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AS HE was bobbing in the Madeiran sea, his cruise ship ablaze behind him and the starry night’s sky above, Joe Benveniste thought himself as good as dead.

Four days earlier Mr Benveniste, a Jewish Londoner of Greek heritage, boarded the TSMS Lakonia as one of its team of hairdressers and barbers.

After suffering through a bout of depression, he had decided to seize what appeared to be the gig of a lifetime, with its promise of voyages to parts of the world he would otherwise never have seen.

The ocean liner, which had previously served as an Allied forces troopship, set off from Southampton on December 19, 1963. It was due to sail to the Canary Islands, via Madeira, on an 11-day Christmas cruise.

Aboard were 646 passengers, all but 21 of them British. There was a healthy Jewish contingent. Sailing under captain Mathios Zarbis was a crew of 376, from Britain, Greece, Cyprus, the Netherlands, Germany, Canada, Belgium, France and China.

Mr Benveniste, who at the time was a member of the Sephardi Holland Park Synagogue, in West London, was in the on-board cinema when disaster struck. At about 11pm, a plume of thick, black smoke was spotted billowing from the hair salon. An alarm was raised, but it was too faint.

“The fire alarm bell was so weak it sounded like someone calling the waiter to ask for tea,” a survivor later told a reporter. Others remarked that they had assumed it was a drill. At first the smell of smoke was dismissed as coming from a cigar.

Within ten minutes the ship’s upper deck was ablaze, and by 11.30pm the ballroom was filling with smoke. Panic set in.

“It didn’t help that as soon as the fire was spotted, some of the crew members put water on it. Because it turned out to be an electrical fire, it just made things worse,” Mr Benveniste, now 75, said.

“People just started panicking. We couldn’t see any land, but we could see rescue ships in the distance. We knew we would have to get off the ship. You could feel the heat below your feet.”

With all lifeboats taken, those remaining on board were told they would have to jump into the freezing waters below.

“All I could hear were screams. And a really terrible crashing noise as people were hitting the water one by one,” he said.

“I got halfway down the rope ladder, and I knew I had to jump. It was about 30 feet in total. The rescue ships were on the horizon; they couldn’t get any nearer to us because they thought the ship might explode.”

With the strong Atlantic current sapping his strength, Mr Benveniste feared the worst. Were it not for his mysterious saviour, named Tony, he surely would have become the night’s 129th fatality.

At the point of surrender, Tony hauled him out of the water.

“He came swimming along and he said to me ‘put your head on this pillow’,” Now and then: Joe Benveniste at the age of 75 (below) and (far left) as a young man preparing to travel on the ill-feted TSMS Lakonia in 1963 (near left) Mr Benveniste said. “I just remember asking his name, and he told me it was Tony. I didn’t think to ask his surname, or where he lived. I still don’t know who he is. But I know if it wasn’t for him I would have been left to die there. “The next thing I knew, I was awake on the rescue ship. I had been in the water for five hours.” Ninety-five passengers perished in the Lakonia disaster, along with 33 crew members. British Pathé newsreel captured in the immediate aftermath shows the ship’s gutted, charred remains being towed by rescue ships. After receiving medical attention in the Moroccan city of Casablanca, Mr Benveniste and his fellow survivors were flown back to the UK.

A period of recuperation followed, and he was eventually able to resume his career as a hairdresser, but the events of the night have stayed with him for the past 55 years. An investigation later found basic emergency preparations on the Lakonia had been inadequate.

A number of lifeboats failed to deploy, while the finger was pointed at some members of the crew after the order to abandon ship was issued too late.

Some sleeping passengers were also never alerted. Eight officers were charged with negligence.

In 2013 Mr Benveniste visited Gibraltar, where many of the victims were buried, to mark the 50th anniversary of the disaster, along with his wife, Vivian, and two sons, Jeffrey and David. Mr Benveniste said he would now like to reconnect with other survivors — and one in particular.

“Since I was one of the youngest people on board, I would imagine many of the others have passed away. But if there are any relatives or children, too, I would encourage them to get in touch,” he said. “They may want to know what happened, after all these years.” “And obviously it would be amazing to finally find Tony, and thank him for what he did — for saving my life. It would mean a lot.”

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