Henry David Bird was born on 11th April 1898 in Hoxton, East London. He was the third of eleven children to carter and carman Henry Bird and his wife Florence.
When he left school, Henry Jr found employment as a munitions worker, but shortly before his nineteenth birthday, he was drawn to a more active role. On 8th January 1917, he enlisted in the Royal Navy as an Ordinary Seaman. His enlistment papers show that he was 5ft 4ins (1.63m) tall, with brown eyes, brown hair and a fresh complexion. They also noted that he had a scar on his right index finger.
Henry’s first posting was at HMS Pembroke, the shore-based establishment at the Naval Dockyard in Chatham, Kent. After a couple of months’ training, he was assigned to the cruiser HMS Concord. He served on board for for a few weeks, before returning to Chatham in May.
The summer of 1917 was a busy time for HMS Pembroke; Ordinary Seaman Bird was one of those billeted in the Drill Hall, sleeping there, rather than in the overcrowded barracks in the dockyard itself. It was here that he was sleeping on the 3rd September, when the German Air Force undertook their first night bombing raid. One of the planes scored a direct hit on the Drill Hall, and Henry was killed instantly. He was just 19 years of age.
Henry David Bird was buried in the Woodlands Cemetery in nearby Gillingham, along with the dozens of other servicemen killed in the Chatham Air Raid.
Gregory Ernest Wootton was born on 28th October 1898, the only child of Henry and Isabella Wootton. The family lived in East London, and the year of Gregory’s birth was a challenging one. His parents married that year, and Henry also passed away, leaving Isabella to raise her son on her own.
She was made of stern stuff, however, and moved back in with her father, Joseph, while finding employment as a florist, working with artificial flowers. By 1909, Isabella had remarried, wedding policeman Harry Mee, and moving to South London, where the couple had a child of their own, Gregory’s half-brother, Leonard.
War was edging close to Europe, although Gregory was underage when hostilities broke out. By late 1916, however, this was no longer the case, and he was drawn to the Royal Navy. On 6th November, he gave up his job as a case maker, and enlisted as an Ordinary Seaman. His sign-up papers show that he stood 5ft 4ins (1.62m) tall, had brown hair, brown eyes and a fresh complexion.
Ordinary Seaman Wootton’s first posting was at HMS Pembroke, the shore-based establishment at the Naval Dockyard in Chatham, Kent. After a couple of months, he was moved north, to HMS Ganges, which was a similar training base in Suffolk. While here, he was promoted to Able Seaman.
In June 1917, Gregory was on the move again, returning to Chatham. While here, at a particularly crowded time for the dockyard, he was billeted at the nearby Drill Hall. On the night of the 3rd September, while resting, the first German night raid dropped bombs on Chatham, directly hitting the Drill Hall. Able Seaman Wootton was killed instantly. He was just 18 years of age.
Gregory Ernest Wootton was laid to rest in the Woodlands Cemetery in nearby Gillingham. He was buried with the other 97 victims of the Chatham Air Raid.
George Henry Hewlett was born on 11th July 1892, the oldest of four children to Henry and Louisa Hewlett. Henry was a painter from Hampshire, who travelled for work. George and his youngest sibling were born in Romsey, while his two brothers were born in Swindon, Wiltshire. By the time of the 1901 census, when George was eight years old, the family had settled in Hammersmith, London.
The next census, in 1911, recorded the family as living in Caterham, Surrey. By this time, George and his father were working as gardeners, while his brothers were working as grocers. Louisa, meanwhile, was employed as a live-in housekeeper for a spinster and her mother just around the corner.
War was coming and George was determined to do his bit. Full details are not available, but he enlisted in the Royal Marine Light Infantry, taking on the role of Gunner. In May 1918 he was on board HMS Iris, a Mersey ferry requisitioned by the Royal Navy for support in the planned raid on Zeebrugge.
On 23 April 1918, HMS Iris was towed across the English Channel to Zeebrugge by HMS Vindictive; she was carrying a couple of platoons of the 4th Battalion of the Royal Marines as a raiding party. When the Vindictive neared the Zeebrugge she cast the ferry aside. Iris tried to pull up to the breakwater under heavy fire in order to off-load the raiding parties which were on board. She sustained heavy fire and a shell burst through the deck into an area where the marines were preparing to land. Forty-nine men were killed, including Gunner Hewlett. George was 28 years of age.
George Henry Hewett’s body was brought back to England. He was laid to rest in the Woodlands Cemetery in Gillingham, Kent, not far from the dockyard at which he was based.
George’s two brothers also fought in the First World War.
