Lord James Blears
British-American professional wrestler (1923–2016)
Lord James "Tally-Ho" Blears (born James Ranicar Blears, 13 August 1923 – 3 March 2016) was a British-American professional wrestler, ring announcer, promoter, actor, mariner, and surfing personality. While serving in the British Merchant Navy in 1940, Blears narrowly escaped being summarily executed by Japanese during a WWII incident out at sea. Blears became a US citizen and became something of a celebrity in Hawaii where he lived until his death in a nursing home.
Early life
Blears was born in Tyldesley, Lancashire, England in the United Kingdom on 13 August 1923. An accomplished swimmer in school, he was selected for the British swimming team for the 1940 Summer Olympics but was unable to compete given their cancellation due to World War II.
Merchant navy career
Blears enlisted in the Merchant Navy in 1940 during World War II at the age of 17. With his knowledge of Morse code he became a radio officer. Whilst serving as second wireless operator on board the SS Tjisalak, a Dutch merchant ship, his ship was torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-8 on 26 March 1944 during a voyage from Melbourne, Australia to Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The survivors were taken prisoner by the Japanese and the majority were summarily executed by beheading. Blears managed to escape by leaping into the water and found his way into a lifeboat, where he and four other survivors began attempting to sail to Ceylon until the United States Navy liberty ship SS James O. Wilder retrieved them three days later. Blears was given a can of peaches by his rescuers and celebrated every year thereafter on March 29 by eating a can of peaches.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Lord James Blears” is british-American professional wrestler (1923–2016). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Lord, James and Blears, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q23303623. VIAF identifies the subject as 305044501. The Library of Congress control number is no2013081423. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1923, 2016, 1940 and 1944.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lord James Blears” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.