VICTOR Day wishes to share photos of a sinking incident at sea with Looking Back readers.

He brought in these pictures which were taken from the Stone Pier in Weymouth in the 1940s.

It shows a tug boat which sank.

Victor, 83, said: “I took the photos when I was an apprentice and the only thing I really know about them is that having unloaded its cargo of men, the boat tried to turn and couldn’t and when the tide came in it couldn’t right itself.

“It was blocking the entrance to the harbour for a while.

“I think another really interesting thing about these photos is that you can see three cranes by the harbour, showing just how busy it was back then. I remember it being used to lift crates of tomatoes.”

The photos brought back memories for Victor of another much more dramatic sinking – this time the sinking of HMS Foylebank in Portland Harbour, upon which his dad worked as a stoker and mechanic.

HMS Foylebank was a converted 5,500 ton merchant ship used during the Second World War.

She arrived in Portland on June 9, 1940, for a build-up to anti-aircraft duties commanded by Captain H.P. Weir.

On July 4, 1940, while the majority of her crew were at breakfast, unidentified aircraft were reported to the south.

These were originally thought to be Allied aircraft returning to base but they turned out to be 26 Stuka dive bombers.

Albert ‘Happy’ Day was one of the survivors of the tragedy, in which 176 out of a total crew of 298 were killed.

Victor said: “I remember the morning of July 4. I was nine years old.

“We were woken up by an air raid. We were told that morning that Foylebank had been bombed. We didn’t know what had happened to my father and we were all very worried.

“A little while later, he made his way home. He was still wearing his boiler suit. He managed to get out of the water after the sinking and got back aboard Foylebank.

“He was lucky to get off there because the ship was on fire at the time. He had a wound all the way through his calf which went through from one side to the next.

“Dad never got any medical attention for it, he was that kind of man like they all were back then.”

Victor said his wartime memories were more of excitement than fear.

“As a nine-year-old in the war, it was quite exciting. We didn’t think about being killed or anything. Things did get a bit ‘naughty’ at night. It was always a bit more frightening in the dark.

“When they were fighting overhead I always wanted to go out and look at it. Being that age I didn’t realise the threat of it. When I think back to that time, I think back to the excitement and how people were friendlier then.

“Now people all seem to be frightened of each other.”

After surviving the Foylebank disaster, Albert ‘Happy’ Day went on to work in the dockyard on a tug named ‘Pilot’ and then worked in security.

He retired from the dockyard in 1959.

The Foylebank was salvaged in two sections. Some fragments remain on the seabed and one piece has been recovered and presented to Portland Museum.