In 1940 the ship 'The City of Benares' was transporting evacuees to Canada. Two days after leaving port in Liverpool, tragedy struck and the ship was hit by a German torpedo. In all 256 lives were lost, including 77 children, before survivors where picked up and hastened to Greenock in Scotland. The news wasn't reported back home for a week. One of the survivors was Bess Cummings, nee Walder, fifteen at the time, who was being evacuated with her younger brother Louis. Bess told John about her experience.
 Bess (left), Albert Gorman the coxswain who rescued her, and Beth |
Bess remembers how utterly thrilled she was to be on that wonderful ship. She was 15 and her brother was 9 at the time. They were very aware of danger. "We were after all wartime children, and wartime children get used to danger". They were very punctilious on board about safety drills, and all the children knew what they must do should there be an accident of some sort.
When the ship was hit by a torpedo Bess remembers how different it was from the drills. It was the middle of the night, and the ship suddenly shuddered and there was an enormous bang, and the whole ship smelt of cordite, a smell Bess says she'll never forget. Furniture in the cabins was falling down, and most children had been sent to bed early because of the appalling weather so were in their bunks. They hurriedly struggled into life-jackets and were told to make their way to the lifeboats.
They thought they knew where to go, "but it was deadly black, and the sea was absolutely tremendous. None of the lifeboats were in the places we thought they would be because some of them had been damaged. The ship was sinking badly, and at a huge angle so the lifeboats were being launched but they weren't being launched straight. The whole thing was chaotic in the extreme".
Her father had urged her to look after her brother, but she didn't even know where he was because the boys were on the other side of the ship from the girls. Bess was on the deck, the ship was sinking, it was chaos all around, but she saw one lifeboat and someone literally picked her up and threw her into it. The lifeboat was launched sideways, and as soon as it hit the ocean (particularly in the terrible conditions) the water poured in. In the huge gale and lashing waves the boat turned upside down and many people who had been in it were drowned.
Everybody who survived at that point was also thrown into the water. Bess doesn't know exactly how long she was in the water, but she remembers it as "a very long time indeed. Fortunately my father had taught both of us how to swim in the sea, and I was not afraid of water. As I started to swim my arm struck out and actually touched the upside down lifeboat. I lifted my arms up and I clutched the keel. My body stretched out across the side of the lifeboat, and my head and shoulders and part of my body were out of the sea. Alongside me were people who'd done the same thing. On the opposite side I saw the face of a girl I'd known on board, whose name was Beth".
They both held on to the top of that lifeboat all that night, and right round to the next day. It was very difficult to actually talk because of the noise of the storm, and also of course because of the danger of a mouthful of seawater. Their conversations were consequently very short and mainly monosyllabic! Bess believes that "Had we not been together I don't think either of us would have survived". Bess was determined she would survive, and feels that it was this determination that ensured that she did.
Eventually only she and Beth remained. "Most of the adults that had hung on decided that it was hopeless, and rather than go through any more pain they just let go". When the dawn came they could see nothing but ocean, but the two of them never gave up hope. "We'd seen so many other people go, and here we were still alive after that dreadful night and we would just hang on and hope that somebody would come". They hung on through another long, long day of huge seas, their bodies constantly picked up and thrown down again. Beth was hanging on to ropes, and Bess clung to the keel.
Bess saw something on the horizon, and tried to tell Beth, but this was difficult because by this time their tongues and mouths were so swollen that any words were almost impossible. Beth really couldn't believe it, and shook her head, because she had imagined ships before that had been nothing more than her mind playing tricks. "I kept my eye on this dot and it got bigger and bigger, what's more it got noisy. What it was was a destroyer called 'Hurricane'". Bess remembers clearly that someone called out "We're coming, we're coming - hold on!". As the ship drew closer they were still absolutely petrified about letting go. "In fact, I couldn't. My hands had got themselves so tightly on the keel that I just couldn't. So he had to prise my hands back. I felt no pain. We'd both gone beyond pain".
 Bess being awarded a 'hurricane lamp' for bravery at sea |
Bess's thoughts were about how she was going to tell her parents about the loss of her brother. The Ship's doctor reminded her that there were many parents who had lost all their children, so her parents would be delighted to see her. "That was not much comfort". A day later as they sped towards Scotland the Captain banged on the cabin door with a present : "From behind his back he produced my brother. We cried, we kissed, and I said to my brother 'where have you been'?. We were very, very lucky".
Bess feels that she and Beth were essential to each other's rescue. They stayed in touch once they returned to London, their close friendship cemented still further when Bess married Beth's brother Jeff. The couple have been married 55 years this year.
