Page 153 - KBHA BULLETIN 6

Southern Floe failed to arrive. Given the foul weather conditions this did not cause much

concern, initially, but later on it became apparent that something serious had happened.

Her fate would never have been known but for the fact that at 18h30 that evening an alert

look-out on the Australian destroyer HMAS Voyager spotted a man clinging to a piece of
wood in mid-sea and picked him up. He turned out to be Stoker Cecil Jones, a South

African crewman from the cruiser HMS Gloucester. Gloucester and Southern Floe had
been together in Alexandria where the South African crewmen from both ships had

enjoyed shore leave. Just before Southern Floe left for Tobruk a crewman had gone down

sick and Lt. Lewis had persuaded Stoker Jones to take the sick man's place. Gloucester’s
captain had agreed that he should temporarily join his compatriots. He was fated to be the

only survivor from Southern Floe. This is Stoker Jones’ story:

“All of a sudden [at 04h00] I heard a loud explosion. The ship must
have hit a mine. It broke her back and I floated up with the oil and
water streaming into the engine room and finally ended up right at
the stern. I was scared to death as there was a row of depth charges
on both the port and starboard sides of the ship, so all I did was to
swim away as fast as I could.

However, after a few minutes, which seemed like hours, I swam
back to where I thought the ship had sunk, and found Lt. J. Lewis,
our Captain, and about eight others in the water. He got us all
together, said a short prayer and we sang a hymn. Then he wished
us good luck, saying it was every man for himself, and told us to
hold hands so that we would not drift apart. All through that night
the sea was pretty rough and we soon had to let go of each other
and simply drifted apart.

It was no use swimming, so I just floated around clinging to a piece
of wood for the rest of the night and part of the following day. Due
to the shock and strain, I slowly started to lose consciousness. It
was the most terrifying experience I have ever had. I was all alone
in the sea and had lost all my sense of direction.

I came-to in the sick-bay of an Australian destroyer, HMAS
Voyager. They told me that at 6.30pm, just as the sun was going
down, a lookout on the ship’s fo’csle spotted me in the water – and
I was picked up. “

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