MUSEUM staff are seeking the family of a man who survived the World War II sinking of the ill-fated liner TSS Athenia.

Following a horrific accident as the ship went down, and thinking he would die, cook Sidney Worrall handed his watch to passenger Gerald Hutchinson.

Mr Hutchison died in 2015 and now his family want to find Mr Worrall’s family and tell them he treasured the timepiece.

But the story also has an additional twist.

A Glasgow Museum curator turned detective to find out more about Sidney Worrall - and discovered he survived.

The watch was gifted to Glasgow Museums by Rob Hutchinson in Canada.

Mr Hutchinson said: “The watch had belonged to one of the cooks working on the Athenia when it was torpedoed.

“An explosion ripped through the ship and the force of the blast knocked a huge pan off the stove deluging two poor men with boiling oil.

“My father, Gerry, was a passenger on board, and as the order to abandon ship came he helped to load and then man the lifeboats.

“He ended up in lifeboat six, which also carried the two badly injured cooks.

“My father did what he could for them over the next few hours, making them as comfortable as possible.

“One of them, named Sid, was really ill when he pressed his wristwatch into my dad’s hand saying “please look after my watch for me”.

The rescue ship took survivors from the Athenia to Galway and the two cooks were rushed to hospital. Gerry assumed “Sid” had died.

Mr Hutchinson added: “My dad grew to treasure the watch that he had been entrusted with.

“He didn’t talk about his experiences much, but when he did he would show the wristwatch and talk about Sid.”

After his father’s death, Rob decided to donate some of his Athenia items to the Riverside Museum in Glasgow, which has a display about the sinking on the day war broke out in September 1939.

The ship had been built in Glasgow in 1923 for the Anchor-Donaldson Line, which later became the Donaldson Atlantic Line.

Glasgow Museum’s curator Emily Malcolm received the package which included telegrams, letters and Sid’s watch, which was returned to Glasgow for the first time since 1939.

While preparing the items for display she decided to see if she could find out more about Sid.

Emily said: “I was extremely surprised to find that “Sidney Worrall”, the second fish cook on board Athenia, didn’t die after the sinking.

“The records are very patchy, but it looked as if he had recovered and gone on to live and marry in Scotland.”

First she consulted the lists of those killed in the disaster, of merchant seamen who had died in WW2 and at the newspapers of the time which reported the crew and passenger listings.

No ‘Sid’ seemed to have died as a result of the disaster. Re-reading historian Max Caulfield’s account of the sinking, Emily found a small reference to a cook, Sid Wall, being terribly scarred.

Further research of Scotland’s People, which details all registered births, drew a blank, as did listings of seamen’s tickets issued to merchant seamen from 1919 to 1939.

Undeterred, the curator continued her search at the City Archives in Glasgow’s Mitchell Library.

One file, the Athenia Relief Fund, contains many letters from people injured or who lost family members in the sinking.

One was from Andrew McOnie, the other cook who was injured and landed in Galway.

He wrote a letter of thanks to the fund saying ‘all the Glasgow boys’ were home now with the exception of him and ‘Worrall’ who were still in a nursing home in Galway.

Looking for Sidney Worrall instead of Sidney Wall, sure the name had been misheard or wrongly written, proved to be the breakthrough Emily was hoping for.

Sidney Worrall had been the second fish cook on the Athenia and he had survived the sinking.

He had even been issued with a replacement seaman’s ticket later that year. Emily has been unable to find a record of death for any Sidney Worrall until 1973.

Emily added: “Together with Rob and his family in Canada we would love the public’s help in tracing Sid’s relatives.

“I think they would be genuinely touched to learn that Gerry had kept his treasured watch safe all these years.

“We hope that, with their blessing, it can go on show at Riverside to help tell the important story of the Athenia disaster and those that were on board on that fateful day.”

Glasgow Museums would like the public to help them complete the story.

If you have any information about Sid and his life after the sinking contact Emily at emily.malcolm@glasgowlife.org.uk