Fourteen men reach the starboard raft
The port raft is submerged. The survivors gather in the starboard raft and a count confirms five men are missing.
Final voyage · 18 October 1961 · late morning
Fourteen Survivors Rescued by Derkacz
After the Arctic Viking capsized, fourteen men were left in a life raft in mountainous seas. Their rescue by the Polish lugger Derkacz was not a simple pickup. It was a dangerous act of seamanship carried out in a gale, with exhausted men, a wreck still visible nearby, and five shipmates missing.
In the life raft
Fourteen men afloat
The port life raft was submerged. The starboard raft was the one that saved the fourteen survivors of Arctic Viking. Men reached it by swimming, scrambling, being thrown clear, or fighting their way out from parts of the vessel as she rolled over.
Skipper Philip William Garner later said he reached the raft and ordered a count. There were fourteen aboard. At first he thought everyone might be safe, but the count made the truth plain. Five men were missing: David Craft, Edward Kent, Dennis Lound, John Robinson and Samuel Waddy.
The raft was an exposed, unstable refuge. The men had come from oil, debris, cold water and the violence of the capsize. Some had no life jackets. They were wet, shocked and surrounded by heavy seas, with the overturned hull of their ship still nearby. The raft kept them alive, but it did not remove the fear.
Garner's evidence says a watch was kept at each end of the raft canopy. The survivors still looked for men in the water. One of those seen was believed to be Dennis Lound, waving beyond reach on the far side of the ship. The raft moved towards him, but he disappeared before they could get to him.
The Polish lugger
A yellow object in the sea
The rescue vessel was the Polish lugger Derkacz, commanded by Skipper Ryszard Sleska, whose name appears in British newspaper reports with spelling variations including Sleczka and Sleezka. The reports describe him as twenty-five, married, and the father of a young daughter.
From Derkacz, the first sign of the Arctic Viking survivors was not a clearly identified raft of men. It was a yellow object rising and falling in huge seas. Then a rocket was seen. Through glasses, the object resolved into a dinghy or raft full of men.
From the raft, the sighting unfolded the other way round. The survivors had been adrift for about one to two hours in differing accounts before a mast or vessel was sighted. Garner fired a rocket. Help was visible, but not yet reachable. The weather was so violent that closing the distance took time.
That delay matters. Rescue was not a straight line from sighting to safety. Derkacz had to fight through the gale without losing control or crushing the raft. The men in the raft had to stay alive while the ship worked her way towards them.
Derkacz did not simply find the survivors. She had to reach them, hold position near them, and take them aboard while the sea tried to tear both craft apart. Interpretive summary from the Arctic Viking Obsidian research vault
Coming alongside
The dangerous transfer
When Derkacz reached the raft, the rescue entered its most dangerous stage. The lugger and raft were being thrown about by heavy seas. Too far away, and the survivors could not be brought aboard. Too close, and the raft could be smashed against the larger vessel.
The Polish crew hauled the survivors up by the arms while Mate Ronald Dodsley pushed from the raft below. This detail is repeated in the newspaper account and gives the rescue its physical shape: men below, men above, arms stretched across moving water, all of them working in rhythm with the sea.
Skipper Sleska later described a wave as large as a house lifting the emptied raft onto Derkacz's deck. That image shows how violent the transfer had been. The raft was not gently recovered. It was thrown up by the same sea that had nearly killed the men inside it.
The rescue was successful because Derkacz's crew took risks and because the Arctic Viking survivors still had enough strength and discipline to cooperate. British reports praised the Polish crew, but Sleska shrugged off praise, presenting the act as seafarers' duty to one another.
Aboard Derkacz
Warmth, bunks and exhaustion
Once aboard Derkacz, the survivors were no longer in the raft, but they were not immediately home or safe ashore. They were exhausted, wet, cold and ill from salt water and oil. The Polish crew gave them dry clothes, blankets, medical help and warm bunks.
To make room, Derkacz's crew gave up their own sleeping quarters. Reports say they slept on mess-room tables and in storm-washed alleyways while the Arctic Viking survivors used their bunks. Philip Garner shared the skipper's cabin, while Sleska slept on the floor with a coat for a blanket.
This part of the story matters because rescue did not end with getting men over the rail. Derkacz had to care for fourteen shocked survivors while still riding out the same gale that had destroyed Arctic Viking. The Polish crew were tired too. They had been away from home for a month, and then spent two more days with little or no sleep.
