by Susan Hood
I was the boy
who shouldn’t have been born.
But I was.
I was the boy
who shouldn’t have survived.
But I did.
I was the boy
who spotted the plane
and, according to the newspapers,
“saved all of those lives.”
They say I’m a hero.
I say I’m a survivor.
I survived thanks to
the kindness of
people I didn’t know,
people who were all different,
people who wanted to help.
We’ve stayed in touch
these three years.
We always will.
The war rages on.
I know what I want to do.
All the boys
from Lifeboat 12
are doing the same.
We’re going to help.
A New Chapter
I stand in a long queue
staring up at a war poster
of Nazis burning books.
The caption reads,
“Books are Weapons in the War of Ideas.”
I tuck my book under my arm.
No wonder the Nazis don’t want people to have them.
For them, books are weapons.
For me, stories are lifesavers.
“Next!” says the man
at the desk.
Forms,
questions,
inspections.
They stamp my papers.
I sign my name.
“Welcome to the Royal Navy, young man.”
I once thought the story of my life was over,
but it has just begun.
And I can make my way.
PHOTOGRAPHS
Ken (right) with his sister Margaret and his father Charles
Ken (right) showed an early interest in ships and the sea
Ken Sparks, “full of beans”
Ken’s mother Annie Harmes Sparks, who died when he was a baby
Ken with his sister Margaret and his stepmum Nora
Billy and Peter Short
Alan and Derek Capel
Cabin aboard the Benares
Children’s playroom aboard the Benares
HMS Hurricane rescued survivors of the Benares on September 18, 1940
Father Rory O’Sullivan
Mary Cornish
Ken’s homecoming
Ken gets a kiss from his sis as the crowds welcome him home
Bohdan Nagorski, reunited with his daughters Barbara and Christine after the rescue
More than 100 people from Ken’s community chipped in to buy Ken this silver watch, in celebration of his homecoming.
This U.S. war poster is typical of ones Ken might have seen. During WWII, Nazis were burning books to stop the free flow of ideas. For Ken, his plane spotter book and Mary’s stories were literally lifesavers.
Eighty-eight-year-old Ken Sparks, August 2015
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Dear Readers,
Lifeboat 12 is based on a true World War II story I discovered in the teenage letters of my mother-in-law, Nancy Hurst-Brown Kueffner. Nancy was a British child evacuated just before the Blitz, thankfully on a different ship that did reach Canada. Once safely ashore, Nancy exchanged letters with her mother discussing news of the SS Volendam, which was torpedoed with 321 children aboard. Nancy wrote, “Isn’t it marvelous that all the children were saved?” That certainly grabbed my attention and I had to read more. Researching that story led me to the SS City of Benares.
The tragic events aboard the Benares and the miracle of Lifeboat 12’s rescue are so astounding that my first thought was to write a nonfiction book. Otherwise, I feared no one would believe it! But I know how young readers like to get inside a character’s head. In the end, I decided to write a hybrid book—part historical fiction (creatively retelling the facts from young Ken’s point of view) and part nonfiction (using carefully documented information about the actual people, places, dates, and events).
THE FACTS BEHIND LIFEBOAT 12
In the summer of 1940, Hitler was at England’s doorstep. France had surrendered weeks earlier in June and with Germans just across the English Channel, Englishmen worried that a full-scale invasion of their island was next. So when other countries offered to take British children, Parliament formed the Children’s Overseas Reception Board (CORB) to ship them to safer shores. The program selected children (ages 5 through 15) by lottery and sent them off to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa (the British Dominions). Children traveled without parents but with adult escorts (teachers, religious leaders, doctors, and nurses). Neither Winston Churchill nor Queen Elizabeth wholly approved; Parliament’s decision seemed to signal that Britain was already on the run. Some had suggested the Queen evacuate with her daughters. She replied, “The children won’t go without me. I won’t leave the King. And the King will never leave.”
