24 Apr 1960

The reunion of Spencer Mynott and Alfred Warren

The ‘two little sailor boys’ meet again – 19 years after their ordeal

GRAND REUNION

By Maurice Barsby

Two men who had not seen each other since they were rescued after a five-day ordeal on a raft in shark-infested seas 19 years ago, met last night.

The story of the two little sailor boys was told in Mr. Spencer Mynott’s dramatic “I Was There” war story in last week’s Pictorial.

Horror

Eight men died during the five fantastic days of horror on a tiny raft in the South Atlantic that ex-naval telegraphist Mynott so graphically described. Only one other man survived.

“I would dearly love to meet him – the other one of the ten little sailor boys who helped me beat the last line of the nursery rhyme …” wrote Mr. Mynott.

Last night, in a London pub, Mr. Mynott and the other sailor boy, ex-navy electrician Alf Warren, 42, a Pic reader from Bromsgrove,Worcs, met again.

Limps

Alf, who is still limping from the wound a shark tore in his right leg nineteen years ago, read Spencer’s story last Sunday.

He wrote to the Pictorial. And we did the rest.

For hours the two men talked over drinks and dinner in the West End – recalling the men they had watched go mad and die around them.

And Alf – now a wages clerk, and father of two children – remembered that he too, very nearly threw himself to the sharks a few minutes before they were saved.

“But I didn’t, and my leg healed enough for me to be the only Serviceman in Britain discharged for ‘shark bite on active service’,” he said.

“Spencer made a great story out of our escape. I’m glad he won a £100 prize.”