George Parish Ross

[simonharley]

Hi all, looking for information on Rear-Admiral George Parish Ross, C.B. He served as a Captain during the Great War, was in Command of "Marlborough" at the Battle of Jutland. A search through the "Times Digital Archive" hasn't produced an obituary which is pretty unusual for a Jutland captain (in my experience, anyway).

His date of birth I have from TNA's website, but it would be nice to know a bit more (and I'd rather not rely on his service record containing his date of death).

Any help much appreciated,

Regards,

Simon

[Stephen Nulty]

Simon

No obituary, but came across this in The Times, in case you didn't see it.

[simonharley]

Simon

No obituary, but came across this in The Times, in case you didn't see it.

Hadn't seen that Stephen - many thanks for the look-up.

I see the article was clipped - must have missed it when I checked a while back (very annoying, shouldn't have forgotten to check the entire page). No doubt "Stamp Collecting" put me off as well!

Cheers,

Simon

[melliget]

Simon.

I'm also finding biographical details on this chap to be elusive. For what it's worth, here's his death notice:

The Times, Wednesday, Feb 4, 1942

DEATHS

ROSS.- On Feb. 1, 1942, at 193, Queen's Gate,

S.W.7, REAR-ADMIRAL GEORGE PARISH ROSS, C.B., in

his 67th year. Funeral service, St. Mary Abbots, Ken-

sington, to-day (Wednesday), 11.30 a.m. No flowers.

There was also the standard legal notice in The Times about his estate (Monday, Jun 29, 1942).

regards,

Martin

[melliget]

I see the article was clipped - must have missed it..

Yes, Simon. That is my main annoyance with The Times digital archive - you click on some articles and they don't actually display the highlighted search string (it's a bug, I suppose). For these, you need to view the whole page in PDF but of course the search string is not highlighted in Acrobat, so you have to visually scan the whole page!

regards,

Martin

[Stephen Nulty]

Quite a few Google results with him as "Capt. G.P Ross", as he was at Jutland

"the search string is not highlighted in Acrobat, so you have to visually scan the whole page!"

Martin - still easier than trooping off to the library to read all the way through old editions, though!

[melliget]

Martin - still easier than trooping off to the library to read all the way through old editions, though!

Yes, Stephen. I'm nit-picking a bit there, aren't I It is, of course, a great resource.

[simonharley]

God knows what it used to be like trying to find things out - I'm still young so have always known the wonders of OCR and type-and-search and actually finding what I need very quickly!

After I knew when he died I turned up the same death notice as you Martin. It's so much easier searching for "Ross" when you can narrow it down to a month rather than a year or a decade.

I was somewhat put off googling him when I entered "George Parish Ross" (with the quotation marks) and got no returns - wasn't very hopeful of finding anything if his full name wasn't online. Some time in the future tho' I assume that Google will pick up this thread and then there'll be one mention at least.

Many thanks to all,

Simon

[Stephen Nulty]

Simon

If you'd have done the search with his middle name spelt PARRISH then you would have come across some family information, via the PSS website.

[sadsac]

SIMON, find here award of C.B to Capt. ROSS for services re B.o.Jutland & MARLBOROUGH ;

ROSS George P N/E Captain RN 78A029 Marlborough

C-in-C Grand Fleet 15.09.16 Gazetted

Battle of Jutland 31.05.16 CB

My (Admiral Burney) Flag Captain, who helped me greatly during the action.

He fought his ship well, and subsequently, after she was torpedoed, successfully took "Marlborough" back to harbour, avoiding attack by two submarines on the way.

What / which U-boats one wonders ??

Regards Sadsac

[simonharley]

Many thanks for that Sadsac,

According to Ross's Report of Proceedings only one torpedo was observed two cables off (at 10:52), and this was nearly an hour and half after two submarines had been sighted at 09:30 before diving 5 minutes later.

U-Boats are well out of my area of knowledge I'm afraid - it certainly would be interesting to know. "Marlborough" at the time was escorted by one light cruiser and (at least) two destroyers.

Simon

[melliget]

Simon.

Have gleaned a few morsels from Google Books (snippet view). Looks like his medals were up for sale in 1978:

The Numismatic Circular, pub. 1978, p.220

"6152 Four:- East & West Africa, 1 bar, Gambia 1894 (Mid.,

H.M.S. 'Raleigh'); 1914-15 Star (Flg. Capt.); British War

and Victory Medals (M.I.D.); (Capt. G. P. Ross, R.N.).

good V.F. £155

Rear Admiral George Parrish Ross, C.B. (1916); Midshipman of 'Raleigh';

served in the Naval Brigade ????ed by Rear Admiral F. G. D. Bedford,

C.B. from the.."

Note: Admiral Sir Frederick George Denham Bedford, KCB, was later Governor of Western Australia.

The Great Clan Ross, with Highland Notes etc., pub. 1968, p.147

".. Captain (later Rear-

Admiral) George Ross received the Most Honourable Order of the Bath

for his war services and also received the Russian Order of St. Anne, 2nd

Class with Crossed Swords, for services at the Battle of Jutland."

From Google Books (Limited preview):

The Origins of Japanese Trade Supremacy, by Christopher Howe, pub. 1999, p.286

Footnotes:

39. Westwood has argued: 'Of all the submarine fleets, that of the Imperial

Japanese Navy was provided with the best torpedos,' Westwood, Fighting Ships,

p. 131. By the early 1930s Japanese engineers had solved the problems of oxygen-

enriched and oxygen-powered torpedo engines, and the attack on Pearl Harbour was

made feasible by new solutions to the problems of shallow launching from aeroplanes.

A naval attaché in Tokyo in the 1930s, George Ross (who was fluent in Japanese

and exceptionally able), actually discovered details of Japanese advances in torpedo

propulsion but the British Admiralty refected his reports as incredible. See S. E.

Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War Two (13 vols), Boston;

Little, Brown, 1947-64, vol. 3, p. 23; 'Return to Pearl Harbor', National Geographic,

vol. 80 no. 6, Dec. 1991. Details of Ross's career are from his obituary, 'Rear-Admiral

George Ross', Daily Telegraph, Aug. 9, 1993.

Just thinking about it, this is probably not George Parish Ross but Rear-Admiral George Campbell Ross, C.B.E., whose name appears several times in The Times 1950 onwards (he married Miss Lucia Boer, niece of Mrs. Walter Payne, 16 Mar 1950). It would be unusual for an obituary of a man who died in 1942 to appear in 1993, unless someone saw fit to correct the previous omission.

regards,

Martin

[melliget]

Just thinking about it, this is probably not George Parish Ross but Rear-Admiral George Campbell Ross

Confirmed (after just a bit more Googling). It was George Campbell Ross (1900-1993), not George Parish Ross. So please ignore that last slab, Simon.

regards,

Martin

[sadsac]

SIMON - please tap into E50 E55 B11 - I got `muxtip' to that post !!

Sadsac

[simonharley]

Another of the Clan Ross books I saw on Google Books, one which I believe was cited in the PSS article, lists Ross as "George Parish Ross" - not sure how they added an extra R to that.

I just got a hold of his service record (which does incidentally list his date of death), and that too lists his middle name as "Parish".

Sadsac, Dave Alton pointed me to my copy of "Jutland: An Analysis of the Fighting" by N.J.M. Campbell which states that the two submarines which "Marlborough" altered course away from at 09:30 were the British submarines G3 and G5. The submarine which fired the torpedo was U-46.

Simon