"Native" Stokers lost with H.M.S. Good Hope

[horatio2]

I ran the service numbers for stokers either side of Joseph- which was a surprise. The succeeding numbers are all regular RN, from Scotland- but the numbers immediately before  Joseph are a group of stokers all recruited on Malta, 

Joseph is a strange case. The preceding 16 Maltese stokers in ADM 188 were enlisted between 4 and 16 January 1918. Their engagement terms are not stated (blank) in ADM 188 but could be either 'NCS' or 'Hostilities'. The following ADM 188 entries are all noted as engagements for 'Hostilities' commencing February 1918.

Joseph's ADM 188 ledger page seem to be a very late afterthought, clearly entered and given an Official No. in early 1918 after  more than three years' service. I seems that all his service up to early 1918 in a number of different ships must have been under some identifier other than K.49017, which was not issued until 1918. Whatever the reason, all those "native" recruits for GOOD HOPE seem to have fallen between the admin cracks.

[seaJane]

horatio2, linking your post  if I may: 

 

[Guest]

  Thanks Jane-  I had picked up the Canadians from the loss file- enquiries were made before the list was issued on 1.December.1914. Reminds me of the tragedy of the Polish middies lost with Hood in 1941.  

   Still intrigued as to whether Canopus picked up any of these stokers- the usual accounts of Coronel and Falklands suggest strongly that she needed some.  And if Good Hope and Co. were at Castries  on 23rd August, that narrows down the stop at Trinidad as well 

   

    And just a note on terminology- the ADM references to the St. Lucia men describe them as "Native"-rather than Lascar, which suggests to me that their status has some official paperwork buried further down in the records.

 

     Thought so- Do we know what medal roll Cherriban Joseph was on????    Because the following looks to be of interest: Is it possible that the St. Lucia men were signed up as Mercantile Marine Reserve?  Just a thought

 

ADM 171. Natives

Admiralty, and Ministry of Defence, Navy Department: Medal Rolls. ROLL OF NAVAL WAR MEDALS. Mercantile Marine Reserve: Ratings. ADM 171. Natives.

Held by:	The National Archives - Admiralty, Navy, Royal Marines, and Coastguard
Date:	1914 - 1920
Reference:	ADM 171/134
Subjects:	Armed Forces (General Administration) | Medals | Navy | Race relations

Edited 7 August , 2018 by Guest

[Guest]

   Jane- something you may know the answer to.   One of the casualties at Coronel-flagged up by you- was the surgeon, F.L.de Verteuil.   Just looking at the Naval Staff Monograph on Coronel (free  from the Australians online)- with this intriguing entry on "sources"

 

 

       I am hoping that the back-up papers for the  OH at Kew might have the full transcript of this diary.   The copy diary was sent via the Colonial Office but it is not clear whether  the CO file contains the diary (or records its forwarding to :the  Staff History/ Historical Section)  or just the cover note transmitting it.   If it is not at Kew, would you have any info. or where the original might be??????????

 

(Update-   The diary is listed as a source by Geoffrey Bennett- a very sensible writer- in his book on Coronel, first published in 1962. Alas, no location is given- though I suspect that Bennett was using an Admiralty copy (as per the Monograph) and was granted confidential access to what were then closed records.)

Forwards diary of Dr Ferdnand de Verteuil, Government Medical Officer, describing his experiences on HMS ...

Colonial Office and Predecessors: Trinidad Original Correspondence. Correspondence, Original - Secretary of State. Despatches from George Ruthven LeHunte, Governor of Trinidad. Details are given at... Forwards diary of Dr Ferdnand de Verteuil, Government Medical Officer, describing his experiences on HMS Good Hope from 27 August to 22 October 1914. The Good Hope was sunk suck on 1 November

Held by:	The National Archives - Colonial Office, Commonwealth and Foreign and Commonwealth Offices
Date:	13 April 1915
Reference:	CO 295/498/4
Subjects:	Armed Forces (General Administration) | Caribbean | Diaries | International | Medicine | Navy

Edited 7 August , 2018 by Guest

[johnboy]

Was available as a free kindle download

My War at Sea 1914–1916 Heathcoat S. Grant

Grant, Heathcoat. My War at Sea 1914–1916: A Captain's Life with the Royal Navy during the First World War (Kindle Locations 2-4). warletters.net. Kindle Edition. 

