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5043371 Alan Capel (d.18th Sep 1940) On 17th of September 1940 The City of Benares, carrying 90 child evacuees, was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat. More than 70 of the children died. Seven of the survivors were Reverend Rory O'Sullivan, who had volunteered to be an escort, and six boys it had been his job to look after. Derek Capel, 12, was one of them, and was on board with his five year-old brother Alan. When their mother put her children on the London bus to connect with the train to Liverpool, the parting would have been emotional enough. But she could have no idea that, two weeks later, she would receive a telegram along the lines of: "We regret to inform you that the ship has been sunk, and your sons are presumed drowned." On September 13th the ship headed out into the Atlantic. Derek told me that he and Alan shared a cabin and were woken by the explosion the night the torpedo struck. It was 10.30 and they were wearing pyjamas. "I remember everything falling," he said. "Part of the cabin walls had collapsed. We put on our life jackets and clambered into the corridor, where we heard Rory banging on his door shouting for help. The cabins were dark, but there were blue emergency lights in the corridor. His door must have been buckled, but we banged on it to help get him out." Eventually, he got out. It had taken so long because in the dark "he'd been trying to pull his wardrobe door open," says Derek. Then Derek held Alan's hand and they went up on deck, where "Rory took charge of Alan," says Derek. They emerged not only into the cold night air, but also into a full Atlantic gale with rain, thunder and lightning. As the children made their way, as practised, to their allotted lifeboats, "a man grabbed Alan," says Derek, "saying 'I'll take the little one' and put him into a lifeboat that was ready to be lowered." Derek would never see Alan again. Derek was put into another lifeboat that heaved up and down in the huge ocean swell. "The waves were so big, it was like one second being on top of a church tower looking down, and the next, at the bottom looking up at it. It was freezing cold and we were waist-deep in water," says Derek. Because the ship was being tossed up and down so much, some of the lifeboats were being let down at a steep angle, causing their occupants to be tipped out. There were 43 in their lifeboat, some of the Indian crew, a Polish millionaire, Rory and the six boys and another escort, Mary Cornish, who that night had been at a party held on board because the captain thought they were finally out of U-boat range. He was wrong. Mary later said in a book that she was up on deck, and couldn't get down to the children when the torpedo struck, none of them survived. In the lifeboat, Rory told me he suggested Mary lend her petticoat to be hoisted up the mast to help them be seen and she did. Trust a Catholic priest to come up with that idea! "I remember seeing little icebergs in the sea," says Derek. Mary rubbed the boys' hands and legs all the time, and the Polish man made sure they got their share of the rations. "We had a piece of tinned peach once a day, and some water in the morning and afternoon until it ran out after a week," Derek told me. "We had a ship's biscuit too, but it was too dry to swallow. Rory was very ill in the lifeboat," and all of them suffered from exposure and frostbite. Two days after Derek's parents got the telegram, they were spotted by a fitter on a Sunderland flying boat, Ray Jones, and picked up by a British destroyer, HMS Anthony. But the stories of survival were few. One extraordinary one was two teenage girls, Bess Walder (15) from London and Beth Cummings (14) from Liverpool, who were rescued after clinging to the keel of an upturned lifeboat for 20 hours. Five of the six boys in the lifeboat are still alive and in their seventies, Rory is 94 and living in France, where I spoke to him recently about the ordeal. "Yes," he agreed, "a lot of people have laughed about me getting stuck in the wardrobe. The children's knocking orientated me." He remembers that night. "I tucked them up; then went to bed. When the torpedo hit, I took all seven boys up on deck. Three had been taken by a steward in the farthest cabin before I got there." Rory, born in Kent, has been living in France for 50 years, and used to teach English, Latin and French in the St Michel School in Annecy. Since retiring, he has taught privately. His Irish grandparents had 11 children. His father Cornelius "Con" O'Sullivan ("a very popular Celtic name in Brittany," says Rory) was chess champion for 20 years running in Herne Bay, Kent, and with his brother, Rick Sullivan, ("all my uncles dropped the 'O'") played for the county. There's no doubt that Rory's attentiveness to the children in such appalling circumstances all those years ago helped save their lives. Derek and Alan's own brave attempt to rescue Rory, when the ship was sinking, is all the more touching when you think how young they were.
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