As Ted Briggs gulped down oily water deep in the icy seas of the Denmark Strait, he didn’t feel particularly lucky.

The young signalman had literally stepped from the bridge of the legendary battle cruiser HMS Hood, the pride of the Royal Navy between the wars, as she rolled and sank, riven by explosions and fires started by shells from the German battleship Bismarck and her consort Prinz Eugen.

At first sucked down by the vortex caused by the dying ship, Ted still vividly remembers his struggle for life, and the growing realisation that he would not survive – only to be forced up through the oil-slick on the surface of the sea in time to watch, in horror, the last moments of the mighty Hood.

The warship first weaved its magic on Ted in the summer of 1935, when he had gazed in awe at Hood as she lay off a Yorkshire seaside town.

“I was 12 years old when I saw her – that still sticks in my mind,” said Ted, now a charming, thoughtful man who looks younger than his 79 years.

“I wasn’t really looking to join the Navy before that, but I saw this ship at Redcar beach and I was quite impressed.”

Indeed, Ted’s luck was in almost as soon as he joined the Royal Navy, spurred into the service by his attraction to the ship.

He trained at HMS Ganges in Suffolk, and his first draft fulfilled his dreams by sending him to join the Hood at Scapa Flow.

Sharing a capital ship with 1,420 others came as a shock initially, but by May 24, 1941, when Hood was steaming north in company with HMS Prince of Wales, in search of the German ships Bismarck and Prinz Eugen, Ted felt at home, and in no immediate danger.

“There was no sense of anything being wrong with the ship on that day,” said Ted.

“We knew two powerful ships were coming, but there was no sense that we were going to get sunk, or pounded, or anything like that.”

The two powerful German raiders, aiming to break out into the Atlantic to wreak havoc on convoys, were being shadowed by the cruisers HM ships Norfolk and Suffolk, which guided the British capital ships to their fateful rendezvous.

Hood and HMS Prince of Wales had steamed to the area at 29 knots, leaving their destroyer escort some 50 miles in their wake as the smaller ships struggled through heavy seas.

As Ted worked as the Flag Lieutenant’s runner on the compass platform, from where the admiral’s staff directed the action, he was privy to the thoughts and plans of Admiral Holland and Captain Kerr, who wanted the two heavy ships to concentrate their fire on the Bismarck while Norfolk and Suffolk engaged the Prinz Eugen. The destroyers were to join the action as soon as possible, firing their torpedoes.

But, unknown to the British, the smaller German ship had by that time taken a position ahead of the Bismarck, and as the two ships had similar outlines and the weather was far from clear, the Royal Navy attack was at first directed at Prinz Eugen, and her bigger companion was all but ignored.

“Gunnery in the Hood was good, but not as good as Bismarck,” said Ted. “We fired a couple of salvoes at what we thought was the Bismarck before the Prince of Wales said we were firing at the wrong ship and we changed over. At that distance you could only see the superstructures.”

“We fired about six salvoes before Bismarck answered – we took her by surprise. She had no idea there were heavy units in the vicinity, because of radio silence.

“We had hit her with one which caused a fuel leakage, but it wasn’t all that serious.

“When she did reply, her first salvo fell short – you could see the splashes. The next went over and you could hear the roar like a thousand express trains. The third hit the base of the mainmast, causing a fire in the 4in ready-use ammunition lockers.

“The Captain said to leave it until the ammunition had been expended, and clear the boat-deck of personnel. That was when Bob (AB Bob Tilburn, of the 4in gun crews on the boat deck) saw what was going on – there was sheer carnage.

“In the next salvo one shell took away the spotting top, but didn’t explode. An officer fell on to the bridge wing – the only way we could tell he was an officer was by the rings on his sleeve. He had no face left, and no hands. That shook up Bill Dundas (action midshipman of the watch).

“The fifth salvo hit us as we were coming in, bows on, to close the range to 12 miles as quickly as possible.