[Guest]

Thanks JB- will try to track it down

[johnboy]

It mentions Good Hope etc. written by Captain of Canopus. If not of use for the original question it gives plenty of info about the navy in far off places

[seaJane]

Mike,

 

There are relatives of Surgeon L.F. de Verteuil still alive in Trinidad - when I mentioned his name to a good friend from there, she said, "I was taught by his nephew!".

 

If you don't succeed in finding a transcript let me know and I will put out a feeler or two.

 

sJ

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, seaJane said:

Mike,

 

There are relatives of Surgeon L.F. de Verteuil still alive in Trinidad - when I mentioned his name to a good friend from there, she said, "I was taught by his nephew!".

 

If you don't succeed in finding a transcript let me know and I will put out a feeler or two.

 

sJ

 

   Thanks Jane- though I suspect the road from Thames Ditton to Kew may be seeing a speeding driver  called Malcolm sooner than I can get over to Kew.  

By chance, I have been chasing another Trinidadian family for another purpose, who also sent men to both war  (Hamel-Smith- one of them ran a specialist paper promoting the development of the imperial estates in London before the Great War)  Alas, the Trinidad archives show nothing held- which, if my semi-informed guess is right means that the family will have a pile of stuff-it's an Anglo-Saxon habit.  And I may get a peep at a Trinidad paper or 2 on Saturday.-though I suspect that news of Good Hope being at Trinidad on it's way south may not appear, as it looks as though DORA and other Orders in Council put a news blackout on movements of British warships.

[horatio2]

Do we know what medal roll Cherriban Joseph was on????

He is on the RN ratings' medal roll - ADM 171/107. 1914-15 Star trio claimed and issued to him after demob.

[johnboy]

 

   Thanks Jane- though I suspect the road from Thames Ditton to Kew may be seeing a speeding driver  called Malcolm sooner than I can get over to Kew.  

By chance, I have been chasing another Trinidadian family for another purpose, who also sent men to both war  (Hamel-Smith- one of them ran a specialist paper promoting the development of the imperial estates in London before the Great War)  Alas, the Trinidad archives show nothing held- which, if my semi-informed guess is right means that the family will have a pile of stuff-it's an Anglo-Saxon habit.  And I may get a peep at a Trinidad paper or 2 on Saturday.-though I suspect that news of Good Hope being at Trinidad on it's way south may not appear, as it looks as though DORA and other Orders in Council put a news blackout on movements of British warships.

From Iwm

Fernand Louis Joseph Marie De Verteuil was born in St Pierre, Martinique in 1879 to Aline Charlotte and Ferdinand Aime De Verteuil.

 

 

It must be remembered that Trinidad was the 'capital of West indies and drew immigrants from many other islands .

[seaJane]

Yep, I've been able to find out a lot about the de Verteuils - originally Royalist refugees from the French Revolution who emigrated to another part of the Caribbean.

[horatio2]

On 30/07/2018 at 14:53, Malcolm12hl said:

The GOOD HOPE arrived at St. Lucia on 23 August, so her stokers must have been signed on after that date.  Again, I have not tracked down the dates of her arrivals and departures on the way south, but I would be surprised if she remained there for more than a few days.

Admiral CRADOCK transferred his flag and staff (together with eight officers who probably included the RCN midshipmen discussed in a separate topic) from HMS SUFFOLK to HMS GOOD HOPE on 16 August. Both ships had sailed from Halifax on 15 August and the transfer took place at sea, SUFFOLK proceeding to New York.

 

GOOD HOPE (Flag) went into Castries, St Lucia to coal at 0515 on 23 August. She sailed twelve hours later and anchored off. She sent her picket boat into Castries (where it sank) at 0050 on 24 August and probably sailed for Trinidad late that same day or early on 25 August. BRISTOL had arrived at Castries at the same time as GOOD HOPE and anchored off until GOOD HOPE had coaled. BRISTOL departed St Lucia for Trinidad at 0540 on 24 August arriving at Port of Spain 24 hours later at 0650 on 25 August GOOD HOPE arriving at 0915 the following day. [Source Logs of SUFFOLK and BRISTOL.]

 

So GOOD HOPE was at St Lucia for a maximum of 48 hours, of which only 12 hours were alongside, when her 'native' stokers were embarked. They may well have been recruited from the 'native' workers who are recorded as carrying out the coaling alongside in Castries.

 

Early on 25 August HMS BERWICK arrived at Castries and tasked her divers to recover GOOD HOPE's sunken picket boat. This may indicate that GOOD HOPE had already departed before BERWICK arrived. BERWICK left St Lucia for Trinidad at 0600 on 26 August and arrived at Port of Spain at midnight on the same day, where she found GOOD HOPE and BRISTOL, . [Source Log of BERWICK.]

