Petty Officer Norman Walton (15 Jan 1921 - 20 April 2005)
Norman Walton, then an Able Seaman was the sole survivor
of the cruiser HMS Neptune, spending five days in a Carley
float raft with sixteen men in rough weather. He was born
on 15 January 1921, the eldest of nine children at Rowland
Gill near Gatehead in County Durham in the UK, joining the
Royal Navy in 1938 aged 17. He was trained as an antisubmarine
detection asdic operator
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Leading Seaman Norman Walton |
He was shipped to the Mediterranean and joined he destroyers
HMS Janus. Then he was on board the Depot Ship HMS Woolwich
and paid a visit to the submarine Tetrarch. He had to dive
overboard as the ship was moving out of the defense gate
and swam to the outer breakwater and then back to his ship.
Tetrarch never returned from that patrol. Then he was drafted
to an armed minesweeper trawler, probably of the South African “Southern” class,
operating out of Tobruk during the siege. It was sunk by
enemy aircraft and he was in the water for several hours
before being picked up. This experience probably saved his
life later as he used it to keep alive in a Carley float
from HMS Neptune.
Then he joined the cruiser HMS Neptune on 13 November 1941.
A month later on 18/19 December 1941, he was in trouble again.
The Neptune leading two other cruisers, Aurora and Penelope
and four destroyers - Kandahar, Lance, Lively and Havoc,
sailed from the island of Malta on a dark night in a gale
arriving at midnight about 12 miles off the coastline near
Tripoli, Libya where it was thought an enemy convoy was approaching.
The squadron waited for the convoy but then ran into an unsuspected
uncharted enemy mine field. Neptune hit four mines in the
space of two hours and sank taking most of her crew with
her. Kandahar came alongside her to tow her out of the minefield
and was also seriously damaged by a mine and had to retire.
Aurora and Penelope were both damaged and with three destroyers
were ordered by Captain Rory O’Conor in Neptune to
return to Malta . The destroyer Kandahar whose stern had
been damaged and could not drive herself forward was left
to drift out of the minefield away from the enemy shoreline.
 HMS
Neptune
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Walton was part of a cable party on Neptune’s forecastle
preparing towing lines. He says that his leg was injured
by a broken hawser wire. After the fourth hit by a mine,
the cruiser was further seriously damaged and started to
sink.. Waltom climbed down the anchor cable a dropped gently
into the water and was able to swim. He made for a carley
float which would take about twelve men.. It was already
filled with men with others clinging to it or swimming around.
His captain who was disabled according to some stories but
not Walton was carefully lifted aboard. As the ship went
down in the night there was a cheer from the men in the water
or on the raft. There were sixteen or more left by morning
Walton continued to swim around to keep warm for three days
or hang on the raft to take a rest. Finally enough men on
the float had died to make room for the swimmers. O‘Conor
encouraged them to use their hands to paddle towards the
enemy shore which was only a few miles away. But this didn’t
seem to help much.
The men just sat in the float and waited for a ship to save
them or die. Not much mention has been made if they had water
or any sustenance. This upset Walton as he tried to urge
them to swim with him and get warm and keep themselves active
and in a positive frame of mind. But being only an Able Seaman
nobody took much notice of him. One by one they died and
were pushed into the sea. The captain died on the day before
Christmas eve in the arms of Walton and, once they made sure
he was dead, he too was pushed gently over the side. By this
time there were only two men left Walton and Able Seaman
Price. On the next day, Christmas Eve, an Italian plane flew
over them and very soon they were picked up by an Italian
torpedo boat, both in terrible straits with little sleep
for days and no food or water.
Walton was able to grab a propellor metal guard and was
pulled aboard becoming unconscious immediately. The next
day, Christmas Day 1941, he woke up in a hospital in Tripoli.
They were feeding him thin gruel and he was told that Albert
Price had died. He was blind but his eyesight gradually came
back. When he looked in the mirror his face was not recognisable.
His tongue was twice its normal size, his nose was spread
across his face and it was still black from the oil impregnated
in his skin. He was treated very well in hospital and the
Italians made a fuss of him. When he was able to eat properly,
the food given to him was excellent. His broken leg was mending
well. On New Years Day he was put aboard the hospital ship “Grandisca” being
landed in Bari in a transit camp. Eventualy ending up in
Prisoner of War camp 60 in Northern Italy
He was a POW for 18 months, being repatriated in the summer
of 1943. After that he served in a frigate in the Murmansk
run and then in the minesweeper “Rowena”, being
demobbed in 1946. After the war he became a professional
boxer fighting 147 fights. He was called up in the Korean
War for five years retiring as a petty officer. He then worked
in a firm in Leeds, retiring in 1985. His wife Irene Dodds
died in 2005 aged 84. He is survived by his daughter.
He and his wife were brought from England and returned by
a group of New Zealanders in 1991. British Airways donated
the airline tickets. He didn’t want to come at first
because he had a tendency to burst into tears if he talked
about his experiences and he also had a lot of nightmares.
He had refused to talk to the press for years. It embarrassed
him as he was known to be tough,. He was always being asked
why he alone of all the crew survived. He couldn’t
answer it - whether it was his strong constitution or just
plain luck. But it was something that kept going over his
mind. This was strange because he is an outgoing and friendly
person who loved to talk. He finally agreed as his family
said it would be good for him and this proved to be the case.
He had befriended a Kiwi, a man called John Newton in Rowena,
who, with the mayor of Christchurch who had been in Aurora,
tried to trace him. The New Zealander next-of-kin wanted
to know what had happened to their loved ones. Finally they
traced him and Walton and his wife were to come on the day
that Neptune was sunk - 19 December 1941 - to attend the
sinking of HMS Neptune memorial service which takes place
every year in a church in Christchurch, South Island.
They were treated like royalty everywhere they went. Walton
said that it was therapeutic journey.
“It helped me to come to terms with my being the only
one saved. I am a different fellow now. I have been able
to get the thing off my mind, talk about it, relieve myself
and also relieve the relatives. The amazing thing was that
the relatives seemed to know almost nothing about what happened
and how the Neptune was lost. I was able to fill in the gaps
for them. I did not breakdown too often except once when
I was talking to the niece of a particularly good friend
of mine who I got know in the ship.”
Walton himself died on 20 April 2005 at the age of 84.
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