Ken Sparks and his new friends were not the first to evacuate. The CORB program launched on June 20 and in ten days more than 211,000 children registered for 20,000 spots. Everyone was soon aware of the dangers. Near midnight on August 30, the SS Volendam with 321 children on board was torpedoed by a German U-boat 70 miles off the coast of Ireland. Only one of the two torpedoes exploded, so while the ship was gouged, it didn’t sink. All but one of the 606 passengers disembarked into lifeboats and were rescued by British ships. The ship’s purser was the only casualty. Two children, Patricia Allen and Michael Brooker, returned home to find their houses bombed, so they were squeezed onto the next trip on the Benares.
One week later, on September 7, 1940, the Blitzkrieg, or “Lightning War,” began. Late that afternoon, London was attacked by 348 German bombers, escorted by 617 fighter planes; sky-high fires along the docks of the East End lit the way for another round of nighttime bombers. By daybreak, 430 men, women, and children had been killed and more than 1600 injured. The bombing continued for 57 consecutive nights. Given the choice of “bombed at home or torpedoed at sea,” parents chose the lesser of two evils. They were assured that each evacuee ship would sail in a convoy under the protection of the Royal Navy.
Normally, seamen would delay an unlucky departure date of Friday the 13th, but there was no time to lose. So the SS City of Benares left Liverpool at 6:15 pm that day on her first Atlantic crossing. Crewed by 166 Asian crewmen and 43 European seamen, the ship sailed for Quebec and Montreal in a convoy of 18 ships, escorted by the destroyer HMS Winchelsea and two corvettes, and watched over at first by a Sunderland flying boat.
By Tuesday, September 17, the ship was 600 miles from shore. Typically, U-boats didn’t venture that far offshore, so rules were relaxed. Escorts allowed children to remove their life jackets and change into pajamas for the first time. However, they hadn’t taken one thing into account: Since the fall of France earlier that summer, U-boats were now based in French ports and could travel farther into the Atlantic than ever before.
That night, the City of Benares was torpedoed by a German Unterseeboot—U-boat 48. Official reports put the time at about 10:05 pm. The first two torpedoes missed, but the third hit the ship’s no. 5 hold on the aft port side, one level below the children’s cabins. Two children were killed instantly. Reports say there was no panic; passengers trained for just such an emergency and proceeded to their lifeboats in an orderly fashion.
The ship started to list to the port side and sink in the stern. Captain Landles Nicoll, 51, gave orders to abandon ship. Unfortunately, in high seas and force 10 (55 mile-an-hour) winds, many lifeboats flipped or swamped as they were lowered, especially those on the starboard side. Ken Sparks had been originally assigned to Lifeboat 8; it was among the first to be lowered on starboard. One end fell and the boat dangled vertically until a huge wave hit the boat, flinging more than 30 men, women, and children into the frigid sea. There were no survivors. If Ken had not gone back to get his coat, he would have been
aboard.
As luck would have it, Ken boarded Lifeboat 12 instead. Farthest astern on the port side, Lifeboat 12 was the only boat lowered without incident and it took on little water. Fourth Officer Ronnie Cooper assumed command and directed the lifeboat away from the sinking ship. As noted by the U-boat commander, the City of Benares sank at 10:34 pm.
The Benares’ SOS and position (56.43° North, 21.15° West) had been picked up in Scotland and relayed to the Naval Western Approaches in Liverpool. HMS Hurricane, under Lieutenant Commander Hugh Crofton Simms, was directed to proceed to the rescue “with the utmost dispatch.” Simms knew immediately that meant women and children were involved. Traveling more than 300 miles, fighting heavy waves and a force 8 gale, the Hurricane arrived on the scene of the sinking around 2:30 pm the following day. Survivors had been in the water for sixteen hours. The Hurricane’s crew worked for four hours, rescuing 115 people, 105 from the Benares.
The rescuers knew to look for twelve lifeboats. Unfortunately, they mistakenly counted one of the two lifeboats from the Marina, the convoy ship that had been torpedoed four minutes after the Benares. Lifeboat 12 had drifted quickly out of the ship’s searching pattern because it wasn’t swamped with water. So while HMS Hurricane steamed back to Greenock, Scotland, Lifeboat 12 was left behind at sea.