John William Hewlett, who was two years younger than George, joined the 1st Royal Marine Battalion of the Royal Naval Division as a Private. He fought on the Western Front, and was killed in fighting on 22nd October 1916. He was 21 years of age. John was laid to rest at the Mesnil-Matinsart Cemetery near the town of Albert in Northern France.
Joseph Herbert Hewlett was born three years after George. When war was declared, he enlisted in the Buffs (East Kent Regiment), joining the 4th Battalion as a Private. Dispatched to India, he was initially based in Bombay, but was injured in fighting. He was sent back to England, and treated at the Military Hospital at Netley, near Southampton. Sadly, his wounds proved too severe – he passed away on 4th April 1915, aged just 20 years old.
In the space of three years, Henry and Louisa Hewlett had lost all three of their sons to the war. After George’s death, a local newspaper reported this was their “sad and proud record”. [Dover Express: Friday 31st May 1918]
John Joseph Madden was born in Cork, Eire, on 13th August 1894, one of ten children to John and Mary Madden. John Sr was a jarvey – or coach/cab driver – while his son found work as a messenger boy when he left school.
John Jr wanted bigger and better things, however, and so, on 26th June 1913, at the age of 19, he left Cork for a life in the Royal Navy. Joining up as a Stoker 2nd Class, his initial posting was at HMS Pembroke, the shore-based establishment at the Naval Dockyard in Chatham. After five months’ training there, he was assigned to HMS St George for his first posting.
Over the next few years, Stoker Madden served on five different vessels, rising through the ranks to Stoker 1st Class, and Leading Stoker. His final ship was HMS Conquest, which he boarded on 1st April 1916. The cruiser served in the North Sea and was damaged by a shell during the German raid on Lowestoft just weeks after John came on board.
HMS Conquest was involved in a number of other skirmishes during Leading Stoker Madden’s time on board, On 13th June 1918, while on patrol, she struck a mine, and was badly damaged. Seven of those on board, including John, lost their lives in the incident. He was just 23 years of age.
The ship sailed back to the Naval Dockyard in Chatham; John Joseph Madden was laid to rest in the Woodlands Cemetery in nearby Gillingham.
John Hannon (or Hannan) was born on 9th November 1885, in the Cork village of Ladysbridge. He was one of ten children to labourer Michael Hannon and his wife, Kate.
Given his proximity to the coastal port of Cork, it is no surprise that John sought adventure on the high seas. In May 1903, he joined the Royal Navy as a Boy, and served on HMS Black Prince. His enlistment papers gave his height as 5ft 4ins (1.62m), and recorded that he light brown hair, blue eyes and a sallow complexion. He also had a tattoo on each wrist.
As soon as he turned eighteen, on 9th November 1903, he was formally signed up, and given the rank of Ordinary Seaman. Over the next eighteen months, he served on two more ships – HMS Minotaur and the training ship HMS Boscawen – and was promoted to Able Seaman in August 1905.
John’s naval career continued apace up until the Great War. When hostilities broke out, he was assigned to HMS Tiger, and served on the ship at the Battles of Dogger Bank (1915) and Jutland (1916).
At the start of 1918, Able Seaman Hannon was transferred to HMS Hindustan; this was one of the many ships that supported the Zeebrugge Raid on the 23rd April. The plan was to scuttle a number of ships in the entrance to the Zeebrugge Canal in Belgium, thus preventing the German Navy from launching into the North Sea.
Over 1700 men were involved in the raid and heavy fighting left close to 300 sailors dead, with a similar number wounded. Sadly Able Seaman Hannon was one of those to lose their lives in the battle. He was just 32 years old.
John Hannon’s body was brought back to England; he was laid to rest in the Woodlands Cemetery in Gillingham, Kent, close to the Naval Dockyard in Chatham that he had occasionally called home.
Henry Wate was born on 15th June 1897, the youngest of seven children (four of whom survived) to Henry and Norah Wate. Henry Sr was from the East End of London. He raised his family in a three-room tenement in White Horse Alley, just off Cowcross Street, next to the busy Farringdon Station.
By the time of the 1911 census, Henry Sr and Norah had been married for thirty years. The head of the household, Henry was working as a rad dealer, while Norah was a housewife. Of their children, William (the eldest) worked as a labourer for a bike dealer, Annie was a packer in a chocolate factory, Nellie was a waitress and Henry Jr was still at school, though only just. Henry’s niece Julia was also staying with them, and was employed as a fancy leather worker.
When war broke out, Henry Jr was working as a carman, carting goods to and from the nearby railway. When the call came, however, he joined up, enlisting in the Royal Navy as a Stoker 2nd Class. After a couple of months training at HMS Pembroke – the shore establishment at the Naval Dockyard in Chatham – he was assigned to HMS Wallington. This was a trawler, requisitioned by the Royal Navy to act as a boom/balloon vessel, presumably to tether barrage balloons.
