Thread: Ted Briggs - last survivor of HMS Hood

The last remaining survivor of the sinking of WWII battle cruiser HMS Hood in May 1941 has died at the age of 85, his naval association has said.

Ted Briggs, from Hampshire, was one of just three survivors out of more than 1,400 crew after an exchange of fire with the German battleship Bismarck.


BBC NEWS | UK | Last veteran of Hood sinking dies

From Daily Telegraph.


Ted Briggs, 85, was one of only three of 1,418 crew that survived the sinking during the Battle of the Denmark Strait.

Mr Briggs, from Fareham in Hampshire, passed away at the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth on Saturday night.

He was boy signalman aged 18 when the fifth salvo from the Bismarck hit the ship's magazine resulting in a catastrophic explosion. It tore the ship in half and it sank in less than three minutes.

The flagship of the fleet was part of a force ordered to engage the Bismarck and her escort cruiser Prinz Eugen off Greenland.

Mr Briggs was near the bridge when the warship began to roll and he was sucked under by the sinking ship before being propelled back up.

He was soon joined by the only two other survivors; midshipman William Dundass, who died in 1965 and able seaman Bob Tilburn who died in 1995.

The trio spent three hours on the freezing sea before they were picked up by the destroyer HMS Electra close to death.

Briggs, who was president of the HMS Hood Association, described what he saw in the aftermath:

"When I came to the surface I was on her (the Hood's) port side...I turned and swam as best I could in water 4" thick with oil and managed to get on one of the small rafts she carried, of which there were a large number floating around.

"When I turned again she had gone and there was a fire on the water where her bows had been. Over on the other side I saw Dundas and Tilburn on similar rafts. There was not another soul to be seen.

"We hand-paddled towards each other and held on to one another's rafts until our hands became too numb to do so."

In the days after the sinking, Britain's wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered the Bismarck found and sunk.

On May 27, the battleship was finally sunk after several days of attacks by Royal Navy ships and the Royal Air Force.

Peter Heys, chairman of the HMS Hood Association said: "He was a humorous man but he did not like to be reminded of the sinking as he had to pulled out of the freezing water."

Mr Briggs left the navy in 1973 at the rank of lieutenant and he then became a manager of an estate agents in Fareham. He was awarded the MBE in 1973.

The wreck of HMS Hood was discovered in 2001 and Mr Briggs lay a bronze plaque naming all those who died.

YouTube - HMS Hood sinking & survivor Ted Briggs

Very sad, but inevitable to hear of his passing.

I remember seeing the documentary which featured Ted lowering a plaque onto the wreck. He understandably became tearful talking about the sinking. "Time shall not diminish them...."

A fuller Obit now in the Telegraph

Ted Briggs - Telegraph

As an 18-year-old Flag-Lieutenant's messenger, Briggs was on Hood's compass platform when a shell from Bismarck hit the ship between centre and stern, penetrated the deck, exploded and touched off the ammunition in the four-inch and 15-inch magazines. According to one witness, the column of flame generated was “four times the height of the mainmast".

Ted Briggs himself recalled that he was lifted off his feet and dumped headfirst on the deck: "Then she started listing to starboard. She righted herself, and started going over to port. When she had gone over by about 40 degrees we realised she was not coming back." There was no time, or need, for an order to abandon ship. Hood sank within three minutes.

On his way to the compass platform shortly before the action, Briggs had bumped into a fellow-sailor, Frank Tuxworth, with whom he had earlier been playing cards. Tuxworth joked: "Do you remember, Briggo, that when the Exeter went into action with the Graf Spee, there was only one signalman saved?" Briggs laughed and replied: "If that happens to us, it'll be me who's saved, Tux."

