BY now, you will know whether Hartlepool has elected its first Conservative MP since 1959 – such a long time ago that the seat was then known as The Hartlepools.

And such an extraordinary chap was Pools’ last Tory MP that I was invited onto BBC5Live at an ungodly hour last week to tell his story.

He was Lieutenant-Commander John Kerans, an Irishman from a sea-going family who went to the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth where he excelled at sprinting, fencing, shooting and swimming. But he was too much of a brash maverick to be any good at discipline.

His flawed personality held him back but his hour came in 1949 when he was appointed assistant naval attaché in Nanking, in China, on the Yangtze river. China was convulsed by civil war: the Kumomintang nationalists on the north bank of the river versus Mao Tse-tung’s Communist People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on the south. The British liked to sail warships 200 miles up the river from Shanghai to Nanking in a bid to keep trade routes open.

At 9.30am on April 20, HMS Amethyst came under fire from the PLA. Twenty-two of its crew were killed, including its captain, and it was stuck on a mudflat. With 31 badly wounded sailors – even the mascot, Able Seacat Simon was injured by shrapnel – stranded on board, the British sent three warships to the rescue, but they were driven off by the Communist guns – 46 British men were killed.

Finally, Kerans was sent to take charge of the Amethyst and see if he could negotiate a way out. But the PLA crossed the river and surrounded Amethyst.

For 102 days, the frigate was besieged in the fetid heat. The dead were thrown overboard; the rats were gnawing at supplies (Seacat Simon recovered and took on the role of rodent reduction officer). On July 30, Kerans convinced his men there was only one way out: to make a mad dash for it in the dark down the treacherous river.

As he was hatching his plan, at midnight, a merchant ship, Kiang Ling Liberation, with all its lights blazing, began moving down the Yangtse. Kerans seized his moment: he swung the battered Amethyst round, the noise of its engines concealed by those of the Liberation, and, unlit, he shadowed the larger vessel. The Chinese knew something was up. They opened fire at the only ship they could see – the Liberation, reducing it to a burning wreck. But Amethyst, hidden by the smoke, made a break for freedom.

At full speed in the fast flowing river, Kerans amazingly found the only narrow channel through a boom of scuttled ships and, slicing a junk in two, flashed 104 miles down the Yangtse to safety where he cabled London: "Have rejoined the Fleet south of Woosung. No damage or casualties. God Save the King."

Kerans was a national hero, an all action superman (Simon the cat was lauded, too). In 1957, an adventure film, The Yangtze Incident, was made with Richard Todd in the starring role.

When Kerans tried to find a new life on dry land, he became a trainee manager at South Durham Steel and Iron Company at Greatham, near Hartlepool. The local Tories pressed him to be their boy’s own candidate, and at the 1959 election he won by 182 votes, relinquishing Labour’s 14-year grip.

In Parliament, Kerans called for the cane to be used in schools, but with the Tory star fading, he didn’t contest the Pools in 1964. Labour regrouped, and ever since has held onto it - until at least yesterday.