In January 1917, Henry received a promotion to Stoker 1st Class. He returned to Chatham six months later. That summer, HMS Pembroke was becoming crowded and he was billeted at the Chatham Drill Hall.
On 3rd September 1917, the building took a direct hit from a German bomber. Stoker Wate, along with 97 others, was killed instantly. He was just 20 years old.
Henry Wate was laid to rest – along with the others who perished that night – in a mass funeral on 6th September 1917 at the nearby Woodlands Cemetery in Gillingham.
Full details of the night raid on Chatham Drill Hall can be found here.
Henry’s older brother William also served in the Great War. Twelve years older than his brother, William joined the Royal West Surrey Regiment in January 1915 as a Private. He was posted to France in July, and ended up serving on the Front Line for nearly four months.
In September 1915, Private Wate fell ill with heart palpitations. Shipped back to England for treatment, he was admitted to the Brook War Hospital in Greenwich, South London. The medical report confirmed that William had had rheumatic fever as a child, and had had an attack of ‘sycope’ (low blood pressure and a loss of consciousness) in 1911. The report concluded that he had heart disease and he was discharged from military service in 1916, as a result of this.
Little is known about Williams post-army life. All that can be confirmed is that he passed away from his heart condition on 23rd November 1918 aged 33. He was buried in St Mary’s Roman Catholic Cemetery in Kensal Green, North London.
Angus MacIntyre was born on the island of Eriskay in the Outer Hebrides on 9th October 1894. One of eleven children, his parents were fisherman Malcolm McIntyre and his wife Flora.
Sadly, there is little information on Angus’ early life and military service. He was still living in the Scottish Islands by the time of the 1911 census, and enlisted in the Royal Naval Reserve when war broke out.
In April 1918, Angus was acting as a Deck Hand on Motor Launch 282 in the North Sea, supporting the “Zeebrugge Raid”, an attempt by the Royal Navy to block the Belgian port by scuppering obsolete vessels in the canal entrance.
Full details are not clear, but it would seem that the vessel Deck Hand MacIntyre was serving on was ferrying men between some of the ships that were being scuppered. When it was trying to manoeuvre it’s way out of the Zeebrugge Canal, it came under heavy machine gun fire, and a number of people on board were shot.
The motor launch managed to get clear of the fighting and returned to England. Unfortunately, Angus was one of the victims of the German gunfire. He was just 23 years of age.
The boat sailed back to the Naval Dockyard in Chatham, Kent. Angus MacIntyre was laid to rest in the nearby Woodlands Cemetery.
John McNish was born in the Staffordshire city of Wolverhampton on 26th June 1897. The oldest of six children, his parents were railway porter James McNish and his wife Mary Ann.
Sadly there is little documentation to evidence John’s early life. When he left school, he seemed to have joined his father in becoming a porter and, when war broke out, he joined the Royal Navy, given the rank of Ordinary Seaman in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. He was based at HMS Pembroke, the shore-based establishment at Chatham Naval Dockyard in Kent.
In the summer of 1917 HMS Pembroke was becoming crowded and John was billeted at the Chatham Drill Hall. On the night of 3rd September, the building took a direct hit from a German bomber. Ordinary Seaman McNish, along with 97 others, was killed instantly. He was just 20 years old.
John McNish was buried in the nearby Woodlands Cemetery in Gillingham, along with dozens of others who perished that night.
Ordinary Seaman John McNish (from findagrave.com)
Full details of the night raid on Chatham Drill Hall can be found here.
Frederick John Shiplee was born on 15th November 1895 in the Essex town of Harwich. The oldest of eight children, his parents were Frederick and Matilda. Frederick Sr worked as a carter for the local railway, while his son found employment as a butcher’s errand boy when he left school.
In November 1913, having just turned 18, Frederick Jr enlisted in the Royal Navy as an Officer’s Steward, and spent three years training and serving on board HMS Ganges, the shore establishment at Shotley, near Ipswich.
From Suffolk, Frederick moved to Kent, and was based at the HMS Pembroke in Chatham. From here, he was involved in trips on HMS Spey, an old river gunboat that had been converted for use as a diving tender. It was during one of these trips that tragedy struck.
