A wartime sailor who survived a torpedo attack on the Navy’s unluckiest ship has died aged 85.

Reggie Bowser was one of 206 men who survived the sinking of the infamous HMS Penelope after it was torpedoed twice by a German submarine – 415 other crew and the captain lost their lives in the tragedy.

The ship, nicknamed HMS Pepperpot because it was holed so often, sank on November 18, 1944.

It had been leaving Naples to return to the Anzio region when it was targeted despite travelling at 26 knots. Out of all recorded Second World War submarine attacks, no other ship running at such a speed was ever struck.

The first torpedo hit the Penelope’s engines and 16 minutes later a second hit its boiler room.

Mr Bowser, a radar operator, was below ship in his cabin when it happened. He was thrown across it before managing to escape the doomed vessel.

By the time he surfaced, the ship had almost disappeared. He spent hours in the freezing Mediterranean water before being picked up by a rescue boat.

His cousin Pat Evans, who lives in Oakenshaw, said: “All Reggie could see was blackness on the horizon. It was oil from the ship. He decided to swim away from it unlike the other survivors. It was that that saved him.”

He remembered being dropped off on the beach at Naples and being looked after by the Salvation Army who gave them tea and blankets. And he was eventually taken to Malta before being shipped back home for surgery on a stomach injury suffered in the bombing.

Mr Bowser continued to serve in the Navy and spent time in South Africa. He went on to be awarded both the Italy and Africa Star medals and one for war service.

When he was finally de-mobbed he returned to the career he had started in the Bradford mills and became a respected wool sorter, often being sent to do quality-control work in Argentina.

He once turned down a permanent job in South America, telling his boss: “What would I want to leave Bradford for? There’s everything I could ever want right here.”

At the age of 42 he got married, spending much of his wedded life in Undercliffe with his wife Joyce.

After she died he would meet up again with old school friends from his Great Horton days. “He got a car and loved their days out in the Dales,” said Mr Evans. “He said the air was like Champagne!”

As ill health took a grip, Mr Bowser had to leave his home in Wrose, Shipley, to live at Norman Lodge in Odsal.

Mr Evans said: “He thought the world of everyone at the home but because he had always been such an independent man life recently had become a terrible trial. Apart from a cousin Winnie in Bankfoot, who was his rock, and myself he had no one else left.”

A requiem mass will be held for Mr Bowser at St Joseph’s Church, Pakington Street, off Manchester Road, on Tuesday at noon followed by burial at Scholemoor Cemetery at 1.15pm and later a celebration of his life at Chapel House, Low Moor.

Donations in his memory will go to St Joseph’s organ restoration fund.