Another excellent poem, Ken.
I experienced drowning once.
We were in East London, in the Eastern Cape in South Africa in 1953 on the New Zealand Star.
Sunday 13 December 1953. The Mission Man took us and some of the Mission girls to Bonza Bay for a picnic.
Ken Hignet SOS aged 20,of Mill Cottage, 1, Mill Road, Birkenhead couldnt swim and got into difficulties with the strong current and was swept away. I went to assist him and we were both swept out to sea.
The big Cape rollers got bigger and bigger,I was hanging on to him trying to get back to the beach, it was like being inside a washing machine, We were gulping water down and coughing our lungs up as we tried to surface before the next big sea hit us and forced us under again. It was a battle for survival, then Ken died and I lost his body, His last words were just "Help, Help, Help." then he was gone.The cramps started to go into my legs and then my arms, I was in a no survive situation as my vision started to go, just being swirled around in the raging sea.and then blackness.
Meanwhile a South African lad, David Brinton had seen it happening and he swam out with a life buoy on a line, he got me and I was towed unconcious, back to the beach.they gave me some rescusitation and the mission man took me to hospital where I was put to bed to recover. I came out two days later and taken back to the ship, we sailed to Durban and then to New Zealand. I never knew who had saved my life. Ken was washed up five days later and buried in the East Cemetery in East London.
48 years later as I was getting older I decided to find the lad who saved me to thank him before it was too late. In 2001, I went to East London to try and find him and also Kens grave. I found the grave, that was another experience, for a later date. he was there.
I had asked to Salvation Army if they could help to trace David Brinton,
When I got home The Salvation Army phoned me to say they had found him, He was living in Stranraer in Scotland after living in the Cape then Rhodesia and then Zimbabwe. Then one day the phone rang and it was Esther Rantzen of the BBC, TV, asking me to go on her show. So on 14 February, 2002, I went on the show at the TV Studio in London and she introduced me to David Brinton, what a wonderful feeling it was to be able to thank him after more than 48 years. We still keep in touch, what a brave lad he was.
I wrote a poem about it, not very good but the best I could do.
BONZA BAY.
In December, 1953 on the New Zealand Star
In East London we did stay
but Ken Hignett and I
didn`t know he would die
on some beach called Bonza Bay.
The story began
when the Mission Man
said he would take us away for the day
so all of us went off on his bus
to a beach called Bonza Bay
When Ken jumped in
he just couldn`t swim
and the tide soon carried him away.
Though I struggled and tried
Ken drowned and then died
near a beach called Bonza Bay
div>
Then I was seen on a wave
by a lad named Dave
who swam out to get me away
and through struggle and strife
that lad saved my life
on a beach called Bonza Bay
When Ken washed ashore
his life was no more
Five days since he got swept away
and he lay all alone
on the the sand and the stone
on a beach called Bonza Bay
So they buried Ken in a Sailors grave
at a place where the palm trees sway,
on a foreign strand
in a far off land
near a beach called Bonza Bay
It`s been 50 years
since the grief and the tears
and in the time that I was away
I found Ken`s Grave
and the man named Dave
near a beach called Bonza Bay
.
1, The Rescue, 2, Ken`s grave in East London 2001. and 3, Ken, Me and below Mo Riley AB. 7 days before on Sunday 6 December 1953 in Cape Town.
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