The 30-foot* lifeboat spent eight days at sea, desperately sailing for Ireland with enough food for about three weeks and water for about eight days. Each person received about six ounces of water per day on the lifeboat, as opposed to the four quarts of water allocated to each person on the ship.**
The major events recounted aboard the lifeboat are based on actual events. Whales visited one day. A ship was spotted on the fifth day and it did indeed approach, only to turn away again; no one is quite sure why. Perhaps they suspected the lifeboat was a decoy, a ploy used by German U-boats to stop British ships within striking range and provide a stationary target for torpedoes.
Derek Capel’s comment, “Thirteen is my lucky number,” proved oddly prophetic. By a strange coincidence, the ship left on Friday the 13th in convoy OB213; Ken Sparks (the thirteen-year-old onboard) spotted the plane that saved them; they arrived back on land thirteen days after departure; and only 13 of the original 90 evacuee children survived. You just can’t make this stuff up!
Ken Sparks was celebrated as “the boy who spotted the plane.” It was a Sunderland, a seaplane from the Royal Australian Air Force that had been accompanying a convoy. It was headed back to England around 1:45 pm when the pilot, W. H. Garing, spotted a speck on the water. He couldn’t be sure what it was and was about to fly off; then he spotted movement. It was Ken waving his pajama top!
Garing dove down for a closer look and saw a signalman spelling out C-I-T-Y-O-F-B-E-N-A-R-E-S by semaphore. But Garing was low on fuel.
He radioed a Royal Air Force Sunderland flown by Flight Lieutenant Doughie Baker. Baker zoomed over the lifeboat at about 2:00 pm, dropping food and a smoke float. Then he, in turn, radioed a ship two hours away and led it to Lifeboat 12.
At 4:30 pm, HMS Anthony, under Lieutenant Commander N. V. “Pugs” Thew, rescued Lifeboat 12 about halfway between the site of the sinking and the coast of Ireland (latitude 54.43° North/ longitude 14.20° West). They were still more than 300 miles from shore. After rescuing the passengers, they pulled the plug and Lifeboat 12 went to join the Benares at the bottom of the sea.
Lifeboat 12
As the Anthony steamed home, the telegrams went out to mourning parents, some of whom had already held funeral services for their children.
Commander Thew sped the survivors to Gourock, Scotland, where, on September 26, they received heroes’ welcomes.
From left to right: Ken Sparks, Derek Capel, Fred Steels, Howard Claytor, and Billy Short. Five of the six recued boys aboard the HMS Anthony. Note that Ken still has his overcoat.
Dear Mum and Daddy
I hope you are all well and happy as you know that I am safe we had a dreadful time on the lifeboat we had very little water and a small piece of salmon or a sardine on a ships biscuit we saw a huge whale and we were ready to drive it away in case it broke the boat one day we saw a boat which stopped for us but before we were picked up it went away and we were disapponted [sic] three days we floated around when we saw an aeroplane which dropped us food and then went away soon after two planes came along with a destroyer which picked us up and we had good food and water.
Ken’s letter home to his parents. He modestly didn’t mention his role in the rescue.
Mary Cornish, the only woman on Lifeboat 12, was lauded for her care of the boys. Her stories were based on Bulldog Drummond, a popular character in British books and movies that Ian Fleming credited as a model for his James Bond. King George VI awarded Mary the Order of the British Empire Medal in 1941, along with Ronnie Cooper and George Purvis.
Ramjam Buxoo was commended to the commander for his “unswerving devotion to duty assisting passengers at their boats and again during his 8 days in the No. 12 Lifeboat” and for “showing a very high standard of discipline which had a marked effect on the other native members of the crew.”
