SAILOR’S MATES RAISE £600 TO ASSIST YOUTH’S MOTHER

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28450, 3 December 1957, Page 15

SAILOR’S MATES RAISE £600 TO ASSIST YOUTH’S MOTHER

(Rec. 7 p.m.) LONDON, Dec. 1. It was the Navy’s traditional farewell gesture to a lost shipmate—the auction at sea of a 17-year-old seaman’s belongings for his next-of-kin.

But when the modest belongings had been sold on board H.M.S Carysfort. £642 had been Paid to the auctioneer, according to the “Daily Mail.”

The men of the lower deck knew that Peter was an only son. and that Peter’s mother was a seaman's widow.

. Ten airmail envelopes, sold singly, fetched £B2 10s. An elastic band from a packet of letters made £7. A rating paid £22 for 1 3d packet of coffee. .Peter’s “housewife,” the serviceman’s sewing outfit, brought

£29. and his off-key mouth organ another £lB.

The auctioneer held up a piece of string with a knot in it. That made £6 10s.

“The men’s generosity was almost embarrassing,” said the officer who conducted the sale.

“We couldn’t get rid of the stuff. Over and over again they kept handing articles back to be resold.” Peter, the second youngest member of the crew, was swept overboard 13 days ago while the destroyer Carysfort, his first ship, was battling in darkness through heavy seas off the north of Scotland. His mother, Mrs G. Seed, of Handforth, Cheshire, was widowed during the war, when her Merchant Navy husband was lost overboard from a cargo vessel.