I hit the sea pretty hard and without a life belt to break the fall. I must have gone below the water at least half the distance I had jumped from the deck and came up spluttering. According to the Captain who was watching men jumping off towards the very end, he said it was a height of at least fifty feet. He saw someone stripping off his dark blue uniform and kicking his boots off on deck just before the ship sank. He presumed it was engine room branch and it could have been me he was watching but I couldn’t say for sure because it might not be true. He specifically mentioned this story in his report. I jumped off the starboard side when it was still sinking from the stern. I came up spluttering oil, frightened to death. I went down again a little way, came up and was sick bringing up a lot of oil that was in my mouth and throat. I struck out, I wasn’t a very good swimmer, my best stroke was the breast stroke and I swam away from the ship, probably fifty or sixty yards until I could swim no more.
What with the oil taking effect and the frightening state of affairs I was
exhausted absolutely and all I could do was kick and tread water. I rested a
moment and turned round and saw the bows of the ship sliding gently back into
the sea. In less than two or three seconds it had disappeared causing a lot
of froth and the Dorsetshire was on its way to the bottom. I panicked and looked
around me. There were groups of men at different places because we had drifted
away from the ship. There was a terrible noise. I shouted help at the top of
my voice because I had no lifebelt and if I couldn’t tread water any more
I knew I was going to drown. I shouted help twice and someone came to me, he
was a very good swimmer, I don’t know who he was but we had a lot of Australians
and South Africans on board who were marvellous swimmers. He shouted to me,
“Hold on” “Hold on” he had brought a blown-up lifebelt
that he had probably got from a person who didn’t need it any more. He
managed to get it on me, around my waist and he said, “You’re OK
now”, just rest a minute or two and then get back to the lads”.
He swam in front of me and he helped me, looking after me. After resting a couple
of times we eventually reached the nearest group of men that were hanging on
to a part of the main mast that had floated off or it could have been one of
the booms that were used for the motorboats in the harbour.
There were about eighteen or twenty men hanging onto the boom you could only
see the men because the boom was under water. They made space for me on the
boom, I was absolutely exhausted but I couldn’t drown because I had a
lifebelt on. The ship had disappeared and there was a terrible lot of noise
from other groups of men who were badly wounded and dying.
When I jumped into the water I hit my left groin badly on some wreckage, gashed my foot and scalded my arm on a steam pipe or a jet of steam. I hadn’t felt any pain because the salt water seemed to numb it. Apart from my wounds, complete shock was now getting hold of me but I felt safe, I was hanging on and we were helping each other, talking and trying to blank out things. There was a shout of sharks being in the area around the main group. I hadn’t seen any personally but some of the other survivors had and many of the floating dead bodies had disappeared which we presumed were taken by sharks. We weren’t actually attacked because it was thought that the smell of the black oil and the noise had deterred any attacks. We had been told by the skipper to make noise and splash to keep the sharks at bay.
Whilst in the water three Jap fighter planes came low over the survivors machine gunning. I thought after all I had been through I was about to die with a machine gun bullet in me. I let go of the boom and forced myself under the water hoping this would lessen the force of the bullets. No one was hit as far as I know and whether they were trying to hit us or scare us I’m not sure. One of the planes did a victory roll, joined the other two and presumably went back to join their carrier. We were in the water approximately thirty hours from one thirty pm in the afternoon of Easter Sunday. The attack lasted around eight minutes in total, my watch stopped at one thirty as I hit the sea because it wasn’t waterproof.
We weren’t too concerned about hunger because we had just eaten a good
dinner before the attack took place; it was the thirst that worried us.
The Japanese were very clever; they didn’t start their attack until the
sun was high in the sky so it upset our guns accuracy. I read a Japanese report
that they dived from the sun on purpose. The Japanese reported that they dropped
thirteen, one thousand pound bombs and scored eleven direct hits on the ship.
After being in the water and everyone eventually getting into one main group
the badly wounded were in two boats with the doctors helping people in the greatest
pain. After about four hours in the water several Fairey Swordfish, which were
carried on all cruisers, were sent out to look for us, they knew roughly the
area where we were. They were delayed initially, first someone said they heard
it then they said they could see it, and then nobody could see anything, so
we thought it was imagination. One minute your hopes were up then the next minute
they were down. The Swordfish aircraft was finally spotted, and came in right
over us signalling with their Aldis lamp “Hang on help coming”.
Our signals section was able to pick the message up and this was conveyed to
everyone.
We were happy; we cheered, watched the horizon and thought it will be no time
now before we were found. . We hoped the message would get back and they would
send help. We were aware that the Cornwall had been bombed and sunk nearby so
there was another group of men in the vacinity in exactly the same position
as us, but we didn’t see them at all. Two destroyers and a light cruiser
were sent to find us but were late in starting because they had to collect survivors
from other British warships sunk earlier the day before in Colombo.
Eventually we saw masts of three ships on the horizon, and everyone cheered. Then someone said “They’re Japanese” We immediately thought of being bustled on board, beaten and kicked to death, prisoners of war and that didn’t help, but we soon realised that they were ours when we saw the White ensign flying. They were HMS Panther a fairly old destroyer, HMS Enterprise a light cruiser and HMS Paladin a modern destroyer.