Description
Object description
Ms letter (4pp), dated 4 May 1940 but never posted, written to a friend in Shoreham-by-Sea, Sussex from the South Atlantic by one of the radio officers in the MV BEACON GRANGE describing the ship's voyage from the United Kingdom to South America, the progress thus far of her return passage and his impressions of the ports at which they had called; together with a photograph of Pilcher and a post-war presscutting about the war crimes trial of the Captain of the German surface raider WIDDER. After leaving the BEACON GRANGE, Pilcher's next ship was the SS ANGLO-SAXON, on which he served as the 2nd Radio Officer, and he died in her jolly boat ten days after she was sunk by the WIDDER in the Atlantic in August 1940: his letter was among the contents of an attache case that he had with him in the jolly boat and which was returned to his parents after the jolly boat eventually landed, with just two survivors, in the Bahamas in late October 1940.
Content description
Ms letter (4pp), dated 4 May 1940 but never posted, written to a friend in Shoreham-by-Sea, Sussex from the South Atlantic by one of the radio officers in the MV BEACON GRANGE describing the ship's voyage from the United Kingdom to South America, the progress thus far of her return passage and his impressions of the ports at which they had called; together with a photograph of Pilcher and a post-war presscutting about the war crimes trial of the Captain of the German surface raider WIDDER. After leaving the BEACON GRANGE, Pilcher's next ship was the SS ANGLO-SAXON, on which he served as the 2nd Radio Officer, and he died in her jolly boat ten days after she was sunk by the WIDDER in the Atlantic in August 1940: his letter was among the contents of an attache case that he had with him in the jolly boat and which was returned to his parents after the jolly boat eventually landed, with just two survivors, in the Bahamas in late October 1940.
History note
Cataloguer RWAS
History note
Catalogue date 2002-11
