The Tribune

WILBERT Roy Widdicombe and Robert Tapscott were found on a beach on Eleuthera in October 1940, the sole survivors of a British merchant ship which had been sunk off the coast of Africa two months earlier. The sailors survived a perilous journey on the high seas, but as we reveal in the second part of their story, tragedy was to strike again in both their lives.

ON November 9, 1940, Roy Widdicombe and Robert Tapscott were staging “as great a battle for life” on the beds of the BG Hospital as they did in their 70 days at sea as the survivors of the SS Anglo Saxon, a British merchant ship which had been on route from Wales to Argentina when it was sunk off the west coast of Africa by the Widder, a German surface raider.

On that night on August 21, seven men from the crew of 40 or 41, some wounded, had jumped into a 16ft jolly boat. One man died from gangrene; four others threw themselves into the sea.

The last two men on board, Roy Widdicombe, 24, and Robert Tapscott, 19, eventually drifted for 70 days, 2,800 miles across the Atlantic, before finally being snatched from the brink of death.

They came ashore in Eleuthera on October 30 and were spotted by a farmer. They were transferred to Nassau.

“I wondered if I was dreaming when I saw a strange face leaning over me,” Widdicombe told The Tribune in his hospital bed.

“And then the whole horrid situation came back to me with all its vividness, and I suffered a severe misgiving, until the man started to talk to me and then I realised that we had had the good fortune to wash up on one of Britain’s far flung colonies.

“My relief at the realisation that I was alive and safe on land among friends was indescribable,’ he said.

Among the visitors in the first week of the pair’s recovery were the Duke of Windsor, then Governor, and the Duchess of Windsor.

The two men helped make radio history in Nassau when, on December 7, 1940, they told their story to Robert L Ripley in the Royal Victoria Hotel for his show, ‘Believe It Or Not.’

It was the first time a scheduled coast-to-coast United States programme was broadcast from Nassau.

Introducing the two men, Ripley said: “Standing here beside me I have two young British sailors who have survived a voyage that makes Captain Bligh’s voyage pale into insignificance.”

Following the programme, the jolly boat which had brought the two to The Bahamas was auctioned off - and bought by Lady Oakes who bid �300.

Widdicombe travelled to New York and, in February 1941, headed for England in the Siamese Prince, a British motor cargo vessel of 8546 tons.

On February 17, en route from New York to Liverpool, she was torpedoed by U-69 and sunk - just one day from the UK.

Nine persons were lost from a crew of 58, including Roy Widdicombe.

Tapscott recovered and testified at the War Crimes trial of Helmuth von Ruckteschell, captain of the Widder.

According to the four British charges submitted to the United Nations War Crimes Commission against von Ruckteschell, the evidence revealed ‘at least one clear case of mass murder and several equally clear cases of the sinking of vessels whose crew were on the vessels when they were fired on, and were not picked up subsequently when on boats, rafts and in the water.’

Regarding the SS Anglo Saxon, the charge was that he fired on the lifeboats, and failed to ensure the crew’s survival.

Although unavailable to attend the trial in May 1946, Tapscott testified that the Widder had opened fire on the boats and rafts as they moved away from the sinking ship.

The defence maintained he was firing over heads at the ship and that the boats attempted to escape and were lost in the dark.

Ruckteschell was found guilty of ‘not providing for the safety of the crew’.

He was convicted on three of the four charges, including the attack on the Anglo Saxon, and jailed for 10 years. He died in the Hamburg-Fuhlsb�ttel prison on June 24, 1948.

Tapscott enlisted in the Canadian army. He later re-joined the Merchant Navy, married and fathered a daughter.

He took his own life after the war.

• IN 1941, not long after the events, writer Guy Pearce Jones wrote a book about the story called ‘Two survived: The story of Tapscott and Widdicombe, who were torpedoed in mid-Atlantic and survived seventy days in an open boat.’

It has been re-reprinted several times and is still available.

The jolly boat was found in Mystic, Connecticut. Its unscrewed nameplate was discovered in Texas and it was brought to Britain, where it can now been seen at the Imperial War Museum in London.

In 2011, Anthony Smith, an 86-year-old, who had read and been inspired by the war story as a teenager decided he would re-enact the voyage.

His aim, he wrote in the Daily Telegraph newspaper in Britain, was partly to draw attention to the plight of seamen in wartime, “their chance of death higher than in any of the armed services.’

He, his crew and his raft left Valle Gran Rey in the Canary Islands in January 2011 with Eleuthera in their sights.

The raft’s two rudders broke on the third day and on three occasions it was blown back towards the east; fresh food ran out after three weeks.

In 66 days they completed 2,763 miles, but his crew members decided they could not spare the extra month it would take to reach the Bahamas, a journey of another 700 miles, so they ended their voyage at St Maarten.

A little over a year later he was ready to set sail again covering the stretch between St Maarten and Eleuthera.

In April 2012 they set sail but in the first week of May, after sailing 850 nautical miles and spending more than three weeks at sea, the conditions were so bad he was thinking about choosing to sail past and ask for a tow.

In fact they came to a beach, which turned out to be the very one Tapscott and Widdicombe had landed on.

He concluded his story for the Telegraph: “What total joy! We were all safe and our raft looked good. Miracles do occur.

“Can life ever be better than on that day and at that hour? I do not think so.”