his attempt to save the life of a crane driver injured when his crane toppled across the open hold of a ship in Tilbury Dock on 10 March 1966. The crane driver died before he could be released. Death A few days before his death, he was involved in another incident with a toppled crane at Tilbury. This time the driver survived. De Neumann was killed in an accident at Tilbury Docks on 16 September 1972, two days before his 55th birthday. His ashes were scattered on the River Thames in Gravesend Reach. Museum pieces Three items which de Neumann brought home from Timbuktu were on loan to the Imperial War Museum in London and displayed in the Survival at Sea Exhibition. They were: A copy of the New Testament, with a diary of the movements the prisoners made whilst in captivity A Red Cross label from a parcel addressed to Peter de Neumann in Timbuctoo The tumbler he made from the bottom of a Perrier water bottle by half-filling it with water, binding paraffin-soaked twine around it at the water level, and igniting it, making the glass crack at the water-line References 1917 births 1972 deaths Military personnel from Essex British Merchant Navy officers British Merchant Navy personnel of World War II Transport pioneers Recipients of the George Medal Royal Navy officers of World War II Accidental deaths in England People from Hadleigh, Essex