In 1941, young James Gilman, with his fa­ther, moth­er and sis­ter, trav­elled through "the U-boat-in­fest­ed At­lantic to Trinidad, where my fa­ther took up the post of head of the Sal­va­tion Army in that part of the Caribbean and was al­so ap­point­ed civ­il de­fence ad­vis­er to the Gov­er­nor, Sir Be­de Clif­ford (grand­fa­ther to the wife of Britain's present Prime Min­is­ter, David Cameron)."

He be­came a pupil at Queen's Roy­al Col­lege, re­main­ing there for three years un­til the fam­i­ly re­turned to Eng­land in 1944.

Now 81, he is writ­ing his mem­oirs.

Gilman re­cent­ly e-mailed the T&T Guardian with a copy of the sec­tion of his au­to­bi­og­ra­phy deal­ing with the per­ilous voy­age to Trinidad and his time here.

"I have nev­er for­got­ten those days in Trinidad, among the hap­pi­est of my life," he wrote. "In fact, when I or­gan­ised an in­ter­na­tion­al Youth Con­fer­ence here in Wales in 1993 I in­vit­ed T&T to send three del­e­gates, large­ly as a way of my say­ing 'thank you' to your is­land for what it gave me all those years ago...

"I am hop­ing to be able to vis­it Trinidad again while I am still mo­bile enough to trav­el–I have been in touch with the Sal­va­tion Army and it seems that our old house in Char­lotte Street is still there, and I'd very much like to vis­it it again. I am al­so still in touch, af­ter all these years, with my best friend in Trinidad at the time, now a re­tired head­mas­ter liv­ing in Scot­land, so old­mem­o­ries do not die out all that eas­i­ly!"

This is the first of two ex­tracts from his mem­oirs.

On Oc­to­ber 13 in that year of 1941, my dad had re­ceived a phone call from the Sal­va­tion Army's in­ter­na­tion­al head­quar­ters in Lon­don, ask­ing if he'd be will­ing to sail the fol­low­ing week for Trinidad in the West In­dies, to take up a post as ter­ri­to­r­i­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive re­spon­si­ble for the work of the Sal­va­tion Army in Trinidad, To­ba­go, and Bar­ba­dos. I don't know how long it took for him and Mum to make up their minds but, giv­en the trau­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ence that wash­ing the doorstep and boil­ing up the wash each week must have been for Mum af­ter the lux­u­ry of life in Ts­ing­tao in a mil­lion­aire's house re­plete with ser­vants, and that liv­ing by day in a win­dow­less house un­der en­e­my bom­bard­ment and sleep­ing at night at a pig farm must have been for all of us, I sus­pect the re­sponse must have been in­stan­ta­neous!

So it was that one Oc­to­ber day in 1941 we left Hull for the port of Avon­mouth, our transat­lantic des­ti­na­tion blacked-out on the la­bels stuck to our trunks and oth­er lug­gage for fear of Ger­man spies dis­cov­er­ing that we were head­ing for the At­lantic Ocean– and their U-boat packs. It be­ing far too dan­ger­ous for one ship to run that par­tic­u­lar gaunt­let alone, we steamed up the west coast of Eng­land to Dunoon where, a small bar­rage bal­loon tow­ing from our stern, we joined up with a con­voy as­sem­bling in Scot­land to make the haz­ardous jour­ney un­der es­cort by Roy­al Navy de­stroy­ers. Among the ships we trav­elled with was an air­craft car­ri­er tak­ing 5,000 Fleet Air Arm per­son­nel to Cana­da for train­ing.

Ear­ly on in the war the British trai­tor known as Lord Haw Haw, who'd be­come a pro­pa­gan­dist broad­cast­ing for the Ger­mans, stat­ed in a ra­dio broad­cast from Berlin: "We warn you that we are go­ing to sink all five A-class ships of the Blue Star Line" of which our ship, the Avi­la Star, was one. The pre­vi­ous year the An­dor­ra Star, sis­ter ship to ours, was tor­pe­doed and sank with a loss of 700 lives while our own ship, af­ter de­posit­ing us safe­ly in Trinidad, was tor­pe­doed and sank on her re­turn jour­ney to Britain with the loss of many lives. These facts are a suf­fi­cient in­di­ca­tion of the dan­gers we ran.

