TO millions of Only Fools And Horses fans, Del Boy and Rodney’s Uncle Albert was the Royal Navy’s unlucky Jonah.
Captain Birdseye lookalike Albert Gladstone Trotter, played by Buster Merryfield, served on seven ships in World War Two — all of which sank.
Uncle Albert came into the show in the fourth series as a replacement for Del and Rodney’s beloved Grandad — but he was not dreamt up from nowhere by creator John Sullivan.
The Sun can reveal he was based on a real-life naval hero who survived after three of the ships he served on during the war all sank, with the loss of many lives.
Petty Officer Cook Thomas Henry Ward, known as Harry, who won the Distinguished Service Medal for saving the life of an officer at Dunkirk, has been unmasked as the inspiration behind Uncle Albert.
Albert is even seen borrowing his catchphrase, “During the war . . .”, to start his service stories.
Harry’s sister, Doreen Simson, who will be part of this year’s celebrations to mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day on May 8, told The Sun: “Uncle Albert was based on my brother.
“After the war, Harry joined the BBC and worked with John Sullivan, who created all of his characters from real people.
“Harry told John all about his exploits in the war and how three ships he was on went down. Two of them sank in the Arctic.
“Our parents were told he was dead, presumed drowned, but later I watched him come down the street, large as life, with his kit bag over his shoulder, just like Uncle Albert.”
Harry, the eldest of seven children brought up in West London, was born in 1920 — the same year as the fictitious Albert Trotter.
As a child, Harry taught himself to swim in the Grand Union Canal — a skill that would later save his life.
Just like Uncle Albert, Harry was 17 when he joined the Royal Navy. By May 1940, he was serving as a cook aboard the minesweeper HMS Gossamer.
Harry’s ship was sent as part of the Operation Dynamo flotilla to help evacuate 338,000 British troops stranded at Dunkirk.
The Gossamer made six trips to the shore and rescued more than 3,000 men.
During the chaos off the French coast, Harry’s ship came alongside destroyer HMS Wakeful, which had picked up 640 soldiers before being hit by two torpedoes fired from a German E-boat.
The stricken ship split in two and the bow sank immediately. Only four soldiers and 25 crew survived.
Military records show that the crew of HMS Gossamer rescued a handful of survivors.
Harry bravely saved the life of a Lieutenant Commander who was drowning, for which he received the Distinguished Service Medal from King George VI at the palace.
‘His nickname was Jonah’
Doreen, 87, of Crawley, West Sussex, says: “Somehow or other, Harry got a ribbon from the hat of one of the sailors from HMS Wakeful, which he always kept, and now I’ve got it.”
Two years later, HMS Gossamer was on the Arctic convoy routes protecting ships taking supplies to the Russians against enemy U-boats.
On June 24, 1942, the minesweeper was moored at the Kola inlet in northern Russia when she was sunk by a bomb during a German air attack.
Three officers were killed and 12 ratings were reported missing. Twenty crew members survived but suffered wounds.
The ship carrying those survivors was also attacked and sank. By this time, Harry had switched to another minesweeper, HMS Leda, on the Arctic convoy.
But at 5.30am on September 20, 1942, Harry was preparing breakfasts when two torpedoes fired from a 435 U-boat scored direct hits.
Harry was posted missing. But after the war was over, I saw him coming across the road carrying his kit bag. We all thought he’d been lost at sea.
Doreen Simson, Harry’s sister
A column of smoke shot out of her funnel and the ship began to sink.
It took an hour and a half for the Leda to go under. All 86 crew, including Harry, got off by jumping into the water, though six would later die of hypothermia.
Doreen says: “When the Leda sank, apparently Harry swam over to a merchant ship and later that sank as well. His nickname was Jonah.
“On the next boat he got to, they joked, ‘Don’t come on our ship, find somewhere else’.”
The War Office sent a telegram to his mother, Nellie, a BBC cleaner, and dad Harry, a fish seller at Harrods, informing them that their eldest son had been posted as missing.
By then, Doreen, who was four, and her nine-year-old brother Dennis, had been evacuated from London during the Blitz to live with families in Wales.