Despite the happy ending for Lifeboat 12, the sinking of the Benares remains a horrific tragedy. Of the 406 passengers and crew, 253 people died in the water, including Billy Short’s little brother Peter. Three children who were taken aboard HMS Hurricane unconscious did not survive the trip home: Ken’s friend Terrence Holmes, Derek Capel’s five-year-old brother Alan, and ten-year-old Derek Carr. Two crewmen, Ibrahim Balla and Abbas Bekim, died soon after they arrived back in Scotland.
Of the ninety evacuee children on board the Benares only thirteen survived in all, the six boys on Lifeboat 12 and seven others:
Derek Alfred Capel (12)
Henry (Howard) Francis Claytor (11)
Paul Shearing (11)
William (Billy) Cunningham Short (9)
Kenneth John Sparks (13)
Henry (Fred) Broderick Steels (11)
John Baker (7)
Elizabeth (Beth) Mary Cummings (14)
Jack Sidney Keeley (8)
Rex Ernest Thorne (13)
Bessie Annie Walder (15)
Louis Bernard Walder (10)
Eleanor Wright (13)
In addition, seven children who were paying passengers survived, three of them remarkably from the same family.
The Children’s Overseas Reception Board had successfully evacuated thousands of children: 1,532 to Canada, 576 to Australia, 353 to South Africa, and 203 to New Zealand. But as a result of the Benares tragedy, the CORB program was quickly canceled.
Importantly, the tragedy resulted in a major change in convoy policy. Starting in October 1940, convoys included a rescue ship, designated to stay and assist any damaged ships. This saved more than 4,194 lives in the coming years.
Five of the Lifeboat 12 boys grew up to join the Royal Navy. (Paul Shearing joined the Army instead.) Ken joined in 1944 as a boy bugler. When people spoke of him as a hero, he modestly told them, “We were survivors, not heroes.”
Since then, Bernares survivors have held regular reunions. In 1988, according to a report in The Independent, they met two Germans who had been aboard U-boat 48: Wilhelm Kruse, the wireless operator, and Edouard Hansen, the engineer. Survivors of the Benares were “touched to hear that the German crew had been moved to tears on returning to their base in Lorient and discovering that the Benares cargo was mostly children.”
* * *
*Lifeboats on the City of Benares ranged in size from 23 to 30 feet.
**Scale of provisions, General Register and Record Office of Shipping & Seamen, Tower Hill, London, E.C.3. National Archives BT 381/1106.
SOURCES
In my research, I consulted many primary sources at the National Archives, British Library, and National Maritime Museum in England, including firsthand accounts from survivors from both published and unpublished memoirs, recordings, newspaper articles, letters, ships’ manifests, forms, telegrams, m
eeting minutes, and top secret government files that were only opened to the public in the 1970s. (See documented quotes on page 301.)
I read several Bulldog Drummond stories, but I concocted the story included here, weaving the boys’ names into it, much the way Mary might have. All of the boys later said that it was Mary’s stories that kept them alive.
I had the great good fortune to locate several of the “boys” of Lifeboat 12, now in their eighties or nineties, including Ken Sparks. I traveled to England in August 2015 and interviewed eighty-eight-year-old Ken, whose humor and optimism is reflected in a sign that hangs outside the small house where he has lived for forty years; it says: Shangri La. Ken was a lovely, funny, humble man with a great zest for life. He happily shared his story and a trunkful of memorabilia, including the silver watch he kept all these years. [See photo insert.] Tragically, Ken died two months later. This book is a tribute to him and all the other survivors.
INTERVIEWS
Ken Sparks
Derek Capel
Derek Bech, a survivor whose family had been paying passengers
Blake Simms, son of Hugh Crofton Simms, commander of HMS Hurricane
Sean Hollands, nephew of Father O’Sullivan, and his wife Rosemary
ADULT BOOKS
Barker, Ralph. Children of the Benares: A War Crime and Its Victims. London: Grafton Books, 1990.
Balachandran, C. “Circulation through Seafaring: Indian Seamen, 1890–1945.” In Society and Circulation: Mobile People and Itinerant Cultures in South Asia, 1750–1950. Edited by Claude Markovits, Jacques Pouchepadass, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. London: Anthem Press, 2006.
