Description
Object description
Ms account (13pp), with ts transcript (5pp), probably written in 1941, by the 1st Officer of the SS MARINA describing how, when she was sailing in the Atlantic convoy OB 213, his ship was torpedoed on the night of 17 September 1940 and recording how, under very hazardous conditions, he and an able seaman managed to launch and man one of the ship's lifeboats and to manoeuvre it to pick up other members of the crew still on board and how the lifeboat, with sixteen officers and men on board, then completed, at times in very bad weather and in conditions of growing hardship, an eight day, 800 mile voyage towards the United Kingdom before being rescued by the coaster SS CARLINGFORD off the north west coast of Ireland and landed at Londonderry, with all the occupants of the lifeboat alive, though suffering badly from exhaustion, frostbite and exposure; together with photographs of Tait-Smith in Merchant Navy uniform taken in September 1939 and after he was awarded the MBE in May 1941 for his distinguished service following the torpedoing of the MARINA. The CITY OF BENARES, which had sailed in the same convoy with child evacuees on board, was torpedoed by the same German submarine, U48, very shortly before the MARINA and the narrative mentions that one of her lifeboats was briefly in contact with the MARINA's lifeboat shortly after the sinking of the two ships.
Content description
Ms account (13pp), with ts transcript (5pp), probably written in 1941, by the 1st Officer of the SS MARINA describing how, when she was sailing in the Atlantic convoy OB 213, his ship was torpedoed on the night of 17 September 1940 and recording how, under very hazardous conditions, he and an able seaman managed to launch and man one of the ship's lifeboats and to manoeuvre it to pick up other members of the crew still on board and how the lifeboat, with sixteen officers and men on board, then completed, at times in very bad weather and in conditions of growing hardship, an eight day, 800 mile voyage towards the United Kingdom before being rescued by the coaster SS CARLINGFORD off the north west coast of Ireland and landed at Londonderry, with all the occupants of the lifeboat alive, though suffering badly from exhaustion, frostbite and exposure; together with photographs of Tait-Smith in Merchant Navy uniform taken in September 1939 and after he was awarded the MBE in May 1941 for his distinguished service following the torpedoing of the MARINA. The CITY OF BENARES, which had sailed in the same convoy with child evacuees on board, was torpedoed by the same German submarine, U48, very shortly before the MARINA and the narrative mentions that one of her lifeboats was briefly in contact with the MARINA's lifeboat shortly after the sinking of the two ships.
History note
Cataloguer RWAS
History note
Catalogue date 2005-12