RIP Ted Briggs, The Last Survivor Of Only Three Men Out Of A Crew Of 1,421 To Survive When The Battle Cruiser Hood Was Sunk By The German Warship Bismarck In The North Atlantic In May 1941

RIP Ted Briggs, The Last Survivor Of Only Three Men Out Of A Crew Of 1,421 To Survive When The Battle Cruiser Hood Was Sunk By The German Warship Bismarck In The North Atlantic In May 1941

From his obituary in the Telegraph:

Only two other men - Midshipman William Dundas and Able-Seaman Bob Tilburn - survived. All three clung to small rafts for nearly four hours, singing Roll Out the Barrel to stay awake; even so, they were close to death from hypothermia when they were picked up by the destroyer Electra. Their rescuers could not believe that there was no sign of anyone else from Hood,  alive or dead. ...

Both his fellow-survivors from Hood predeceased him: William Dundas in 1965, and Bob Tilburn in 1995. Briggs, who was president of the HMS Hood Association, said shortly before the 60th anniversary of the sinking: "Hardly a day goes by when I don't think about it. I once said to an old Navy man that I sometimes wished I could forget about it. He said to me, 'You are a naval curio, and you will always remain so. You will never be allowed to forget.'" In July 2001 he visited the site of the wreck and released a plaque to commemorate the ship and those who served in her.

Comments

[Maven]

My first knowledge of the HMS Hood story was from the Johnny Horton song:

"Out of the cold and foggy night came the British ship the Hood
And evry British seaman, he knew and understood
They had to sink the Bismark, the terror of the sea
Stop those guns as big as steers and those shells as big as trees

We'll find that German battleship thats makin' such a fuss
We gotta sink the Bismark 'cause the world depends on us
Hit the decks a-runnin' boys and spin those guns around
When we find the Bismark we gotta cut her down

The Hood found the Bismark and on that fatal day
The Bismark started firin' fifteen miles away
We gotta sink the Bismark was the battle sound
But when the smoke had cleared away
The mighty Hood went down"

Made me want to read more (and I did). Quite a story.