My brother, David Day, who has died aged 89, was part of the ship’s crew of HMS Amethyst, which sailed from Shanghai on 20 April 1949 to relieve HMS Consort at Nanjing during the Chinese civil war. Under heavy bombardment, with many casualties, the ship was grounded on Rose Island, the wounded making their way back to Shanghai for treatment. On 21 April the Amethyst was refloated and continued up river for several miles before becoming trapped in enemy territory for three months, escaping on the night of 30-31 July.
Educated at Linton Village college, Cambridgeshire, David had to wait until he was almost 16 before he could apply to the Royal Navy’s boy second-class division. His 18 months with the Royal Navy’s training school on HMS Vincent at Devonport, Plymouth, included a daily ritual of climbing the fully rigged yard arms and vertical ladders to the crow’s nest to “ring the bell”. The endurance test was made possible, he said, by the kind reassurance of a chief petty officer who, quietening his fears from the start, gave him newfound confidence. He went on to serve as an ordinary seaman for 12 years.
He was the eldest son of Marjory (nee Neil) and Leslie Day, both Londoners who had moved to Western Australia under a migration scheme. Three years and two small girls later, the scheme had collapsed and my parents moved inland to live and work in Wagin, a sheep and wheatbelt town, where David and a younger brother were born.
At the age of seven, he, along with the rest of the family, boarded the SS Jervis Bay passenger ship on a summer’s day in February 1939 and sailed for England, arriving five weeks later on a bitterly cold winter’s day in a country preparing for the second world war. Issued with a gas mask and identity number, he spent the next 10 years living in Cambridgeshire.
In 1952, David met Wilhelmina (Billy) Kerr when she worked as a Wren at the same base as him in Glasgow. They married in the city the following year and went on to have two sons. After leaving the navy in 1960, he worked as an engineer in Glasgow until 1980. The family then moved to Northampton, where David worked for the Timken engineering company. After retiring in 1997 he enjoyed travelling around the world with Billy, woodwork – which he was passionate about – and growing orchids.
David cared for Billy at home for most of her long illness with dementia, which was diagnosed in 2007. He refused to send her to a nursing home until he had a heart attack in 2015. He then visited her, sometimes twice daily, until her death in 2019.
A son, Keith, died in 2020. He is survived by his eldest son, John, an artist living in Canada, and by me.
