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John Miles, Able Seaman 
It is with great sadness that we have
learned of the death of our fifth known survivor, John Miles. He was the
most recent survivor to surface and provided us with a vivid description of
the sinking - he was on the upper bridge, leaning over the side just above
where the first torpedo hit and described it as an unbelievable noise that
went right down to the ba se
of his stomach, and soaked the bridge with a deluge of water. The ship then
very quickly started to go over and he
climbed over the "High side" of the Bridge to go down a deck but when he was
climbing down the second torpedo hit, down aft, and it shook him off and
dropped him onto the railings of the Lower Bridge, so that he thought he had
broken his ribs.
John was involved with most of what happened
to Dunedin during his time in her, and was to have his first contact with a
casualty when one of the Cooks went sleepwalking when the ship was in Bermuda
Dockyard, and had to be recovered from under the ship . He was in both the
Boarding Party and then the Towing Crew during the capture of Hanover in March
1940 (and gave a stirring description of the liberation of five bottles of
Champagne from the saloon by the Towing Party when the ship was under tow.
He left us with an equally vivid description of the arrival into Jamaica, with
the whole docks area black with cheering people as Hanover was towed in,
flying the White Ensign above the German Flag.
John spoke to the Dunedin Society
representative who has just been out to New Zealand where the family of the
Senior Engineer presented the same German Flag to the Dunedin Society for
safekeeping, and arrangements were advanced to take the Ensign and show it to
John before it was displayed at the Dedication of the Dunedin Memorial.
When Dunedin was trying to get the gold in
the French Ship Emil Bertin landed at Martinique, and had been ordered to use
force if required, John remembered having to shower and change into clean
clothes, and scrub the Mess deck ready to take the expected casualties , and
then the relief when it did not happen. He also remembered how friendly the
French were when Dunedin went into the Harbour, not realising their original
intention had been to go in and sink everything in sight.
In recent months John was reunited with Jim
Davis, another of the Dunedin Survivors, who had been in the same Carley Float
with him and had lived on the same Mess deck. John recalled the relief that he
got from having salt water poured onto his back to try and ease the pain of
the Portugeese Men of War (a deadly stinging Jelly fish) that had drifted down
through the rafts, and whose stings had driven some men close to the brink.
Finally it is the enduring memory of a
member of the Dunedin Society who was lucky enough to be present when three of
the survivors, including John, were together to have heard a very everyday
discussion between the three of them on how to deal with sharks trying to get
into the rafts - you hit them over the nose with a Carley Float Paddle - and
as John said "They were not very big, about four to six feet long".
John's son, Richard, can be contacted on rmiles@rnli.org.uk
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