Amos William Cornish was born on 16th August 1887 in Dunster, Somerset. One of five children, his parents were George and Elizabeth Cornish. George, who was a brickmaker, died in 1893, and at this point the family relationships seemed to have broken down.
By the time of the 1901 census, Elizabeth had remarried, and was living with her new husband and Amos’ youngest sibling, sister Lily. Two of Amos’ brothers, Walter and George, were living with his maternal grandparents, while Amos himself was one of three hundred inmates at the Horton Kirby Home for Homeless Boys in the Dartford area of Kent.
Amos’ schooling would have finished by the time he was 14 years old, and he quickly sought work that allow him to support himself as a young man with no home to go to. A career in the Royal Navy seemed to provide that regular pay and, on 4th June 1902, he enlisted.
As he was under age, Amos was given the rank of Boy 2nd Class, and sent to the shore-based training ship HMS Impregnable in Devonport, Devon. His service records show that he stood just 5ft 4ins (1.63m) tall, had brown hair, brown eyes and a fresh complexion. He was noted as having a scar in the centre of his forehead, and a tattoo of clasped hands over a heart on his right forearm.
Boy Cornish transferred to another training vessel – HMS Lion – after a month or so, and it was here, in February 1904, that he was promoted to Boy 1st Class.
Over the next eighteen months, Boy Cornish served at two more training bases – HMS Boscawen and HMS Vivid. He was given his first sea-going posting in April 1905, aboard the cruiser HMS Blake. It was on his next assignment, however, that he came into his own.
In May 1905, Amos boarded HMS Carnarvon, an armoured cruiser that had been launched a couple of years before. He was to spend the next two years as part of her crew, gaining the rank of Ordinary Seaman when he came of age in August 1905, and Able Seaman a year later.
When his time on board Carnarvon came to an end, Amos returned to shore, to HMS Pembroke, the Royal Naval Dockyard in Chatham, Kent, which was to be his base on and off for the next eight years. During that time, he served on six more ships, and rose to the rank of Leading Seaman in December 1911. This new rank, however, seemed not to suit Amos, and he reverted back to his previous rank eight months later.
Able Seaman Cornish’s longest posting was on board the cruiser HMS Antrim. He joined her crew in September 1913 and, over the next three-and-a-half years he travelled far and wide. Initially patrolling the North Sea – particularly around the Scottish Isles – Amos was on board for a journey to Arkhangelsk in Russia. The ship then transferred to the Western Atlantic, patrolling around America and the West Indies.
Able Seaman Cornish returned to British shores in April 1917, to be based at HMS Vivid, the Royal Naval Dockyard in Devonport, for the nest nine months. During this time, he became ill and was admitted to the Royal Naval Hospital in Truro with double pneumonia. Tragically, this was something he was not to recover from: Amos passed away on 4th February 1918, at the age of 30 years old.
While somewhat stretched, Amos’ family bond still remained. Elizabeth was living in Minehead by this point, with husband Alfred and their two children. It was to the Somerset town, therefore, that Amos William Cornish’s body was brought. He was laid to rest in the town’s sweeping cemetery.
George’s death in 1893, and Elizabeth’s remarriage a few years later split the family, and Amos’ siblings all followed separate paths.
The oldest of his siblings, Walter, also followed a military path. He joined the Royal Garrison Artillery as a Gunner and, by the time of the census, was based in Gibraltar. On completing his service, he returned to Somerset, marrying Florence Peddle in 1925. The 1939 Register found the couple living with his cousin, Amelia, while he worked as a gardener. Walter died in Weston-super-Mare in 1962, at the age of 74.
Amos’ next sibling, brother Harold, seems to have had a less fortunate time of things. Absent from the 1901 census, he appears in prison records four years later. He was incarcerated for six months’ hard labour in Brecon Prison, having been found guilty of “Gross Indecency with another male person”. Harold was 14 years and three months old at the time. A newspaper report from around this time suggests that the other party was a George Williams, but there is no further information about him. Harold seems to have come out the other side of his experience, however: the 1911 census recorded him as living and working with draper and grocer James Ridler and his family in Dunster, Somerset.
Amos’ third sibling, sister Lily, found work as a servant to bakers Joseph and Minnie Bagley in Minehead. She married painter and decorator William Whitting in 1916 and the couple went on to have a daughter, Kathleen, eight years later. The family settled in Weston-super-Mare, Lily passing away in 1968, at the age of 75.
The youngest of the Cornish siblings was George. He remained living with his maternal grandparents in Dunster, and found work as a printer. In the spring of 1921, he married Clara Govier and, by the time of the 1939 Register, they couple were living in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, where George was working as a printer and compositor. He died in 1957, at the age of 62 years old.
Death and Service 