Sixty-five years to the day after he struggled to free men from a sinking prisoner of war ship, the heroism of Robert Billingham and six other survivors was recognised in a ceremony in London. He died a few days later. Billingham had been held with nearly 2,000 fellow PoWs in the hold of the Lisbon Maru as it sank in the South China Sea in October 1942, having been mistaken for a troop ship and torpedoed by an American submarine.

The Japanese crew locked the prisoners in the hold and were taken off by patrol boats. As the ship began to founder, the PoWs mounted a desperate break-out attempt, in which Battery Sergeant Major Billingham took a leading role, helping to extricate a number of men jammed in portholes.

Born in 1910, Billingham had grown up in Portsmouth. His father was killed on the Western Front in 1917, serving with the Royal Artillery, and Billingham joined up in 1924. By 1937, as a bombardier, he was serving with the Hong Kong garrison.

When the Japanese invaded from mainland China on December 8, 1941, a brief and hopeless struggle ensued. On Christmas Day the garrison surrendered. The following September Billingham was among 1,865 PoWs put aboard the Lisbon Maru for transportation to Japan.

On the morning of October 1 he heard a dull thud as an American torpedo slammed into the stern. The Royal Artillery prisoners were in the hold closest to the point of impact. The Japanese lowered a pump to them, the hold was sealed above them and for 24 hours they pumped in suffocating heat, as the water rose.

Two officers finally broke open the hatch above them, giving access to a cabin. As the officers struggled to force the door, desperate men attempted to crawl through the cabin's portholes. All the while, shots fired from the circling Japanese patrol boats rattled across the deck.

Billingham was among the last to get out. He had found three artillery men stuck in the portholes through which they had tried to wriggle, and with help, managed to pull two of them free. The third, a private from Portsmouth whom Billingham knew, was stuck fast. Sixty-five years later, Billingham recalled how he struggled to free Private Harry Mace as the water rose, taking deep breaths and diving down to him, but to no avail. As he swam from the ship machinegun fire kicked up the water around him.

He swam for five hours. It was only as prisoners were picked up by Chinese fishing vessels that it became clear that there would be survivors and the patrol boats began to pick up the swimmers. Later, as they shivered on the quayside in Shanghai, a Japanese interpreter told them: “None of you should be here. You were all meant to die like rats in a trap.”

More than 800 men died that day, and a further 90 perished soon after of shock and injuries. Billingham spent the rest of the war in a camp in Osaka.

In 1948 he married and raised a family in Portsmouth. After leaving the Army he worked as a Post Office telephone engineer.

His wife, Bridie, died in 2006. He is survived by two daughters and a son.

Robert Billingham, Far East PoW, was born on May 14, 1910. He died on October 9, 2007, aged 97