“There was no explosion that I could hear. We were thrown off our feet and I saw a gigantic sheet of flame which shot round the compass platform. The ship started listing to starboard, about 10-12 degrees, then it started to right itself.

“The Quartermaster reported that the steering gear had gone, and we were to go to emergency conning, but as we did the ship started going to port, and it kept going. It got to 30-40 degrees and we realised the ship wasn’t coming back.

“There was no panic – it’s uncanny, but everything seemed to be in slow motion. We tried to get out of the starboard door. The Gunnery Officer was just in front of me, and the Navigating Officer stood to one side to let me go through.

“I had got half-way down the ladder to the admiral’s bridge when we were level with the water. We were just dragged under. I do not know how long it was, but I got to the stage where I just couldn’t hold my breath any more.

“It sounds silly but there was a cartoon of Tom and Jerry where Tom is drowning, and he had a blissful smile on his face. I was just like that – a calm acceptance – and then suddenly I shot to the surface.

“I came up on the port side, even though I had gone out of the starboard door – I don’t know how I got there – and I was roughly 50 yards away from the ship.

“The ship was standing on end from B-turret up – that was the most terrifying sight you could see.

“I swam away as fast as I could, so that I wouldn’t get sucked down again, and when I looked back the ship had gone, but the oil on the water had caught fire. I panicked and swam away again, but when I looked back again the fire was out.”

Ted clambered on to one of the 3ft square rafts that floated in the wreckage-strewn oily water, and spotted Midshipman Bill Dundas, from the compass platform, and AB Bob Tilburn, who had survived the carnage among the 4in gun crews on the boat deck.

Both had scrambled on to rafts, which meant that there were just three survivors of the sinking which claimed the lives of 1,418 sailors.

“There wasn’t a sign of anyone else – we couldn’t see any bodies or anything,” said Ted.

“I think those below decks would not have stood a hope in hell, and those on the upper decks were killed or wounded before the ship went. I just couldn’t grasp it.

“We could see the Prince of Wales disappearing, still firing, and when she had gone I could see in the distance the tops of three funnels – one of the cruisers, but I didn’t know which one. And that was it.

“I remember Bill Dundas was singing Roll Out the Barrel, like he was conducting a band – he was just keeping his circulation going, because it was bitter cold.”

They drifted for nearly four hours in the ocean swell until late morning, when Bill Dundas saw the destroyer HMS Electra making her way towards the three survivors.

Once on board Electra, the Hood men were taken down to the mess decks and liberally plied with rum, which had the beneficial effect of making them sick, bringing up some of the oil they had swallowed.

They were landed at Reykjavik, and after their initial recovery they went by troopship to Greenock and on by train to London, travelling in some style but not allowed to see or speak to anyone.

In London they were ushered in to see Second Sea Lord Admiral Whitworth, Admiral Holland’s predecessor, who recognised Briggs – “I had knocked him on to his bum coming down from the compass platform of the Hood one dark night,” said Ted.

“The sinking shook the Royal Navy and everybody else rigid. When it came out, everybody just kept saying they just couldn’t believe it.

“She went down at 6.05am on May 24, and it was announced, so I understand, on the six o’clock news that night.”

After the sinking, the trio were deemed unfit for sea, and Ted went to the RN Signal School, at the RN Barracks in Portsmouth, which was in the process of moving to Leydene as HMS Mercury.

“I was sent out there to help out but it was more or less ‘leave him alone and let him do what he wants’,” said Ted.

“I used to wander down the broad walks. The chap in charge was an old and bold signal bosun, and he came across me one day and said: ‘What are you doing?’

“I said I just wanted to forget, and he said: ‘You are never going to forget – you are a Naval curio and no one will let you forget’.”

Ted then spent a year at HMS Royal Arthur, a hostilities-only training establishment in a converted holiday camp at Skegness, before he was declared fit for sea duties again, and he was back on the water after 18 months ashore.

