found just fourteen passengers had survived, with twenty having perished overnight, including nine of the eleven children who boarded from the stricken liner. One of the survivors was Louis Walder, the brother of Bess Walder who was still adrift, clinging desperately to an upturned lifeboat. The other was Rex Thorne, whose sister had perished as the Benares launched its lifeboats. He was not alone in his suffering: as the survivors were slowly lifted onboard the Hurricane a fortunate few were joyfully reunited with their families, while others had their worst fears confirmed.
When Bess Walder and Beth Cummings were finally rescued, the sailors were shocked to find the girls had survived their ordeal. They were so cold and exhausted their frozen and swollen fingers had to be prised from their grip on the lifeboat. It seemed the girls were on the brink of succumbing to exposure as they could hardly move and did not respond to obvious pain. They could not speak and their mouths and throats were filled with sores. It was intensely painful and they could hardly swallow the drinks they were offered – but they were alive.
Finally, HMS Hurricane reached Lifeboat No. 2 where Colin Ryder Richardson had somehow managed to survive. At first he couldn’t believe it. He had been thinking he would see a ship but nothing had arrived. All he could think was ‘Where’s the bloody Navy?’ But now the moment had come. Suddenly, the increasingly drowsy boy looked up and saw the Hurricane, his thoughts immediately changing: ‘I thought, she looks so beautiful.’ As they neared Lifeboat No. 2, the sailors were astounded to hear the survivors singing ‘Rule Britannia’. The first to leave the half-submerged lifeboat was the eleven-year-old Colin. He had been told to climb up the scrambling nets to reach the decks, but he was too weak to do so. Instead, a rope was placed around him and he was pulled towards the deck. He was shaking with cold and could hardly control his body, feeling nothing below the waist. His skin seemed waterlogged and as ‘soft as jelly’. Whilst he had been so brave during the night, his ordeal was over and finally his body and mind succumbed to the cold. He could no longer stand up and was immediately rushed to the engine room to join other survivors.
Once aboard, the survivors were washed down, cuts were treated to prevent infection and frostbitten limbs carefully cleaned. Many had skin that was swollen and split as a result of their prolonged immersion in water. As the children were laid down to go to sleep, they were watched over to prevent them slipping into a coma. Despite all efforts, three of the children died after being rescued.
Although the captain and crew of the Hurricane believed they had rescued all the survivors, they were wrong. The first boat they had found was not from the Benares but from the Marina, the merchant ship that had been torpedoed the same night and which had carried a number of survivors from the liner. Lifeboat No. 12 had been missed. With a large complement of sailors onboard, the craft had not remained on the same patch of water. Instead, they had set sail for the nearest land, the coast of Ireland, hundreds of miles to the east.
There were forty-six people on board, a combination of seamen (both British and Indian), passengers and six children. The six boys were thirteen-year-old Ken Sparks, eleven year olds Howard Claytor, Paul Shearing and Fred Steels, and nine year olds Billy Short and Derek Capel. The experience of the sailors was vital to any hopes of survival. Most importantly they could navigate, were strong enough, initially, to work the ‘Fleming’ gear to help move the craft through the waters and vitally could organize the precious food rations to ensure they could be distributed fairly and last for a week. The boys in the lifeboat were lucky to be under a canvas shelter, rigged up by the sailors to protect the youngsters from the elements.
The boys on Lifeboat No. 12 were in many ways fortunate. Unlike some of the other boats the passengers were dry, their boat not having been swamped by the waves like the other craft. That said, their ordeal was only just beginning. The other boats had been the scene of immediate misery, with sodden and shivering people just hanging on for survival. For Lifeboat No. 12 the sufferings took longer to start but endured for days after. The cold was something none who lived through it could ever forget. Even wrapped up in blankets and huddled in their shelter, the boys couldn’t avoid the weather. The wind burned their skin, dried and chapped their lips. Salt particles formed in their clothes and matted their hair. Their mouths grew parched and dry, leaving them hardly able to swallow the biscuits they received for their meals. It was the ultimate agony, surrounded by water but dying of thirst. Each day they received seemingly miserly rations, yet these were doled out in such a way to keep them alive for as long as possible. A few sips of water and a mouthful of ship’s biscuits, supplemented at times with thin slices of tinned fruit, did just enough to keep them alive.
There were a few moments of relief. The sight of whales skimming through the waters gave them something to occupy their minds for a few moments. One of the sailors cheered them by tirelessly undertaking daily swims, as if to prove that if he had sufficient energy to keep moving then so should they. To keep their minds off their misery, the one woman on the boat – a children’s escort named Mary Cornish – made up stories. These featured the popular character Bulldog Drummond, a hero known for the sort of heroics popular in the period. She had no idea where her stories were heading – or, indeed, whether the boys would survive long enough to hear the ending – but she knew it was vital to keep their spirits up. She also attempted to calm the boys by stressing that they were, just like Bulldog Drummond, living through their own personal adventure. She told them that any number of other British boys would envy them their adventure.
Yet for all its initial excitement, this was not a glamorous escapade. Misery was heaped upon misery as the boys watched the adults around them suffer. There was a seriously ill priest curled up before them. Worst of all, some were reduced to madness with one suicidal sailor diving overboard and surrendering to the waves. Such incidents lowered their morale, with their spirits only lifted again when the ever-decreasing rations were issued.
