ABSTRACT
Tedder sailed from Marseille on 11 May aboard the Omrah, an ex-Orient liner of 8,000 tons, as part of a convoy bound for Alexandria with an escort of ‘neat little Jap destroyers’. At 5 p.m. next day, he found himself sitting on the gun platform of one of those destroyers in warm sunshine, writing to Rosalinde and counting his blessings, in order of priority: ‘I’ve got my money’, he told her, ‘one pipe and baccy, all my papers and I’m dry.’ The Omrah had been torpedoed that morning, about 40 miles off Cape Spartivento, the southern tip of Sardinia. Several seamen were killed or injured, but she went down very slowly in a calm sea in broad daylight and the survivors were able to get away safely in lifeboats. Tedder photographed and described her last moments: ‘she began to slide down, smoke still coming out of her funnel; the bows went down, she heeled right over towards us and then smoothly and almost silently she slid down nose-first out of sight’. There was, he thought, ‘something pathetic about the trail of smoke she left, which was still drifting away when there was no sign of her’.
