The incredible story of the Titanic 'last' survivor who became a WW2 hero

The sea was at its cruellest. Charles Lightoller was being sucked towards a ventilator shaft with a drop of 100 feet. Only a light wire grating covered the shaft’s opening, which was wide enough to swallow a man. Then, suddenly, a terrific blast of hot air blew him back to the surface.

The water was freezing “like a thousand knives being driven into one’s body”. But there, within reach, was one of Titanic’s lifeboats. The bow of the White Star liner had disappeared, and her stern was rising into the night sky, with many hundreds of panic-stricken people scrambling upwards to reach an illusion of safety. The disaster cost the lives of some 1,500 passengers and crew. Lightoller would be the most senior officer to survive.

On April 10, 1912, the 46,328-ton “unsinkable” ship had left Southampton for New York on her maiden voyage. The omens were not great. Titanic nearly collided with an American liner soon after leaving. After calling at Cherbourg and then Queenstown she headed out into the Atlantic – increasing speed.

About 20 minutes before midnight on April 14, lookouts rang the crow’s nest bell three times and phoned the bridge: “Iceberg right ahead!” A desperate attempt to steer the ship clear left her fatally wounded. Lightoller knew there were not enough lifeboats. He was one of the officers responsible for those on the port side. Believing he was following the orders of the captain, Edward Smith, he allowed only women and young children to board them. Many male passengers were turned away. And lifeboats were lowered with empty places.

As dawn broke, only one ship, the Cunard liner Carpathia, was there to pick up survivors. Lightoller was the last person to board her. It was not the first time he had been shipwrecked – and it would not be the last.

Lightoller came from Chorley, Lancashire, where the family had a tradition of running cotton mills. As a young lad he wanted to escape the mills, and he saw the sea as the answer. There were no pressing family ties in Chorley anyway – his mother and stepmother had died, and his bankrupt father had disappeared to New Zealand with a servant girl.

So one day in February 1888, 13-year-old Lightoller boarded the sailing ship Primrose Hill in Liverpool as an apprentice. The ship set off with her cargo on the long voyage to San Francisco via the treacherous Cape Horn off the southern tip of mainland South America, the gateway to the Pacific Ocean from the Atlantic Ocean.

He survived the many hazards, and soon after his return to Liverpool, he set off on a voyage to Calcutta, this time in a sister ship, Holt Hill. It seems incredible that a vessel should end up smashed against rocks on a speck of island in the vastness of the Indian Ocean, but that is what happened to the four-masted Holt Hill. Lightoller jumped from the wreck and clawed his way up a cliff face on St Paul Island, where he and other members of the crew remained, thirsty and hungry, with little shelter, for more than a week before being rescued and, then, only by chance.

During another voyage, off the west coast of Africa, he was in a ship’s gig that overturned in rough seas. He swam to the shore and collapsed. Four of his companions died. On the trip back to Britain he suffered a near-fatal bout of malaria.

Deciding it was time to take a break from the sea, and enticed by the idea of making a fortune, Lightoller headed to Canada in 1897 to join the gold rush, the Klondike stampede. Of the roughly 100,000 people involved, only a few hundred found enough gold to call themselves rich. Conditions were appalling, with scurvy, frostbite and gangrene common. Lightoller was forced to abandon his quest after several weeks. Though broke, he emerged in reasonable health. The stampede is believed to have cost more than 10,000 lives.

Before the First World War broke out in 1914, Lightoller was serving as first officer in the White Star Line’s Oceanic, the Queen of the Seas. After an Atlantic run the liner underwent conversion as an armed merchant cruiser, and he remained with her as a lieutenant in the Royal Naval Reserve.

In the September, the ship (17,272 gross tons) was sent to patrol the difficult waters around Shetland, a task unsuitable for a vessel of her size. Close to the island of Foula she ended up on a reef.

Oceanic was Lightoller’s favourite ship, and he recalled: “Lying broadside on to the reef, with the tide strong on to it, she was held there, lifting and falling each time, with a horrible grinding crash. I know it nearly broke my heart to feel her going to bits under my very feet after all those years. The sensation, as those knife-edged rocks ground and crunched their way through her bilge plates, was physically sickening. How she held together long enough for us to get everyone out of her was a miracle.”

Safe on land, Oceanic’s captain looked out to his stranded ship two miles away and observed that she would remain on the reef as a monument. One of the locals commented wryly: “I’ll give her two weeks.”

The man was not far out. The ship disappeared in one of Shetland’s unforgiving gales.

As the war progressed, Lightoller was given his own command, a torpedo boat. One night, off the Thames Estuary, he engaged a Zeppelin that was on its way to bomb London. The airship fled back to its base.

His next command was a destroyer, HMS Falcon. While on convoy duty in the North Sea, Falcon was almost sliced in two by another escort, an armed trawler. Lightoller remained on board with two officers after the rest of the crew were taken off. Later the fore part broke away and sank, but Lightoller was determined to save what was left of his ship.

The three officers went to his cabin and while waiting for help to arrive they made tea and listened to gramophone records. In the early hours, Falcon sank, leaving the men in the water. They were almost run down by another trawler before being rescued.

Like many British sailors, Lightoller developed an intense loathing of U-boat crews because of their attacks on merchant ships, especially the sinking of the liner Lusitania, with the loss of many women and children.

When his destroyer HMS Garry spotted UB-110 on the surface in the North Sea, he gave the order to ram the submarine. Not content with one attack, Garry circled and rammed again, sinking UB-110. But the destroyer was also badly damaged, her bows crushed.

In danger of sinking at any time, Lightoller began an epic voyage back to base some 100 miles away – stern first. The U-boat captain later accused him of a war crime, claiming his men were murdered as they struggled in the water.

Even at the age of 66, Lightoller did not think twice about putting his life in danger. When the call came for private boats to be used in the evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk in 1940, he took his motor yacht Sundowner – maximum capacity 21– across the Channel and, defying attacks by the Luftwaffe, returned with a total of 130 men.

But Sundowner almost capsized as she entered Ramsgate Harbour. Relieved to be back in England, soldiers on deck moved to one side for a better view, and men below tried to scramble up. Lightoller shouted for calm, and Sundowner moored safely.

Those on the quayside were staggered at the number who left the boat. “God’s truth mate, where did you put them?” said one sailor.

Charles Lightoller had shown remarkable resilience from an early age. With so many escapes, he led a charmed life. By a strange coincidence he was born just six days after one Erik Weisz, who became Harry Houdini, the famous escape artist.

Lightoller was, without doubt, Houdini of the Sea.

• Houdini of the Sea by Brian Izzard (The History Press, £22.99) is out now