When car ferry Princess Victoria sank in heavy seas off Northern Ireland on 31 January 1953, Billy McAllister was working onboard

Massive waves were pushing and hitting, sending her [Princess Victoria] every which way. I was trying to keep the pots and pans on the stove! I never thought such a thing was going to happen – I just thought we were going to be a bit late.

I went to have a look and there was a man trying to close the gates… At 12.30pm she started to list. We were in trouble then. A friend and I went to sit in the passage and he gave me a hand up onto the rails thinking it was safe.

They were handing out lifejackets. They were cork and they broke your neck if you didn’t hold them down right when you jumped.

The cargo shifted over to one side and at 2pm she started turning over. We were sat there on her side. After one big wave my friend vanished.

They shouted “jump” from one of the ship’s lifeboats. An oil tanker came but it wasn’t possible for them to help. It just kept hitting the front of our boat so we told her to go away or we would be killed. The [ship’s] lifeboat carrying the women and children had already been lost in a wave throwing them against the hull of the ship.

It took the Donaghadee lifeboat two or three attempts, but we got aboard. We were all sitting there not talking. I thought we will maybe be safe.

I had 6 weeks off and then went back to work on the replacement Princess Margaret. It’s a good job the lifeboat came or it would have been dark ...

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Billy (centre) is one of the last remaining survivors of the disaster. In January, he marked its 60th anniversary by laying a wreath on the spot where his ship sank with friend (and Larne Coxswain) Frank Healy and Second Coxswain Norman Surplus (right).

Read Frank’s account of what happened and the impact of the rescue on the lifeboat crew as told by a relative at RNLI.org/victoria.