THE SINKING OF THE EMPIRE GULL
My father was crew aboard the empire gull at the time,and although now 90 remembers it vividly,i would think he is probably the last remaining survivor who was there at the time,one of the crew had seen something dark pass through the water earlier in the day and supposed it might have been a shark,
From what i have been able to find out from records of u177,she had fired two torpedoes at the empire gull and missed,later attacking again with a single torpedo as she only had two left,this one struck.the ship heaving into the air with derricks bouncing up and down,u177 then surfaced and closed in,starting to fire with the deck guns and tracer,this continued while the crew were abandoning ship.
u177 then started closing on the lifeboats,the master,capt william james escudier tossed his cap and ships logs over the side,as scuttlebutt had it that he was wanted by the germans for stealing a ship from under their noses and bringing her back to uk ,she came alongside their lifeboat with machine guns trained on them and small blue lights on the their caps and asked where the captain was ,of course no one had seen him!
one norwegian sailor was in the water shouting for help.my father who was just a young man with severe rope burns on his hands after sliding down a rope into an empty boat got hold of him ,but couldnt get him into the boat as the man was exhausted,telling him if you dont help yourself i am letting you go!One of the other survivors came to help and they got him into the lifeboat,
u177 circled the vessel for some time shelling it,then became more distant.
one of the life boats had two survivors in it but as the ship went down ,they got dragged down with it as the lifeboat was still tied to the ship.
when the water was checked ,the tanks had not been filled and there was not much water,they had a radio,but the batteries hadnt been topped up and were dry ,so that went overboard.they had a sail but no one was sure how to rig it but the norwegian they had pulled aboard had knowledge of this rig,so they got that up.
next day somone saw what they assumed was a periscope in the distance in the water,they thought maybe she had come back for them or were waiting to attack any ship stopping to pick them up.it turned out to be the antenna of the radio they had thrown overboard ,which had come back down past them on the current!.
They were eventually picked up by hms inconstance,given clothes and remaining provisions taken from the life boats,which were then sunk by gunfire,dad kept a roll of horlicks tablets for many years!
they were landed at durban,the nowegian sailor thanking them for saving his life.
if by any chance there are any others surviving from that day,would be great to hear from them or if anyone is interested in a detailed account of what happened,i believe capt escudier died in 1985 in hastings sussex,i have been unable to find much known information on other crew,as only about 5 are listed on the sites listing the empire gull and have been unable to get hold of any photographs of her so far,
my father was very surprised to find that u177 also carried two autogyro type craft for spotting ships that could go to height of around 300 metres as there seemed to be no knowledge of this at the time