Youre forty years old, and war is just breaking out in Europe. Do you want to spend the hostilities as stores and acquisitions manager in your father-in-laws factory in the Midlands?

Its simply not an option for our hero, and he signs on the Sue N Dewey, bound for Canada, in the hope of joining the services there. But then, 1,500 miles into the Atlantic, disaster strikes...

And now I began to really panic. I had been marooned on a doomed ship. The next big wave would shove the Sue N beyond her centre of gravity and she would turn over and sink like a stone.

How he kept alive, got the...