Sea Story

This week a young man of 20 left Nassau in the Bahamas to rejoin the war.

Behind him already lay one of the most hair-raising adventure stories to come out of World War II and one of the most amazing in seafaring history.

On Aug. 21, 1940, the British freighter Anglo Saxon, out of England bound for Buenos Aires, was attacked 500 miles south of the Azores by the German raider Weser, since captured by a Canadian armed merchant cruiser. The raider shelled the ship, killing most of the crew and destroying all but one of the ship's boats.

Unseen by the raider, the last boat, a 16-ft. jolly boat containing seven men (the ship's chief officer, third engineer, wireless operator, gunner, three seamen), got safely away.

The men rowed and rowed westward, under a maddening heat. On the tenth day, the wireless operator died. Four men jumped overboard. Only men alive after 25 days were Able Seamen Wilbert Roy Widdicombe, 24, and Robert George Tapscott, 19.

When the sun did not attack them, storms tore at their boat. For food they subsisted mostly on seaweed.

They were no longer strong enough to row. Little rain fell. Finally, parched, shriveled, black-skinned, they broke the glass of their compass and sipped the distilled water and alcohol. After that they never knew where they were going. They just drifted.

They saw two ships pass, and signaled frantically but without avail. They fought to keep hold of their minds. Widdicombe broke off his front teeth trying to eat his shoes. Tapscott spent most of the time torpid in the boat's bottom.

On the 68th day Widdicombe, too, grew weaker and nearly lost consciousness. He could hardly see. Then a lone sea gull flew close to the boat. There were other signs that they were near land. Next dawn an island was visible.

Somehow he roused Tapscott, and somehow--he never knew--they guided their boat to land. It was the 70th day. The island was Eleuthera, in the Bahamas, over 2,500 miles from where they had abandoned ship. A farmer and his wife, who saw the empty boat on the beach and followed the tracks, found them nearby.

By last week Seaman Tapscott, a thin-featured blond fellow now weighing more than 170 pounds, was ready once more for action. A few days after he received his pay check for the 70 days he spent in the open boat, he left Nassau for Canada. There he meant to enlist.

Widdicombe did not go with him. First to recover, the elder seaman sailed last February from New York to see his father in Wales. His ship, the Siamese Prince, was torpedoed in the Atlantic. All aboard were presumably lost, including Seaman Widdicombe.

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