OF course, the Tories don't stand a chance in the Hartlepool by-election. Even the fellow who stood for them at the last General Election knows that and is contemplating standing as an independent.

But if they found a candidate like the last Conservative to represent Hartlepool, everything would change.

It was 1959, and someone in the Conservative Association recognised a trainee manager, newly released from the Royal Navy, at work on the South Durham Steel and Iron Company's Greatham site. He was Lieutenant-Commander John Kerans.

In his day, Kerans was mentioned in the same breath as Drake or Nelson. In 1949, he'd been naval attach at the British Embassy in Nanking (now Nanjing) in China. Civil war wracked the country, Mao Tse-tung's Chinese People's Liberation Army fighting Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists.

A British warship, HMS Amethyst, was bringing supplies up the River Yangtse to the embassy. Mao's Communists mistook it for a Nationalist ship and opened fire, hitting it with 53 shells which killed 18 men. In the confusion, the Amethyst got stuck on a mudbank.

Three British warships tried to reach the Amethyst but came under such withering fire they turned back (46 British sailors died in this incident). So Kerans, the most senior officer in the district, was despatched to take charge of the beleaguered vessel.

For 102 days, in the sweltering heat with the dead tossed over the side and rats gnawing at the supplies, Amethyst was stranded. Kerans had 19 meetings with the local Communist leader, trying to negotiate the Amethyst's release. But the Communists demanded that Kerans agree that the British had fired the first shell and the Communists had acted in self-defence. It wasn't true. He refused.

Kerans sought an alternative way out, saw his moment and seized his chance.

Just after midnight on July 31, a merchant ship, Kiang Ling, began moving down the Yangtse. Kerans immediately realised he could use its engine noise to conceal his own. In darkness, no lights showing, he ordered full steam ahead. The Chinese soon opened fire, but struck the Kiang Ling. Amethyst returned fire; Kerans ordered that the engine room kick out the densest cloud of black smoke to conceal their passage.

Somehow, at full speed in the fast flowing river, Kerans had to find the narrow channel which was the only way through the boom of scuttled ships that the Chinese had thrown across the river.

He saw a light, headed to the port of it, and miraculously sailed through.

Then a junk appeared before him in the blackness. On the bridge, he shut his eyes and only opened them again when the junk had been sliced straight through in two.

And with that, Amethyst was free, flashing 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, and he became a Hartlepool hero too when he was asked to contest the seat. He won by 182 votes, displacing the Labour MP of 14 years standing.

In Parliament, Kerans called for the cane to be used in schools, but retired in 1964 for health and family reasons - his home was 315 miles south in Surrey.

His departure allowed Ted Leadbitter to regain the seat for Labour, and he held it until 1989 when he passed it on to one Peter Mandelson.