In memory of Wilbert Charles Roy Widdicombe
Roy Widdicombe was born in Totnes, Devon, in 1919, writes Adrian Hughes. He became a merchant seaman and married Cynthia Pitman at Holy Trinity Church, Newport, in March 1940. While on shore leave he lived with his new bride and her mother at 96 Lewis Street, Newport.
On 21 August 1940 his ship SS Anglo Saxon, belonging to the Lowther Latta Line, was en route from Newport to Bahia Blanca in Argentina with a cargo of coal when it was attacked by the German surface raider Widder (disguised as a neutral ship) in the Atlantic Ocean off West Africa. Able Seaman Widdicombe was in the wheelhouse when the ship was strafed with machine gun fire and torpedoed. He managed to lower the ship’s one undamaged “jolly boat” into the water even though he was injured when his hand jammed in the running block.
The seven surviving men, from a crew of 41, had few provisions in their life boat; a little water and food, a compass and oars. Over the next fortnight five of the men perished, some as a result of injuries from the attack on their ship. Others threw themselves into the sea, deluded from hunger and thirst. After 19 days only two remained alive; Roy Widdicombe and Robert Tapscott.
Seventy days after the SS Anglo Saxon had been sunk, the “jolly boat” grounded on a beach of Eleuthera Island, Bahamas. Barely alive, Roy and Robert had lost half their body weight and were sunburnt to the point of being black. They had survived by eating seaweed and collecting fresh water on the few days it had rained. For the last eight days of their journey they had no water and had smashed their compass and drank the fluid within it.
They were taken by seaplane to a hospital in Nassau (capital of the Bahamas) where they recuperated over many weeks. In hospital they were visited by the Governor of the Bahamas, the Duke of Windsor (King Edward VIII until he abdicated in 1936).
Messages came from Britain that the Ministry of Shipping needed every sailor it could muster for its merchant fleet. In February 1941, Roy, who was in better physical shape than Robert, travelled back to the United Kingdom. He was only one day from Liverpool when the vessel, Siamese Prince, was torpedoed by a German U-boat off Scotland, with the loss of all hands.
Robert recovered in due course and enlisted in the Canadian army, but after frequently absconding he was discharged from the military. He later re-joined the Merchant Navy, married and they had a daughter, but took his own life aged 43, perhaps haunted by “survivor’s guilt”.
The “Jolly Boat” in which Roy and Robert survived is now on display at the Imperial War Museum, whose website has photos and more information on SS Anglo Saxon.
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