The ship was rel­a­tive­ly small by mod­ern stan­dards; at on­ly 14,400 tons she was less than half the size of many of to­day's car fer­ries. Be­cause of the con­stant risk from tor­pe­does the wa­ter­tight doors lead­ing from the open for­ward deck in­to the in­side pas­sen­ger sec­tion, nor­mal­ly closed, were kept open by the cap­tain through­out our voy­age, for ease of evac­u­a­tion in the event of any "aban­don ship" sce­nario. This meant that on oc­ca­sions when we en­coun­tered heavy seas–as we did fre­quent­ly –the wa­ter smashed over the bows and rushed along the cor­ri­dors, flood­ing in­to the cab­ins on that deck, of which ours was one. I have mem­o­ries of wak­ing up and see­ing Dad swing­ing along one of the over­head pipes, hand over hand, to get out of our cab­in, the floor of which was awash with sea­wa­ter up­on which our suit­cas­es bobbed along like ba­by whales.

We had to wear our life­jack­et at all times, day and night, ready for im­me­di­ate evac­u­a­tion in­to the lifeboats should we suf­fer a tor­pe­do hit, and were for­bid­den to take a bath–the most wel­come com­mand I'd ever been giv­en in the whole of my young life!–in case we were caught "in the al­to­geth­er" when the or­der came to aban­don ship, re­sult­ing in what I sniff­in­g­ly la­belled "the pig farm ef­fect."

When­ev­er a U-boat was about to at­tack a tar­get, it would first raise its periscope–a met­al tube with a glass lens at the end–above the sur­face of the sea, the bet­ter to es­ti­mate the size, speed, and dis­tance away of the tar­get ship. The sight of a periscope ap­pear­ing above the sur­face was there­fore the first sign of an im­mi­nent at­tack. As a con­se­quence, the cap­tain promised a re­ward of a shilling to any child pas­sen­ger who re­port­ed such an ob­ject; be­tween us we'd earned three of these shillings be­fore we reached our jour­ney's end.

Each sight­ing brought an ac­com­pa­ny­ing de­stroy­er rac­ing to our lo­ca­tion, fol­lowed by the ex­cite­ment of the bang of depth charges be­ing hurled in­to the sea fol­lowed by a muf­fled thump as they ex­plod­ed deep be­low us. It was an un­der­stood max­im among us chil­dren–though prob­a­bly root­ed on­ly in our fevered imag­i­na­tions–that for every U-boat thus despatched we'd each re­ceive a cap­tain's bonus of �1 (equiv­a­lent to a year's pock­et mon­ey) but no dead sub­marines ever rose to the sur­face af­ter these bom­bard­ments, much to our dis­gust.

To me, it was all great fun; to my sis­ter Joan, how­ev­er, it must have brought a ter­ri­fy­ing fore­bod­ing of what it would be like when the seem­ing­ly-in­evitable tor­pe­do struck.

There were some Fleet Air Arm per­son­nel sail­ing with us, one of whom, Pet­ty Of­fi­cer Catch­pole, a phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion in­struc­tor, took me un­der his wing, as­sur­ing me that we'd all ar­rive safe and well.

And reach our jour­ney's end we did, thread­ing our way through the Bo­cas–small islets off the coast en route to our des­ti­na­tion–and ty­ing up at our moor­ings in the safe har­bour of Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, in the British West In­dies.

The tran­si­tion from the Blitz in Hull fol­lowed by the U-boat-men­aced wa­ters of the war be­ing waged on the At­lantic Ocean to the balmy, trop­i­cal, flower-fra­grant is­land of Trinidad was to move sud­den­ly from our old black-&-white life to one ablaze with Tech­ni­col­or.

We felt like Dorothy ar­riv­ing over the rain­bow in Oz.

TO BE CON­TIN­UED TO­MOR­ROW