at this point hms oribi was part of the escort of this convoy, and the battle went on. we had signals which were repeated to us, and anything that told us what was going on, i knew that they were in this, involved in this terrible battle. and i had thought, having just managed to catch hold of this man, i'm now going to let him go! but of course no, actually we were plotting, we knew the battle was going on, we didn't have information as we would have liked it, but we had a certain amount of information that came in and told us what was going on. john had been in bed, lying in a place near the bridge. he was woken up by a terrific crash, which actually he didn't know what it meant, he got out of bed and rushed up to the bridge again, only to find that his ship, hms oribi, had rammed a u—boat.