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Percival Blake is second from the left

A Crowthorne man has written a poem in memory of a member of his wife's family, who survived the sinking of the Titanic.

Paddy Boyle was inspired to write his poem on Percival Blake, after a relative, shortly before her death, revealed for the first time some of the details of his connection to and survival of the Titanic disaster.

The story of the Titanic is well known. The supposedly 'unsinkable' cruise ship struck an iceberg at 11.40pm on 14 April, 1912. Two hours and forty minutes later she sank deep into the freezing Atlantic waters. Less than a third of the people on board survived, among them the 22-year-old Percival Blake.

Poet Paddy Boyle

Paddy and his wife frequently visited 'Nunk'. He lived with her aunt’s family in Fareham during his old age. They all knew that he had been on the Titanic, but he had occasionally spoken, only to her aunt, about some details of his experience.

Paddy said Nunk did have paperwork and mementos from the Titanic.

"At the time he was a merchant seaman, working as a trimmer on large liners." he said. "His previous ship was the other P&O liner Olympic, his job was to carry coal for hundreds of yards between the bunkers and the boiler rooms."

Percival's survival was all the more remarkable as he boarded the Titanic as a crew member. Of the 325 trimmers on board the Titanic, only 72 survived its maiden voyage.

'Nunk' did not escape on a lifeboat, but was rescued from the freezing Atlantic sea, clinging to an upturned boat.

Paddy said the secret to his survival was that he was probably off watch when she struck the ice and due to his training in the merchant navy he would have known to dress warmly, cover his head and wear several pairs of socks and his boots before jumping in.

In writing the poem Paddy drew on his own experiences as a naval diver and keen canoeist, speaking of breaking ice on Portsmouth’s Horsea lake before diving and having to slap his wife’s face to get her breathing after the shock of falling into the Thames in winter

Paddy has written other poetry for a naval website, including one poem about a Southampton ship called the HMS Rawalpindi, which was sunk during the Second World War.