Condensed from an interview with Geoffrey Goddard, published in the Sunday Herald Sun (Melbourne) January 7, 2001.
Bob Paton was asleep when the Japanese torpedo hit the Centaur. The force of the explosion threw him from his bunk. His other vivid memory is how fast the ship sank. “It was so sudden,” said Bob. “I just picked myself off the floor, ran out to the gangway, up the steps and over the side. When I surfaced there was no ship. It had already gone, as quick as that.”
Bob and a few others dragged themselves on to a damaged life raft. “But I wasn’t dangling my feet over the side,” he said. “There were sharks everywhere. I’ve never seen so many sharks.”
Bob said he survived because of luck. “I often think how lucky I was to climb on that raft. Luck was certainly with me that day,” he said.