Wartime exploits of ex-Cheshire chairman revealed in new film

Dec 8 2008 by David Norbury, Chester Chronicle

A REMARKABLE escape by a man who was to become chairman of Cheshire County Council is revealed in a new film.

Now aged 91, Bill Leathwood, then a purser/radio operator with the world famous Blue Funnel line founded by marine engineer Alfred Holt, was torpedoed by a German U boat which attacked the 7,585 ton vessel Mentor in the Gulf of Mexico in May, 1942.

The new video, made by Wirral maritime historian David Roberts, shows Mr Leathwood, who also became a deputy lieutenant for Cheshire and a justice of the peace, speaking of his survival more than 60 years after his sinking.

Mr Leathwood, who sailed to Shanghai on his first voyage with the company, relates how he spent four days in an open boat and says: “It could have been worse.”

Although he describes the episode as “unpleasant”, Mr Leathwood, a religious man, believes his faith kept him alive before he was picked up, astonishingly by another Blue Funnel ship crossing the Atlantic.

Although seven men were lost, he lived to tell the tale and returned home via Key West in Florida and New York.

Mr Leathwood also recalls his lifelong friendship with Peter Jackson, then a fourth officer, who went on to became captain of the QEll and took her to the Falklands.

He says of the shipping line: “The loyalty to Blue Funnel was something I have never seen anywhere else.”

Mr Roberts's DVD captures the voyages of the company's general purpose cargo boats using rare archive footage as they steamed the world's shipping lanes, including the Far East.

The new film, Blue Funnel - Voyages And Voices Take 2 follows overwhelming demand as a result of a previous successful DVD about the shipping line.

It is available from Avid Publications on 01745 886769.