HMS Royal Oak survivor buried on wreck.

[SilentNite]

A HERO who survived when his ship was sunk in World War Two has been buried — in the wreck with his lost mates.

Fernleigh Judge, 88, never forgot the 833 men who died as HMS Royal Oak was torpedoed in harbour.
Royal Navy divers descended 100ft to the sea bed with a wooden casket containing his ashes.

Ship's crest ... Royal Oak



Able Seaman Billy Miller gently pushed the container, wrapped in a white ensign, through a porthole of the 25,750-ton battleship.
Fernleigh, who died in May, was a 19-year-old flight sergeant on the aircraft-equipped Royal Oak when a U-boat blasted it with three torpedoes on October 14, 1939.
He scrambled overboard and was picked up — one of 375 who survived as the ship exploded, rolled over and sank in just 13 minutes.
Fernleigh wished to pay tribute at the wreck site at Scapa Flow, Orkney, but was too ill to make the 600-mile trip from his home in Peterborough, Cambs.

Pal Patrick Lyons, 74, who helped arrange the burial, said: “Fernleigh was haunted by memories of what happened and desperately saddened by the death of so many crewmates.
“He was too poorly to go back so a burial at sea was his only option.”

Widower Fernleigh’s three children live abroad so fellow survivor Kenneth Toop took his ashes to Orkney.
Kenneth, 85, secretary of the Royal Oak Survivors’ Association, said: “I was honoured. I go to all the funerals if I can.”
Fernleigh served on battle-cruiser HMS Devonshire for the rest of the war. He was later a bandmaster in the Royal Marines.
His ashes were laid to rest as the divers from Faslane submarine base made their annual descent to replace Royal Oak’s ensign.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...cle1815799.ece