Last survivor of sinking of HMS Hood during Second World War dies at 85

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This article was published 06/10/2008 (6561 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

LONDON – Ted Briggs, the last survivor of the Second World War sinking of the British battle cruiser HMS Hood, has died. He was 85.

Briggs died Saturday in a hospital in Portsmouth, southern England.

Briggs was one of only three seamen among the 1,418-strong crew to survive an attack by the German battleship Bismarck on May 24,’41.

A salvo from the Bismarck hit the Hood during the Battle of the Denmark Strait and the magazine exploded, tearing the ship in half.

It sank within three minutes.

Briggs, an’-year-old signalman, later described how he had been sucked under by the sinking ship before being propelled to the surface, where he saw HMS Hood disappearing below the waves.

“I turned and swam as best I could in water four inches (10 centimetres) thick with oil and managed to get on one of the small rafts she carried, of which there were a large number floating around,” he wrote in an account posted on the HMS Hood Association’s Web site.

“When I turned again she had gone and there was a fire on the water where her bows had been.”

Briggs said he saw two other survivors, Midshipman William Dundas and Able Seaman Bob Tilburn, on rafts nearby. “There was not another soul to be seen,” he wrote.

The trio were picked up by a British destroyer three hours later.

Dundas died in’65, Tilburn in’95.

The sinking of the flagship of the British Home Fleet, and the heavy loss of life, shocked a country proud of its naval might.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered that the Bismarck be hunted down and destroyed. The German ship was pursued by British forces and sunk on May 27, with the loss of almost 2,000 of its 2,200-strong crew.

In 2001, the wreckage of the Hood was found, almost 3,000 metres below the ocean’s surface between Greenland and Iceland.

Briggs helped lay a plaque on the underwater wreckage, which was designated an official war grave by the British government.

Television producer Rob White, who was with Briggs for the ceremony, said he was a man of “great modesty.”

“If you said ‘you’re a hero,’ he used to say ‘I was not a hero, I was a survivor,”‘ White said. “He felt he had to embody that loss and sacrifice and he did in an unassuming manner.”

Briggs remained in the navy until’73.

He is survived by his wife, Clare. Funeral details were not immediately available.