A red life-jacket and a mom who told him to never take it off is the reason why a London boy was one of only 13 evacuated children that survived the bombing of a Second World War ship.

Now this life-jacket forms part of a fascinating new exhibition on how the Blitz affected children. The display at the Imperial War Museum marks the 60th anniversary of the end of the war.

Colin Ryder Richardson was 11 when he boarded the SS City if Benares as one of 16,000 children who were sent overseas by ship to escape the war.

At the start of the conflict, he lived with his parents and younger brother in St John's Wood, north London.

Before they set sail, his mother gave him a red life-jacket with sleeves, "just like an anorak", Ryder Richardson remembers. He followed her order to wear it even when he slept, earning him the nickname "Will Scarlet".

Five days after the ship left Liverpool for Canada in September 1940, it was torpedoed by a German U-boat.

The boy was reading a comic book in bed when the shell struck at 10pm. "There was a loud bang and I could smell the explosive right away."

He was ushered into a lifeboat with about 40 adults. Once they were lowered onto the water, the dry wood filled up with water, but stayed afloat due to buoyancy air tanks.

The sail, oars and mast floated away while rough seas crashed over their heads. "We were holding on for dear life."

Colin hugged the elderly nurse next to him to comfort her. "Eventually the old lady died in my arms, but by tat time I had no strength to move to let her go."

Only 12 people in the boat survived the 20-hour wait before the HMS Hurricane rescued them.

Nine-year-old Alan Francis, whose family lived in Wembley when the war broke out, remembers the empty desks at his school after the SS City if Benares sank. Unlike many of his classmates, he had declined a school offer to be taken to Canada.

He delivered his mom's letters of condolence to the bereaved families. Yet a few days later, his mother was killed in an air raid, along with six neighbours.

On the night of 29 September 1940, the family slept downstairs underneath furniture. The bomb woke Alan, who had been protected by the ironing board above his head.

"I could just see out the garden. There were no curtains, no wall."

His dad, brother and grandparents were unharmed. But next to his father under the dining table his mother laid crushed beneath the chimney stack.

"We took less notice of the air raids after that," says the retired police officer. "We believed lighting wouldn't strike twice."

Other highlights of the exhibition include a baby's gas mask, an Anderson bomb shelter and a life-size replica of a two-story wartime house.

A unique collection of drawings by evacuee schoolgirls shows the country through the eyes of London children who had never seen a cow.

Art teacher Mary Speaight, now 93, accompanied her class as part of the mass evacuation of one million children in September 2001. She kept the drawings made by her pupils in the village Somerton, Somerset.

"I thought they were jolly good, because they are so lively."

  • "The Children's War" runs from 18 March at the Imperial War Museum, London. Admission free.