Jimmy Miles was 19 on that early 1942 morning when a torpedo hit his ship the Mariette as It cruised the Indian Ocean with its convoy amid the chaos of a five-hour attack.

They were 200 miles south of Madagascar when a submarine strike began at 11 p.m., and by dawn six of seven ships were sunk. The seas were high and winds blowing at 40 miles per hour when the Mariette's crew felt the hit and scrambled for life rafts as the last of the British cargo operations Royal Fleet Auxiliary convoy went down.

STRUGGLED ONTO RAFT

Five men struggled to get Aboard Jimmy's raft and one died in the process, but the four whom daylight found floating. directionlessly off the East African Coast were the sole survivors of their 54-men crew. They were Able Seamen Jimmy Miles of Souris, P.E.I., Big Dolly MacLeod from the Isle of Skye, Jimmy Howe of London and Alex Graham from the Isle of Lewis.

With that dawning, began nine days of aimless drifting punctuated by conversation, dozing, I fear and tragedy. The men marked passing days with a notch in the wood each morning while they floated on an open raft secured between four 40-gallon drums, eating hard biscuits and canned milk.

They parceled out water with precise measure, so much for drinking.

YOUNG, STRONG

"How we survived, I'm not sure, but we were young and strong at the time," said Mr. Miles as he recalled the days that passed one on another.

"There were no heros, I can tell you that," but every day was a new experience for the four men who never knew what to expect the next.

They dozed on and off, and when weather was fine rigged their clothes up to dry, and huddled under tarpaulin when foul.

He remembers most how they took care of each other, told stories and talked privately about their families. And unlike one might expect, their tempers never flared. It was just a long period of waiting.

"Lots happened down there but I can't remember it all, there was no sense of direction...we were just adrift."

He read a Red Cross survival manual from cover to cover so many times he knew it by heart as they waited, not knowing for what.

HEADED FOR HOME

Whether it was delirium or despair on their fourth day out that caused Big Dolly MacLeod to head for home, no one knows, but he had had enough.

"He just stood up and said he was going home to the Isle of Skye, , , said Mr. Miles, as he rememberd the big man who walked off the raft and was never seen again.

It was five days later, on their ninth day at sea, that the sound of a plane roused the remaining three. Somehow the pilot spotted them and circled back, dipping his wings and returning to drop a canvass bag of cigarettes and supplies.

By then their lungs were clouded and memories were vague and, "I don't think we would have lasted much longer," said Mr. Miles, who can't recall if they had even notched the raft that last day.

By morning a ship arrived and the men were loaded on and carried to a hospital, but Mr. Miles has no memory of that transfer.

It's not often that he will talk about those nine days or the men he soon lost contact with, although they probably shared the most astounding period of each of their lives. Nor did the experience keep him off the ocean.

Today Mr. Miles lives quietly in the town of Souris on eastern P.E.I., having just retired as head of the Canadian Coast Guard branch in his home port and a full life at sea.

Copyright
Waldron H. Leard