Garner later said the Polish crew shared everything: beds, food and clothing. The detail is simple, and all the stronger for that. Men who had just lost a ship and five companions were met not with ceremony but with blankets, space, medicine, and practical kindness.
Search and loss
The ship still in sight
The rescue did not erase the men who were missing. Accounts describe the survivors and Polish crew seeing Arctic Viking still floating upside down after the rescue. In one report, the men from the Viking stood with the Polish crew and watched her sink, stern first, after her bows lifted.
There are differences in the recorded timings. Some reports say Arctic Viking remained afloat upside down for around twenty minutes after the survivors were picked up. Other testimony says she sank later, after Derkacz had continued searching. The page preserves that uncertainty rather than forcing the accounts into one artificial sequence.
The search for further survivors continued in severe conditions. Garner was asked at the inquiry whether the missing men could have survived in the sea. His answer was bleak: in such weather, without life jackets, he could not expect a man to live for two hours.
One of the hardest details appears in the Derkacz account: a body was seen near the lugger, tangled in the Red Ensign. No attempt was made to recover it because Sleska judged that he could not risk the vessel and crew again. That decision belongs to the cruelty of sea rescue: even compassion has to answer to the weather.
Stormbound
The long return to Hull
Derkacz could not simply turn and run for Hull. The gale still ruled the sea. Reports say she had to ride out the storm for nearly forty-eight hours before the survivors could be landed. A message from Derkacz indicated that the weather made turning the small vessel towards port unsafe until conditions moderated.
When Derkacz finally came up the Humber, people waited to see her. The survivors came ashore pale, exhausted and carrying the knowledge that five men were gone. The Polish crew were received with gratitude, but Sleska himself kept his men aboard at first. They were too tired; they would rest before going ashore.
At Hull, Boyd Line managing director Tom Boyd met the returning men and honoured the Polish rescuers. He spoke of the brotherhood of the sea, a phrase that appeared in several reports and was later repeated as a summary of what Derkacz had done.
That phrase can sound ceremonial now, but the rescue gives it weight. Derkacz's crew risked their vessel, gave up their bunks, used their supplies, shared their clothes and stayed awake through the storm so that fourteen Hull fishermen could come home.
The rescued men
Fourteen names carried home
The survivor lists in the research vault vary slightly in initials and spelling, but the core record is clear: fourteen men survived the capsize and were carried home through Derkacz's rescue.
- Philip William Garner Skipper
- Ronald Dodsley Mate
- Joseph Thomas Bartle Chief engineer
- William Campbell Marshall Radio operator
- David Cressey Spare hand / helmsman
- Raymond Dodsworth Spare hand
- John Clare Galley boy
- Alan Bailey Spare hand
- Charles Kirk Deck hand
- Dennis Petrini Deck hand
- J. W. Rood Cook
- Ray Hotham Crew member
- Keith William Carr Spare hand
- Harry Cooke Engineer
J. Kiel had been landed at Honningsvåg on the outward voyage and was not aboard for the capsize or rescue. Some notes include variant crew initials or an additional J. Clarke; this page follows the current combined survivor list used elsewhere on the site.
Rescue chronology
Late morning, 18 October 1961
A missing crewman is seen in the water
Dennis Lound is reported waving in the water, but the raft cannot reach him before he disappears.
Derkacz sights the raft
The Polish lugger sees a yellow object and then a rocket. The raft is identified as full of men.
The lugger closes in heavy seas
Derkacz battles close enough for the transfer while avoiding crushing the raft.
Fourteen survivors taken aboard
Polish crew haul the men aboard while Ronald Dodsley helps from the raft below.
Arctic Viking sinks
The overturned trawler remains visible for a time before finally going down. Exact timings differ across reports.
Derkacz reaches Hull
After riding out the storm, Derkacz brings the survivors home to Hull and public gratitude.
Sources used include the Arctic Viking Obsidian research vault files: Proud To Know The Men He Saved, How We Capsized in a Cruel Sea, Arctic Viking sank in two minutes, Ship Died In Curling Seas, Skipper Tells Of Sudden Lurch, I Learned How To Swim That Morning, Calendar Of Courage In Winter's Storms, Death of a trawler-By her skipper, and the combined crew list. Some timings differ between newspaper and inquiry accounts; those differences are retained as uncertainty.