As the days passed it was the boys’ turn to be touched by madness. One of their number, Paul Shearing, was reduced to crying out as his desire for water took over. He screamed out in recognition of his own madness, his desperate desire for liquid to sate his thirst. Those assisting him noted how the boy’s feet and legs were bloated and marked with sores. It was clear he was dying and a small extra measure of water was surreptitiously smuggled to him, helping ward off the effects of thirst and hunger for a few brief minutes.
Wrapping clothes around Paul’s legs and body to raise his body temperature, the adults tried to clean and dress his swollen legs, soothing the sores that afflicted him. They rubbed the puffy flesh to aid his circulation, in the hope of warding off frostbite. It was desperate and seemingly doomed to failure, but it was all they could do in the circumstances. Yet for all it seemed the boy could not possibly survive, by the eighth morning Paul had somehow defied the odds. He was still on the brink of madness and death, but he was still there in the boat along with the five other boys.
Though the boys did not know it then, their ordeal was almost over. After more than a week adrift their supplies were almost exhausted. A little water remained but it was hardly enough to do more than just wet their lips. Some food was still available but without water there was little hope anybody could generate enough saliva to swallow it. Though only the sailors realized it, the inhabitants of Lifeboat No. 12 were facing their final hours.
Somehow, seemingly out of nowhere, salvation finally came. It was one of the children, Ken Sparks, who first spotted it. He spotted a dot in the sky. At first the others dismissed it as a bird, a cloud or a trick of the light – more likely a trick of the mind. From his parched throat came the cry, ‘Plane!’ Some ignored him but others followed his gaze. Next the boy was on his feet waving his shirt in the direction of the apparition. Soon it came closer, revealing its form: it was a plane. For the children, this soon took on an element of a favourite wartime game. All across Britain, boys had developed a deep interest in aviation, learning to identify aircraft by their silhouettes. In the summer of 1940 plane-spotting had become the number one pastime for many youths, developing childish rivalries of who could best identify the aircraft – both British and German – that filled the skies. Those who had studied seaplanes soon realized this was a Short Sunderland, an aircraft that hunted submarines across the seas around Britain.
Though the plane came close, there was still some time before salvation would come. Unable to land on the choppy seas, the crew instead signalled to the sailors by Morse code signalling lamp, telling them that another plane would soon be with them, to be followed by a ship. True to their word, the plane soon arrived, dropping food and water to the desperate passengers of Lifeboat No. 12. Within minutes they were gorging themselves in anticipation of the forthcoming relief. Then what had become unthinkable finally came: on the horizon appeared HMS Anthony.
As the warship came alongside, the children looked up to see sailors smiling down at them. Within minutes they were hauled to the decks and were soon ensconced in the mess drinking tea and orange juice, and eating porridge. Next came warm baths and a change of clothing, wrapping themselves in baggy uniforms offered by the crew. In a short time it seemed the boys, except Paul Shearing who was being treated by the ship’s doctor, had recovered their spirits. To onlookers it appeared they had forgotten their experience. Like so many children growing up in wartime Britain, they seemed to be able to forget how much they had suffered. In their minds all that mattered was that the ship had come, and they had now moved on to the next stage of their adventure. They were saved. More than that, they had come back from the dead. Nine-year-old Billy Short was reunited with his parents and discovered a memorial service had already been held for him, but the true tragedy was that the service was also for his brother, Peter, who had been lost when the Benares had sunk.
In the aftermath of the disaster, the true price of war was evident. With the survivors safely returned to the UK, the staff at CORB began the ominous task of informing the families of the child victims of their fate. In Sunderland, eleven children had been sent overseas on the Benares, yet just one returned. Just two of the twelve Liverpudlian children had been saved. Twelve children from Wales had sailed, none had survived. Fifty-nine homes soon received the terrible news that the children they had believed were being sent to safety had been lost at sea. Seventy-seven children had lost their lives, with a number of parents receiving the grim news that more than one of their children had been lost.
For one family, it was particularly tragic. The Grimmond family from Brixton in south London received the terrible news that five of their children – Violet, Connie, Lennie, Eddie and Gussie – had perished on the Benares. Their parents, Eddie and Hannah Grimmond, had only sent them away after their home had been destroyed by bombs a week before the Benares had sank. Initially Hannah had been reluctant to let the children go but her husband, who had fought in the trenches of Flanders and knew the true horrors of war, had been adamant. He won the argument but lost five children. Following the disaster he immediately volunteered to rejoin his old regiment, hoping to avenge his loss. He was refused frontline service and instead joined the RAF, serving throughout the war. However, in 1943 the Grimmonds received further bad news: another of their children had been killed on active service. Of a total of eleven children, six had been lost to war.
The sinking of the Benares had one significant impact: on the 2 October 1940 the CORB evacuation scheme was cancelled. In the aftermath a few details emerged. The convoy’s Royal Navy escort ships had left the merchant ships in mid-Atlantic, leaving them unprotected. More importantly, in the aftermath of the sinking, acting under standing orders, no ships had deviated from their course within the convoy and left the Royal Navy to pick up survivors as and when it could. To some it seemed this was unfair: hundreds of people, including many young children, were left adrift in the sea. The time it took for the Royal Navy to reach the survivors cost the lives of many of those aboard the lifeboats. It was a cold and seemingly heartless strategy but rules were rules. As the Admiralty explained in reaction to the criticism, ‘We do not think it would have been proper to depart from orders on account of the children as this would possibly have endangered other ships.’1 The words made one thing clear: this was total war and children were in the firing line. If they had to die in pursuit of victory, so be it.
1. Quoted in Tom Nagorski, Miracles on the Water (London: Robinson, 2007).