Eight heroic NI sailors honoured for the part they played in the Royal Navy’s most dramatic international escape story - Yangtse Incident: The Story of H.M.S. Amethyst
Eight heroic Northern Irish sailors have been honoured for the part they played in the Royal Navy’s most dramatic international escape story, with the unveiling of a memorial plaque and storyboard in Hazelbank Park
The memorial plaque and storyboard unveiling comes at the end of an eight-year campaign by Andy Bannister and Raymond McCullough - sons of two of the heroic Northern Irish sailors who were part of the legendary 1949 HMS Amethyst Yangtze Incident - to remember the eight local navy seamen involved in this historic event.
During the HMS Amethyst Yangtze Incident…with civil war raging in China, the British Royal Navy ordered HMS Amethyst
up the Yangtze River to act as a guardship for the British Embassy in Nanjing.
The ship was run aground and sieged by the Chinese Communist People and Liberation Army with the ship’s crewmen held captive.
What followed was a heroic three-month story of gruelling hardship, grinding endurance, desperate struggle and a daring last-ditch midnight dash to freedom.
Twenty-one sailors lost their lives with many more wounded.
Andy Bannister’s dad, Sammy Bannister, was seriously wounded and captured by Mao Tse-Tung’s communist army.
Also on board the sieged HMS Amethyst tending to the casualties was Raymond McCullough’s father, able
seaman Raymond McCullough Snr.
The eight Yangtze Incident sailors from Northern Ireland were: Alfred White, James McLean, Sammy Bannister and Raymond McCullough
Snr (all from Belfast); James Foster Johnston (Bangor), Hugh Haveron (Newtownabbey); Johnny Murphy (Cookstown) and John McCarthy
(Larne).
During the eight Eight-year campaign to honour Northern Ireland’s Yangtze Incident heroes… as fate would have it, Yangtze Incident naval hero sons, Andy Bannister and Raymond McCullough, first met in 2018 after Raymond saw Andy appearing
on the Antiques Roadshow TV programme.
The two men have campaigned together tirelessly ever since to have Northern Ireland’s Yangtze Incident
sailors honoured.
Andy Bannister said: “Raymond McCullough and I have taken our story to local groups up and down the country.
"We wanted to keep people informed and to someday influence the right person to help us achieve our
goal of a permanent memorial and storyboard.
“I met Antrim & Newtownabbey Borough Councillor Alison Bennington and she took up the mantle and tabled the motion.
"We are extremely grateful for them supporting this project and bringing this tribute to our eight local Yangtze sailors to fruition.
"It is a landmark moment that means so much to all the families and is something we as local citizens can all be proud of.”
The Yangtze Incident became legendary with the story being retold to the world by the classic 1957 movie, Yangtse Incident: The Story of H.M.S. Amethyst.
In the film, many of H.M.S. Amethyst’s crew are portrayed by a ‘who’s who’ of iconic actors from cinema’s golden age. Yet the part played by Northern Ireland’s eight real-life maritime heroes had slipped by largely unnoticed for almost 80 years… until now, thanks to Andy Bannister and Raymond McCullough.
As a child, Andy Bannister believed his dad - HMS Amethyst’s Stoker Mechanic Sammy Bannister - was an actor… before discovering he was
actually one of the real-life naval heroes, portrayed in the film by legendary actor Ian Bannen.