THERE was a feeling of deep family grief when 19-year-old Royal Navy gunner Fred Fairclough was officially reported missing presumed drowned. But exactly one month later, jubilation replaced sorrow for his parents. They had received a telegram, forwarded by their sailor son, reading: "Safe and well at Malta. Letter following tonight..."

World War light cruiser, HMS Spartan, was sunk on January 29, 1944. She was hit by a glider-bomb released from a German aircraft off the Italian coast after the Spartan had taken part in gun-support operations during the historic Anzio Landing.

Fred, whose parents then lived in Upland Road, Thatto Heath, was one of the lucky survivors picked up from the sea after the capsizing of the blazing Spartan, whose title was later inherited by a nuclear hunter-killer submarine.

And after that close brush with death, Fred, who had lied about his age to join the Royal Navy at the age of 17, was to live on for a further 58 years, fathering two daughters, Rita and Eileen, and a couple of sons, Derek and John. Later he would become a proud grandfather of eight, with three great-grandchildren since added to the Fairclough family tree.

Fred died, aged 77, on Easter Sunday two years ago, after a brave battle against cancer. He was a popular character in his adoptive Earlestown, enjoying a pint and a flutter on the horses, and being possessor of a distinctive deep voice that held listeners captive when recounting his Royal Navy years.

For, unlike many others with first-hand experience of the terrors of warfare, Fred - who is survived by wife Nellie - had been quite happy to chat about the tragedy that unfolded before his eyes, costing the lives of so many Spartan shipmates, including two of his closest buddies, also from St Helens.

Daughter Rita Heyes, from Moss Bank, explains: "He told us that he was off duty, asleep, when the ship was hit. Gathering his wits, he managed to scramble up the lurching side of the ship and leap into the sea as it keeled over before capsizing".

One of her dad's most poignant memories of the tragedy concerned a navy veteran who called out to him through all the panic, "God go with you, son!" That veteran was later listed among the dead.

The surge of relief that their son's "safe and well" telegram brought to his parents, Bill and Emily Fairclough, must have been immense. The couple were later to become well known in the licensed trade after leaving the family home in Thatto Heath - Bill being, at various times, the popular landlord of the recently demolished Park Hotel in North Road, St Helens, and of the Victoria (better known as The Little Pig) at Sutton.

Back on Civvy Street, Fred (nephew of the legendary Great Britain international stand-off Leslie Fairclough who made 355 appearances for Saints in the early 1900s) first earned a living in the Pilkington Sheet Works' roll-plate section and later as a postman in Newton-le-Willowsn-.

He's made his last salute now, but Fred's memory will be kept burning bright within his family through his wartime photographs, well documented stories, a poem he penned about the sinking of the Spartan . . . and that treasured good-news telegram, still in existence 60 years on.