Sheather, Jack (Bosun)

Carbon copy of a typescript account in diary form described as 'a summary from memory of the log of No. 4 Port life boat', kept by Bosun Jack Sheather, describing events after the sinking of the merchant ship SS Nellore south of Chagos Archipelago by a German U-boat on 29 June 1944. Sheather was one of a group of passengers from the Nellore, which also included fellow merchant seamen Arch Litster and M. McCullock, which journeyed across the Indian Ocean in the lifeboat and landed on Madagascar a month later. The diary comprises long and detailed daily entries describing: the initial escape from the sinking ship; attempts to navigate (initially towards Diego Garcia), and the weather and conditions; observations of aircraft and sealife; the conservation and division of water, food and provisions; the contrasting behaviours, and deterioration and deaths from exhaustion and exposure, and burials, of some passengers; and the eventual landing of the survivors at Savambi, Madagascar.