Lieut. Anthony d'Evelyn Trevor Sangster R.N.

Lieutenant Tony Sangster R.N. survived the sinking of the SS Britannia and went on to be Gunnery and Correpondence Officer on HMS Venomous.

The following extract appears in a website about Venomous:

"Tony Sangster...was posted to the cruiser, HMS York, at Singapore.

On the 11 March 1941 he embarked at Liverpool on the SS Britannia, a passenger liner adapted for use as a troop carrier, bound for Bombay via Freetown and Durban. The Britannia was attacked and sunk by the German commerce raider Thor near the Cape Verde Islands on the 24th March and passengers and crew took to the lifeboats.

Tony Sangster's lifeboat was waterlogged with only the stem and stern above water. There were only nine survivors out of the fifty four in his lifeboat when they were picked up after five days by the neutral  Spanish ship, Cabo de Hornos. (It appears that this was Lifeboat Number 10 commanded by Lt Tadhunter, he and Donald Brown were among the survivors.)

They were landed at Tenerife in the Canary Islands where the British Consul negotiated with the Captain General of the Canaries that they would be treated as, "Distressed British Seaman" and confined in a hotel at Santa Cruz which constituted an "internment camp". They were under parole and accountable to the Consul and their Senior Naval Officer. After four months the Consul was able to arrange for them to be released at Gibraltar and he was posted to the destroyer HMS Montrose as Sub Lt Navy Signals in September 1841".

Tony Sangster signed Dad's ship's menu as "A d'E. T Sangsta".

Colin Bower
16 October 2020

Lifeboats