Sid Graham was born in Tidal Basin, Custom House in London’s East End. He was the son of Sidney ‘Siddy’ Graham, a seaman from Barbados, and his English wife, an East Ender called Emma. Before the war, young Sid dreamed of following in his father’s footsteps and going to sea, and at the age of 15 he fulfilled his ambition and became a galley boy on the Nernta, a ship sailing to South America. During the war Sid served as a merchant seaman (stoker) on Atlantic and Arctic convoys. It was dangerous work for it was the merchant seamen who suffered the most from the German U-boat (submarine) attacks.
Early in 1942 Sid’s worst fears were realised. He was crossing the Atlantic on a supply ship, the SS Scottish Star when it was torpedoed by an Italian submarine. Sid recalled:
When we got torpedoed I went up in the air and hit my ribs on the washbasin...busted ‘em...I got up on the companionway and that’s when the submarine started to shell us. We wasn’t going down quick enough for him. I was badly hit in the arm. I went in the lifeboat and we got away from the ship and the ship went down...Luckily enough we were not in the cold, but we didn’t know where we were going.
The shipwrecked crew had no idea where they were because their voyage was a ‘special operation’. Sid survived for ten days in the lifeboat with twenty other crew members.
On the lifeboat drinking water was strictly rationed. The lifeboat drifted 600 miles and the survivors were tossed around the Atlantic Ocean, suffering from severe cold and sea-sickness and existing on meagre daily rations which included a couple of dry biscuits. When the men were picked up by a fishing boat from Barbados, they realised they had drifted into the Caribbean. Sid had never visited Barbados before but his father had come from the island and he had relatives there, although Sid had never met them. Eventually, Sid’s Aunt Dorothy was located, and she took him in. However, being wartime there was no way of letting his family know he was safe, and six months passed before a ship arrived to take him back to Britain. There were tears of joy when Sid was reunited with his parents and five younger siblings: ‘My mother, God rest her soul, had been going crazy when I was away,’ he later said.
This information is from Stephen Bourne's books Mother Country: Britain's Black Community on the Home Front 1939-45 (The History Press, 2010) , The Motherland Calls: Britain's Black Servicemen and Women 1939-45 (The History Press, 2012) and War to Windrush: Black Women in Britain 1939-48 (Jacaranda Books, 2018).
SECOND WORLD WAR CONTENTS:
COMING SOON!
Profiles People
Living through Conflict
A Fight For Freedom
Commonwealth War Graves Commission Stories
Commemoration and Legacy
Artistic Responses to Conflict