Again, luck was with Ted, for while he certainly did not have it easy for the remainder of the war and after, he emerged unscathed – “I was bloody lucky, I didn’t really get any damage at all,” he laughed.

He was at the Sicily landings, Salerno and D-Day with Combined Ops HQ ship HMS Hilary, then with frigate HMS Kingsmill at the Walcheren landings.

“I was terrified by the action side of it, but it was something entirely different so it didn’t really bring the Hood business back then,” said Ted.

“The ships were never hit – a couple of near-misses with bombs, that sort of thing, but nothing else.”

After the war, in another frigate, HMS Brissenden, Ted served on the Palestine patrols, then he spent over two years in the cruiser HMS Ceylon, including the Korean War.

He took his officers’ promotion course and rejoined the Ceylon in time for the Suez crisis – but strangely, he never, in more than 30 years, sailed again through the Denmark Strait and over the wreck where so many friends and shipmates lay.

Ted finally left the Service in 1973, his last appointment being on a leading rates’ leadership course at Whale Island.

“I left as a two-striper with an MBE as a consolation prize,” said Ted. “I look back at my Royal Navy career with pride. I was sorry to leave, but the time had come, because I was in communications and the new technology was getting way above my head, so I had no regrets.

“I had 35 years in, and I was thoroughly satisfied. I still have a sense of pride in the Navy.

“I get quite sad when I look at the size of the Navy today, but, for example, four of us at the association were invited aboard HMS Newcastle, and when I looked round on a conducted tour I realised that that ship packed more firepower than Hood and quite a few others put together.

“So although the Royal Navy has got smaller it’s still good, it’s still the best.”

Ted’s fellow survivors are both long gone now, and Ted bears the brunt of the enduring fascination with the loss of a ship which symbolised British – and Royal Naval – power and pride between the wars.

Tired of his role as a “Naval curio” as each anniversary rolled round, Ted is now more sparing in his interviews – although it is not because they bring everything back into sharp focus. That happens anyway.

“Looking back, it’s still fresh in my mind – I do get quite emotional at times. For example, it takes a hell of a lot of getting out, that exaltation that I do every year at Boldre church for the memorial service,” he said.

“It still affects me – I fill up. And ten years ago a psychiatrist told me that was natural – I said it was 50 years ago, but he said it was so deep-seated that I will never get rid of it.”

Ted was invited out to the site of the sinking with a Danish ship some years ago, but his doctors blocked it, saying it would do him harm.

His emotions also make it difficult for him to contemplate the prospect of divers going to the wreck, or pictures being beamed back from the sea-bed well over a mile down.

“When the idea was first suggested I said ‘No, in no way.’ She is a war grave and should be treated as such,” he said.

But members of the Hood Association were receptive to the idea.

“At an AGM, a friend of longstanding said: ‘What is your objection, Ted?’ I said she’s a war grave and she shouldn’t be touched.

“He said if you went into a cemetery and took a photo of your mother’s grave, would you regard that as desecration? I can see his point.

“As the association agreed, I went along with it reluctantly, so long as they look, but don’t touch.”

Ted since made the trip out to the site, and paid his own tribute to his shipmates.

Ted bears no ill feelings toward those who brought about the destruction of his pride and joy, and he has met Bismarck survivors – around 110 were plucked from the sea by the cruiser HMS Dorsetshire after the German battlecruiser was sunk, little more than three days after she had despatched Hood.

Around 2,100 German sailors died, many drowning as the Dorsetshire was forced to leave the scene, a reported sighting of a U-boat causing her commanding officer to make the safety of his ship a priority.

“They were doing their job and we were doing ours,” said Ted.

“One of the German survivors wrote a book about the Bismarck – he should have come over with a small German contingent to a reunion but he wasn’t very well. He actually died about three days later.

“He wrote a dedication in it: To the only living survivor of the Hood from one of the few surviving members of the Bismarck, in the desperate hope that such idiocy never happens again.

“I think that sums it up.”