In our feature last week relating how the sinking of the Furness liner Fort Victoria on the eve of Christmas 80 years ago was one of the most sensational events in Bermuda's 20th Century history, we mentioned that with the passing a fortnight ago of Captain George Edmund Welch at age 101, Mrs. Writa Johnson, now in her 105th year had become the last and the sole survivor of the sinking.

But another survivor has surfaced. And he is none other than well-known Mr. Warren Brown, Sr. Warren is one of Bermuda's leading business barons and probably the Island's most adventurous and best known amateur ocean sailing yachtsman.

His rescue and photograph made front page in a special extra Sunday special edition of the New York Daily News.

It told of how he was taken from his mother's arms and tossed over the side of the sinking liner and caught by a member of the crew in a lifeboat below.

But what is equally as exciting is how Warren Brown got to New York in the first place – in another drama well before the one on the ocean.

Warren's pregnant mother, the former Mabel May Warren, wife of Archie Brown, had left Bermuda in the summer of 1929 to visit friends in New York.

Her original plan was to return home in September of that year.

But her baby, who turned out to be the irrepressible Warren Brown, had other plans. He was born three months premature.

Mabel May was travelling on a train in Kingston, New York, when she went into labour. Emergency services, with all the excitement they ordinarily attract, took her off the train and rushed her to a Catholic Hospital in Kingston where her bouncing Bermudian was delivered.

Warren was three months old baby when Fort Victoria's captain ordered the 269 other passengers plus crew to abandon their sinking ship.

The order came within minutes after it had been rammed on the high seas by another ship.

They had sailed less than a day earlier from New York for Bermuda on December 19, 80 years ago.

Fort Victoria was Bermuda's lifeline in those days when air travel was just a remote dream.

She was laden with every last thing imaginable, to brighten Christmas in the country that year, including mail.

It all went to the bottom of the ocean after Victoria was rammed by another ship, The Algonquin in a deep fog. The later was bound for Texas with 189 passengers aboard. Those were the days before the invention of radar and other technology was put into place to cut down on such nautical disaster.

Baby Warren suffered no ill effects from being tossed over the side of the sinking Victoria.

But his mother was hospitalised for weeks in a hospital being treated for a paralysed foot resulting from her exposure in the freezing ocean waters while waiting to be rescued.

Years later young Warren left Bermuda to attend Yale University. Upon his return home in 1951 he plunged right into business, starting among other things, the Archie Brown and Son Front Street, clothing store.

He also started Preview Magazine with Ann Brown and Roxanna Kaufmann.

Next he started Island Press with Donald French and later the Bermuda Sun newspaper.

These companies now operate as Media House. Warren Brown was also the man who started Hog Penny Pub and introduced Marks and Spencer to Bermuda.

Warren also headed the team that introduced the Jaycees to Bermuda.

He later was elected a world president of that organisation.

During his tenure he was credited with bringing Newfoundland into the movement and he helped reunite the French and English speaking Jaycees in Canada.

The Young Presidents Organization was another movement he introduced to Bermuda.

He served on the YPO International board for about five years and spent one year as membership chairman.

In his last several years in Y.P.O., he spent time in 27 countries as international development chairman. He started eight chapters aside from Bermuda, in Turkey, India, United Arab Emirates, Iran, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Israel.

On another front, Warren Brown teamed up with former UBP Cabinet Minister Quinton Edness in starting the Interested Citizens Group that aimed at bringing the races together; and later he openly supported Roosevelt Brown in the suffrage movements and in helping to integrate Bermuda.

It now becomes hardly surprising that Warren Brown has such an intense interest in yacht racing taking into account his exploits with the sinking Fort Victoria. His particular interest is in polar exploration by sail.

He has spent time in Spitsbergen, Greenland, Antarctica, and islands all over the world such as Robinson Crusoe, Easter and Pitcairn.

He says he has logged about 350,000 miles at sea, participating in over 20 Bermuda Races, eight Fastnets, and many transatlantic races. Warren has set course records for the Middle Sea Race and Marion Bermuda race.

In our next feature on the Sinking of Fort Victoria, we will follow through with more of Mrs. Rita Johnson, explaining how she happened to be in New York in the first place, prior to boarding the ill-fated Furness liner.