“I was down in the boiler room where I was a stoker and I’ll always remember the captain over the tannoy saying he was sorry, but we would not be picking up any survivors,” Mr Stirk recalled.

“I still think of them, especially at this time of year. I’d gone up on deck to look back and saw the debris and some of the men. It was just a glance, but I will never forget.”

The 86-year-old, of Bolton, Bradford, is one of a number of Second World War veterans who will be returning to the places where they served during 2012 as part of the Big Lottery Fund’s Heroes Return 2 programme.

With his share of the fund he and wife Winnifred, 81, will be visiting Malta – where his ship, HMS Enterprise, stopped off after taking South African troops back home after the war.

Before going to sea Mr Stirk had to do his fair share of square-bashing and drilling on land until he was ready to start out as a stoker and work his way up to a leading stoker position which took 18 months – he was one of 25 new stokers when he boarded HMS Enterprise, a cruiser built for the First World War but recommissioned shortly before the start of the second.

He admits – thinking back to sinking the enemy’s destroyers on December 28 – that he still feels sadness at how his ship had to leave survivors behind but there had been no option.

“The captain said there could be enemy submarines in the area and we had to get away as quickly as we could. It was full steam ahead, we were doing 22 knots. The ship just took off, I can still feel the water rushing past the sides. If we’d stopped we would have been a sitting duck,” he said.

Just because the ship had already been on full alert three days earlier did not stop all the Christmas celebrations. There may not have been any decorations but it was tradition that the officers served meals to the lower ranks on the big day.

This month Mr Stirk will start planning his trip to Malta where he hopes to see more than he did more than half a century ago.

“I remember the rickshaw boys and the boatmen in the harbour coming out to meet us and sell us their wares,” he recalled.

“They’d throw ropes up on to our decks with balls on the other end, then pass things along the ropes in baskets so we could choose what we wanted and send the money back. I’d like to see that again.”

Without the Big Lottery money it is a trip that Mr Stirk would not be making.

He said: “It’s something I’ve wanted to do but not had the money to do it until now.”