Ted Briggs, who has died aged 85, was one of only three men out of a crew of 1,421 to survive when the battle cruiser Hood was sunk by the German warship Bismarck in the North Atlantic in May 1941.
Briggs was sucked down beneath the sea. He later wrote: "I had heard it was nice to drown. I stopped trying to swim upwards. The water was a peaceful cradle - I was ready to meet my God. My blissful acceptance of death ended in a sudden surge beneath me, which shot me to the surface like a decanted cork in a champagne bottle. I turned, and 50 yards away I could see the bows of the Hood vertical in the sea. It was the most frightening aspect of my ordeal, and a vision which was to recur terrifyingly in nightmares for the next 40 years."
Briggs swam clear of the stricken ship and, when he looked back, she had gone.
Only two other men - Midshipman William Dundas and Able-Seaman Bob Tilburn - survived. All three clung to small rafts for nearly four hours, singing Roll Out the Barrel to stay awake; even so, they were close to death from hypothermia when they were picked up by the destroyer Electra. Their rescuers could not believe that there was no sign of anyone else from Hood, alive or dead