On a windswept night in the summer of 1940, Ken Sparks, then a boy of 13, was one of only a handful of young Canada-bound evacuees who survived the torpedoing of the City of Benares.

JOHN WRIGHT tells his remarkable story.

Why would you give your children away to strangers unless it was to save their lives? The parents of the 3500 children evacuated from Britain in the summer of 1940 must have clung to this logic, just as the kids themselves (some as young as five) would have clung to their teddy bears and life jackets.

Ken Sparks, left, returning with other rescued children from the City of Benares. Sadly, many others perished.

How would it affect them? Would they be safe? Would they see their parents again?

No one knew the war had five more years to go.

The children were from all over Britain, mainly the big industrial centres, and 61 were from Norwich.

Ken Sparks was 13 when he boarded the ship, the City of Benares, bound for Canada.

Ken, now 75 and living in Sprowston, was actually born in London. Norfolk became his “adopted home” 40 years ago when he was first attracted to its gentle pace of life, finally settling in Norwich in 1968.
He still remembers his evacuee experience clearly enough to get “just an occasional nightmare about it”.

The reason: because one night after a few days at sea, his ship was torpedoed and sunk, and more than 70 of the 90 children on board died.
It’s not as though the authorities entrusted with the duty of care didn’t have a warning of imminent tragedy.

Two weeks before, another ship bound for Canada, the Volendam, had already been torpedoed. Those children had all been saved.

Surely that was the time for the British Government to stop the evacuations, but they didn’t. Instead, they even took advantage of the children’s own pluck and bravado and let them risk their lives again.

Ken Sparks looks over newspaper cuttings of the sinking of the City of Benares.

“There were four of us in the cabin,” said Ken.

“The other boys were all younger than me, between nine and 11. The torpedo hit about 10 o’clock one night.”

This brave boy calmly woke them all up, herded them along the corridor and made sure they made it safely up the stairs. He said: “It was just like the many boat drills we’d done.

“The explosion had blown the hatch cover off,” said Ken. “When we got on deck, it was a proper Atlantic storm with lightning, and it was raining.

“I watched the others head off to their allotted lifeboat stations, then turned to go to mine.”

“As I made my way in the dark, trying not to trip on things, someone grabbed me and shouted ‘here, there’s room in this boat!’”

In fact, had Ken reached his proper lifeboat, he wouldn’t be alive today.

“Nearly everyone got into the boats, but the swell was so big,” he said.

“I saw some of them get swamped or tipped over.”

The children were all wearing pyjamas.

There were 43 of them in their boat; some of the Indian crew, a priest, a Polish millionaire, six boys and their escort Mary Cornish, whose petticoat they hoisted up the mast at one stage to help them be seen.

“One of the crew died,” said Ken, “after drinking seawater.”

“Mary Cornish rubbed our hands and legs all the time,” he said, and the Polish man made sure the kids got their share of the lifeboat’s rations.

“We had a piece of tinned peach, a ship’s biscuit and a sip of water once a day; sometimes a bit of peach juice with the peach.”

After six days the head of the evacuation scheme had gone to Ken’s parents’ house.

“He told them to give up hope,” said Ken.

Two and a-half days later, they were picked up by a British destroyer, HMS Anthony, after being spotted by the navigating officer on a Sunderland flying boat.

“I’m still in touch with his wife,” said Ken.

Ken said they’d been trying to steer the lifeboat towards Britain, but they’d been found closer to Iceland.

“We were taken to Greenock in Scotland and were carried ashore, too weak to walk.

“I remember a big hotel room and hot baths. We couldn’t sleep. It was too comfortable.

The ill-fated City of Benares, torpedoed by the Germans while taking evacuees to Canada.

“They gave us kilts to wear because they didn’t have the coupons that were necessary to buy other clothes. After a couple of days we were put on a train home, and put in hospital because there was no feeling in our feet. Our feet had been in water the whole time.”

As for the others, two girls were found clinging to the keel of an upturned boat, singing their hearts out, one of them later marrying the brother of the other. But only tragedy would be presented to virtually every other parent.

There is no doubt that Norfolk has helped ease his mind, full of terrible memories as it is, as much as anything has.

He knew in 1962, just as the Beatles were becoming a group, and when he and his wife holidayed for the first time in a chalet in Stalham, that this was the place for them.

“I’ve supported Norwich City for 34 years, and Norwich is one of the best places I’ve ever lived” said Ken proudly.

First they lived in Brundall, then Hethersett, and now Sprowston. Previously a postman, Ken became stores manager at the John Innes Research Institute. Ken and Eileen have a son, Robert.

It seems the rest of his family have also been drawn to Norfolk’s charms.
His sister Margaret, who was three when she’d waved him goodbye in 1940, has settled in Norfolk too and lives in Dereham.

Ken’s mother, Norah, is not letting him out of her sight this time.

“She’s 94 and fiercely independent,” said Ken, “and lives only 10 minutes’ drive away from me.”

This modest hero, Ken Sparks, speaks in an easy and friendly way about his ordeal, and seems to think nothing of the role he instinctively gave himself that night when the torpedo hit.

The character he showed in trying to protect the younger boys in his cabin is all the more poignant, of course, knowing that he was only a child himself.