D/S Ingerfem

...

Thereupon appeared as Witness, the sole surviver, Ole Næss ...

"The s/s "INGERFEM" left Loch Ewe, Scotland, on the 24th day of December, 1942, in ballast, bound for Halifax, Nova Scotia, in convoy. After being three days out from Port, we lost the convoy and proceeded for two days alone. On the afternoon of the 29th of December, two British airplanes appeared above us and gave us instructions to the effect that they would return at 10 p.m. the same evening to advise us whether to proceed to Canada or return to Scotland, as the ship's engine was out of repair; this trouble with the engine was the cause of our dropping out of the convoy. Up to 10.30 p.m. the airplanes had not returned, but at that hour a torpedo hit the vessel and she went down within five minutes. The crew took to two lifeboats. I was one of the last to leave the ship, and as I was getting into the lifeboat, I saw the Captain, the 3rd Officer and one of the Norwegian Gunners trying to get another lifeboat launched from the bridge, but before they could do so, the vessel broke and sank. There were eight men i my lifeboat and I would say there were about thirty in the second one, which we lost in the darkness. The eight of us drifted in this lifeboat for three days. On the third day, the 1st day of January, 1943, the lifeboat capsized, but we all were able to get back into it again. The same day the Chief Officer and two of the crew died. After this the lifeboat was practically always full of water and it was difficult to keep afloat. For a further seven days we drifted, and on the seventh day the lifeboat again turned over, but the remaining five of us suceeded in righting the lifeboat again. During that night the other four men died, and I drifted alone for some days until the 11th January, on which day I was picked up five hundred miles west of Scotland, by the s/s "STEEMAC", an American vessel, and landed in Bangor Bay, Northern Ireland, on 13th day of January, 1943 and taken to Ards District Hospital, Newtownards, Co. Down, suffering from severe shock and salt water sores."

The above being the only evidence, the Maritime Declaration was then terminated.

...