STORY OF A COLLISION IN THE THAMES
Mr CB Sewell resumed the inquest at Chatham, on Monday, on the 13 naval men who lost their lives after a collision between the London County Council steam hopper Belvedere and an old naval vessel in the Thames on March 7th [1917]…
The collision occurred shortly before four o’clock in the afternoon, the weather being bitterly cold and boisterous, and the sea extremely rough. The men, who had taken to a raft, were drifting about till 9pm before the raft was driven ashore. On the raft, when discovered, were a pile of dead men, who had been rendered unconscious by the cold and subsequently drowned through the raft being partly submerged. Lieutenant Humphreys, Royal Naval Reserve, and the other officers were all drowned. In all, 30 of the 37 members of the ship’s company lost their lived, and several bodies have not been recovered. Thirteen of the ship’s crew managed to get ashore at Sheerness in the cutter and three reached the shore at the Isle of Grain in the gig, while one was saved by the hopper.
Arthur George Chick, able seaman, said he was at the wheel of the naval vessel, which was steaming up river at six knots an hour to secure shelter from the weather. Lieutenant Humphreys and a warrant officer were on the bridge, and there were two look-out men. All were now missing. He saw the hopper coming down the river when she was two miles away. When the vessels were nearing each other, the hopper suddenly altered her course to starboard. The witness then altered his course to port by his officer’s orders, but the hopper crashed into his ship, stroking it a glancing blow in line with the forepart of the bridge on the starboard side. The ship sank in three minutes.
Alfred Rawlings, leading signalman, stated that the hopper changed her course when almost abreast of the naval vessel. The hopper’s alteration of course was, he considered, the cause of the collision.
Henry Davies, second officer, and Joseph Beard Hasdell, master of the hopper, gave evidence that they considered the collision was caused through the naval vessel’s error of judgment in starboarding, instead of going to port. The hopper, they stated, ported its helm in accordance with the ‘rule of the road’.
South Eastern Gazette: Tuesday 27th March 1917
While not mentioned in the newspaper report for security reasons, the ‘old naval vessel’ was, in fact HMS Spey. Annoyingly, I can trace no further report of the inquest, other than the conclusion that the deaths were due to drowning following a collision at sea.
Officer’s Steward Shiplee was one of the twenty men who died that day. He was just 21 years of age.
Frederick John Shiplee’s body was laid to rest in the Woodlands Cemetery in Gillingham, not far from the Naval Dockyard in Chatham, where he had been based.
Sidney William Alner was born in Shaftesbury, Dorset, in March 1899, one of eleven children to Sidney and Ellen Alner. Sidney Sr was a grocer’s porter, and the family lived on the celebrated Gold Hill in the town.
War was to come when Sidney Jr was only young – he had just turned 15 when it broke out. He saw his older brothers go off to war and was obviously keen to do his bit as well. Until he was old enough, however, he worked as an errand boy for his father’s employers, Stratton Sons and Mead.
His time would come, of course, although dates for Sidney’s enlistment are not clear. A contemporary newspaper record confirms that he arrived in France in January 1918, so it is likely that Private Alner joined up at some point during the previous year.
He joined the Hampshire Regiment, and was assigned to the 1st Battalion. Heavily involved during most of the conflict, the battalion was seen as key to the Final Advance of the autumn of 1918. Private Alner was caught up in the fight to break the Hindenburg Line, fighting on the River Selle and capturing the town of Monchaux.
It was while his battalion was advancing on the village of Préseau on 2nd November, that Private Alner was injured. Shot in the arm, he was evacuated back to England, and admitted to the Cambridge Military Hospital in Aldershot. He would have survived his injuries, had pneumonia not set in, and it was to this that he would succumb on 19th November. He was just 19 years old.
Sidney William Alner’s body was brought back to Dorset. He lies at rest in the Holy Trinity Churchyard in Somerset, within walking distance of his family’s home.
Sidney was the second member of the Alner family to die as a result of the Great War.
His older brother Harry, who had become a chauffeur and went to live in London, joined the Royal Army Service Corps in 1915. Private H Alner had served three years in France when he was killed on the front line just three weeks before his brother. He was 32 years old, and left a widow and two children.
When researching Sidney Alner in newspaper articles, an interesting report surfaced.
An unfortunate accident has happened to a little girl, not quite four years old, the daughter of Sidney Alner, who resides in Gold Hill. Heals’ steam hobby horses visited the town on Friday and Saturday in last week, and on the evening of the former day, Alner took his little girl for a ride on the horses.
Whilst they were in motion, the bolt that kept the horse on which Alner sat with his child attached to the connecting rod came out, and he and the little girl were precipitated to the ground.
Alner escaped without injury, but his daughter had one of her legs fractured above the knee. She was taken home, and Dr Evans set the injured limb. Later in the evening she was removed to the Westminster Cottage Hospital.
Salisbury and Winchester Journal: Saturday 31st October 1891
This Sidney Alner was Private Alner’s father, and the daughter would have been his older sister Sarah. Nothing more is reported of the incident, and Sarah went on to live until 1945, when she was 57 years old.
Death and Service 