Briggs was sucked down beneath the sea. He later wrote: "I had heard it was nice to drown. I stopped trying to swim upwards. The water was a peaceful cradle - I was ready to meet my God. My blissful acceptance of death ended in a sudden surge beneath me, which shot me to the surface like a decanted cork in a champagne bottle. I turned, and 50 yards away I could see the bows of the Hood vertical in the sea. It was the most frightening aspect of my ordeal, and a vision which was to recur terrifyingly in nightmares for the next 40 years."

Briggs swam clear of the stricken ship and, when he looked back, she had gone.

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.

Hood, launched in 1918, was at the time still the biggest warship ever built. "She was the outward and visible manifestation of sea-power," wrote Sir Ludovic Kennedy in his book Pursuit: the Sinking of the Bismarck. "For most Englishmen the news of Hood's death was traumatic, as though Buckingham Palace had been laid flat or the Prime Minister assassinated."

Albert Edward Pryke Briggs was born on March 1 1923 at Redcar, in the North Riding of Yorkshire. He never knew his father, a builder and decorator who died in a fall from a ladder three months before his son's birth. Ted first saw Hood when he was only 12 and she was anchored off the mouth of the Tees. In his book, Flagship Hood, co-written with the late Alan Coles and published in 1985, he recalled: "I stood on the beach for some considerable time, drinking in the beauty, grace and immaculate strength of her."

The very next day he went to the local recruiting office and announced that he wanted to join the Royal Navy: "They patted me gently on the head," he remembered, "and told me to come back when I was 15. So I did just that. I had joined up within a week of my 15th birthday."

After his training at HMS Ganges, Ipswich, Briggs was surprised and delighted to be assigned to Hood; he joined her on June 29 1939, just before war was declared. "It never once occurred to me that she might be sunk," he said. "As far as I was concerned, she was invincible. And everybody on board shared this view."

The fact was, however, that this formidable vessel had one - and, as it turned out, fatal - weakness: her deck armour was not strong enough to withstand the vertical trajectory of a shell fired at extreme range. It was a weakness that the Bismarck was able to exploit.

The British were aware in May 1941 that the German fleet had left Norway, and guessed that it would attempt to use the Denmark Strait between Iceland and Greenland to break through to the Atlantic, where it would attack the convoys carrying supplies and arms from America to Britain.

On the evening of May 23 Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen were sighted in the Strait. Hood, along with Prince of Wales and six destroyers, went to intercept them. There followed several nerve-wracking hours of cat-and-mouse, as Hood and her sister ships tried to locate the Germans. Although dawn at this latitude was at 2am, visibility was poor; there were snow flurries, and radar at this stage of the war was not fully effective beyond 20 miles.

Finally, at 5.35am on May 24, Hood spotted the enemy. She moved to close in, and attacked. Briggs recalled: "We had taken them by surprise, and fired about six salvoes before she replied. And when she did, her gunnery was excellent. The third salvo hit us at the base of the mainmast, causing a fire - some of the ammunition was exploding.

"Then there was a hit just above the compass platform. It didn't explode but it caused some bodies to fall down. I saw one officer with no hands and no face - I knew every officer on the ship, but I didn't recognise him. We were closing in to get the range we wanted, and that's when the final salvo hit. I didn't hear any explosion - all I saw was a terrific sheet of flame."

Ted Briggs served 35 years in the navy, reaching the rank of lieutenant. He was appointed MBE in 1973, and until his retirement in 1988 worked as a furnished letting manager for an estate agent at Fareham, in Hampshire.

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.

Ted Briggs married twice, and his second wife, Clare, survives him. There were no children.

An excellent obit.

Very sad to see the last survivor from the Mighty Hood has left us. I hope he finds a fair wind and a calm sea.

Regards
Hugh

Originally Posted by Hugh

Very sad to see the last survivor from the Mighty Hood has left us. I hope he finds a fair wind and a calm sea.

Regards
Hugh

I've just caught up with this thread !

God Bless the man with " the gentle voice " ..... I love to watch the reruns of the Hood program on PBS here ! ...

Ted Briggs, last survivor of HMS Hood | Ted Briggs | The Economist