SINKING OF ARK ROYAL

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 28 April 1942, Page 2

SINKING OF ARK ROYAL

THREE MEN TEEL OF SINKING SCORN FOR LAND-LUBBERS Three men -one from Berkshire, another from Hampshire, the third from Somerset at a Ministry of Information conference told how the Ark Royal j sink. They talked about her as if she were a living thing, a friend. “No one thought that she would I ever sink. ‘We’ll be waiting for you ' to bring her in,’ the men shouted at) us.” said th- man from Somerset, who was one of the last to leave the ship. He said that Captain Maund vras the last to leave, that as lie came down the side of the aircraft-carrier someone o.i the destroyer alongside put a small searchlight on him and ab the ship’s company clapped liim j and cheered as he came aboard. “Did he wave back?” someone asked. “No,” the Somerset man said. "lie was coming down hanging on to a | rope.” His soft burry voice held some scorn for these land-lubbers he was talking to. Didn’t they know that a man coming off' a sinking vessel with a list of nineteen degrees needed both his hands? LAST EFFORT The man from Somerset was one of the chief stokers on the Ark Royal. He had served on her for three years and nine months. When the captain Ce lled for volunteers he and six others vent down to get up steam. They got two dynamos going, working under conditions at which he didn’t even hint 'but which we could guess as he sat there telling his story, the words coming hard and slowly). They started up eight submergible pumps, which corrected the list to 17 degrees. “We felt that she was gradually going over,” he said. “At last we could not feed the boilers, because the water had run out of the feed tanks. The oil was running into the furnaces and caught alight. The men hauled themselves out of the boiler room, past three decks, with the lines they had rigged when they went down—he didn’t know how many hours earlier. “We passed out because of the fumes before we got out, but five hands came in to fetch us. * We came to in the fresh air and slid down the ship’s side into the destroyer, he said. The man from Hampshire was a chief petty officer—young, alert, confident. He told how a captain of a destroyer who was "just snoopin’ about” put her alongside the Ark Royal. "It was a good feat of seamanship, if I do say it myself,” he said. WITH THE SWAG The Ber' ‘.hire man was a lieutenantcommander, anonymous like the others. He was asleep in his cabin on the port side when the torpedo hit the Ark Royal, breaking down all communications, so that it was impossible to get any orders through. He was told to see the Fleet Air Arm officers on board irto the destroyer. They slid down rt.pes, hoses, anything. "There was no panic. Everyone was very quiet. In fact, cracking jokes,” he said. The petty officer told us then that the paymaster-commander appeared on the deck of the listing Ark Royal with a suitcase in each hand. "Everybody cheered. He looked as if he were going away for the weekend. But he yelled at us that he had all the ship's money with him—£lo.ooo in one case and £IO,OOO in the other. We got him off.” he said. But the Somerset man finished the conference. Reporters weren’t sure bow he liaJ got out of the inferno of flsmes and darkness below; how he and the two volunteers who had stayed below with him got past thr three decks as the ship listed beneath them. “We climbed up the life lines like monkeys,” he explained. These—stupid land-lubbers!