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FORGOTTEN STORY OF A DOOMED SHIP
It was one of the most dramatic naval encounters of the last war – and yet the the loss of the troopship SS Khedive Ismail has been largely forgotten by everyone outside an ever decreasing circle of survivors and their relatives. Local author Brian Crabb tells the fascinating and genuinely moving story in Passage to Destiny
Brian, who lives in Portishead and runs a garage business in Clifton, has strong personal reasons for retelling the story. His father Percival Crabb (Buster to his shipmates) was one of the few survivors to escape as the torpedoed troopship took just two minutes to slide beneath the Indian Ocean back in February 1944.
The former liner had left the African port of Kilindini as part of convoy KR 8 crowded with black soldiers from the 301st Field Artillery Regiment bound for Burma, along with a strong contingent of female auxiliaries and nursing staff. But an attacking Japanese submarine succeeded in putting two torpedoes in her engine room, blowing up her boilers and sentencing the majority of the trapped African troops and nursing staff to a watery grave. No less than 1,297 of them lost their lives.
Brian's father, who later worked at Fisons in Avonmouth, was one of the lucky survivors - hauling himself out of a porthole precious seconds before the ship went down. Another survivor, Bill Howard, had almost given up hope of rescuing a trapped Wren when escaping air literally blew the pair of them to the surface.
But the swimmers problems were not over yet. British destroyers raced in to attack the Japanese sub, dropping depth charges through the survivors. Laconic naval reports admitted this may have added to the casualty list but certainly kept the sharks at bay. The incident was later used by writer Nicholas Monserrat in his novel The Cruel Sea.
The Japanese sub was forced to the surface and eventually blown in two, its crew following the Khedive Ismail to the bottom. This is a truly compelling story, told simply and without frills by the people involved and it is also lavishly illustrated.
http://ipresent.co.uk/morebooks.htm
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Topic: grandfather on SS KHEDIVE ISMAIL 1944 (Read 6449 times)