She says: “Harry was posted missing. But after the war was over, I saw him coming across the road carrying his kit bag.
“We all thought he’d been lost at sea. He said he lived because he was a strong swimmer.”
After surviving two Arctic sinkings, Harry served on a number of other ships.
He stayed on after the war ended and served 18 months aboard the fleet aircraft carrier HMS Ocean in the Mediterranean.
Harry was onboard when two British ships were sunk off Corfu in 1946, sparking the 50-year Cold War with the Soviet Union.
Petty Officer Ward finally left the Royal Navy in 1948 and, just like Uncle Albert, he was demobbed with a chest full of medals for service to King and country.
He was married to Agnes, who died in 1969 aged 46. They had no children and Harry never remarried.
When Doreen quizzed him about his life in the Navy, Harry, who died aged 90 in 2011, told her she was “being nosy”.
Crashing chandelier
After working as a painter and decorator, he landed a job at the new BBC Television Centre in White City, just down the road from his flat.
Until he was nearly 70, Harry created scenery for BBC shows, including Z-Cars and The Citadel.
In the bar of the BBC club, with a pint of Guinness and a tot of rum, he would regale his workmates with stories that began: “When I was in the war . . . ” One of those listening was John Sullivan, who worked at the time shifting props in the comedy department.
It was only when Harry died that we found out that John Sullivan had based Uncle Albert on our brother.
Plumber’s son John then turned his hand to writing sitcoms, creating Citizen Smith and Just Good Friends, which Harry worked on.
His biggest hit, Only Fools And Horses, began in 1981, starring David Jason as Del Trotter, Nicholas Lyndhurst as his brother Rodney and Lennard Pearce as Grandad.
When Lennard died in 1984, Sullivan had to urgently come up with an old member of the Trotter family who could share their flat in Nelson Mandela House.
Retired florist Doreen says: “It was only when Harry died that we found out that John had based Uncle Albert on our brother. It made sense, because John based most of his characters on people he knew.
“The famous crashing chandelier scene happened to his own father.
“Boycie was someone he’d met working in the car trade, and Del Boy was based on the market traders he saw growing up in South London as a kid.
“It’s something you do when you work with someone, you talk and talk.
“And John obviously knew all Harry’s war stories.”
When widower Harry became ill in later life, Doreen and her sisters often visited him.
She says: “One day he put his head under the blankets and said, ‘Get away, get away. None of you have got any idea what it’s like seeing your friends dying in burning oil’.
“You see, he got no counselling whatsoever. It’s just so sad.”
At Harry’s funeral, his BBC colleagues told Doreen they knew all about his past and revealed: ‘You do know Harry was Uncle Albert?’
“Harry never said anything to us. So they told me to get in touch with John and he will authenticate it.
“Sadly, a few weeks later, John died, too [of pneumonia, aged 64], and I never got to speak to him.”
But in a moving tribute at his funeral, Harry’s workmates said: “Petty Officer Ward endured cold and desperate times.
“The Leda, Gossamer and Wakeful. Before he could sort out his bunk, all of them fired on, all of them sunk.”
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VE DAY TUNES & TALES
ON May 8, the 80th anniversary of VE Day – when war in Europe ended – Doreen will be appearing on stage at the Royal Albert Hall.
She will be talking about her family and life as an evacuee after she was sent, aged four, from London to the seaside village of Borth, near Aberystwyth, with her older brother Dennis.
Doreen recalls: “My mum said that Dennis had to look after me. At Borth station I was left crying because a man took my brother and his friend Georgie West off to a farm.
“I was left on my own and then this lady said, ‘I’ll take this little girl’.
“I went into a house where these people had strange voices, not Welsh but posh accents.”
Jean Sharpe, the wife of a wealthy Midlands factory owner, lived there with her mother and two daughters.
Doreen says: “She used to take me down the country lanes and tell me the names of wild flowers.
“My evacuation shaped my life. I became a florist for over 60 years, a job I absolutely loved.”
- VE Day 80: The Party, an evening of music and storytelling in aid of Armed Forces charity SSAFA, is at the Royal Albert Hall on May 8. See veday80.org.