 

The squadron (GOOD HOPE, BERWICK and BRISTOL) sailed in company from Port of Spain just before noon on 27 August. Just before leaving Port of Spain BERWICK received 16 ratings from GOOD HOPE (could these have been 'native' stokers?)

[Malcolm12hl]

I have finally managed to get back to the National Archives to start tracking down all the many interesting leads this fascinating thread has drawn out.  As a first step going I am going carefully through the ADM 116 casualty file for the GOOD HOPE for information on her West Indian stokers.  I will finish this tomorrow, but I have already discovered that next of kin information for most of them has been added in pencil to the typewritten crew list.  I will post a list after I finish the task, but most of those I have noted already give family addresses in Castries.  Quite how and from where these found their way back to the Admiralty is an interesting question, but the existence of Colonial Office correspondence from St. Lucia on related matters does suggest that the link might have been the Governor of St. Lucia, so I will look into the CO papers when I get a chance.

 

Thank you again to everyone involved for turning my original post into such a rewarding exercise.

 

Malcolm

[Guest]

  Malcolm-Could you let me know which files you have looked at-to avoid duplication of effort?

[Malcolm12hl]

GUEST

 

I am at the preliminary stages of what might well turn into quite a big project on Coronel and the lost crews of the GOOD HOPE and MONMOUTH, and at the moment most of my energies are going on building up crew databases and searching out potential sources.  I have got ahead of myself on the West Indian stokers (and to a lesser extent the Canadian Midshipmen) simply because they were such interesting subjects and didn't seem to have attracted any research.  I am still working my way through the two crew loss files ADM 166/1354 (GOOD HOPE) and ADM 166/1355 (MONMOUTH), and have looked into the ADM 186 Admiralty Staff Monographs.  I will take my first look at the CO files in the next week or so - oddly enough, I have never looked at a CO file in my 40 years of visiting Kew, so I have no idea what working with them will be like.  I will keep the forum posted if anything more comes up on the threads I have set going.

 

Malcolm

[Guest]

Well, one off the list- a local casualty lost with "Good Hope"   Written for a local audience- I wondered if, as he had passed for PO, he might have been "acting-up"

I may have a go at de Verteuil tomorrow.

 

 

STRACHAN,  WALLACE

Leading Stoker K/1435,  H.M.S. Good Hope

Killed in action, Battle of Coronel, 1^st November 1914, aged 25

       Wallace Strachan was born  at Wanstead on 30^th March 1889. His further connection with Wanstead is unclear but it  meant something to his surviving family, for his entry  with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission  states “Native of Wanstead”. His father, James Harry Strath Strachan was a Scot ,from Aberdeenshire, who worked as a commercial clerk. His mother  Sophie hailed from Kilburn. By 1892 the family were at 30 Blackwall Buildings, Whitechapel Road, when Wallace was baptised at St.Pauls, Shadwell. Of his schooling nothing is known but he worked as an engine cleaner, a dirty and laborious job.

    Wallace Strachan exchanged the drudgery of being an engine cleaner for a career in the Royal Navy, enlisting  on 11^th September 1908 for 12 years, the standard term for someone trying to make a career. Near completion it could be indefinitely extended “to complete for pension”. The  naval race with Germany and the construction of a fleet of Dreadnought battleships meant the navy needed plenty of good men. Wallace,with an engine cleaning background ,was assigned to the Stoker branch and trained up on HMS Nelson at Portsmouth for 5 months. She had been launched in 1876 and was the nameship of a class of armoured cruisers long superseded- she still had masts. Her engines were 3 cylinder  inverted compound steam engines, coal-fired and driving one propeller from 10 oval boilers. And all of that for a top speed of 14 knots. From 1901 she was rated as a hulk at Portsmouth and used as a training ship for stokers. Older steam engines were notoriously unreliable, so Wallace’s training must have been arduous and thorough in a ship at the end of its service. It was sold for scrap in 1910. On completion of training, he became a Stoker 3^rd Class and was posted to HMS Blenheim

     HMS Blenheim was a Blake class armoured cruiser launched in 1890 (and a local ship, being built by Thames Ironworks at  Leamouth) From 1908 she was the depot ship for a flotilla of destroyers in the Mediterranean. So for 2 years, Wallace alternated around various destroyers and training at the depot ship. He was uprated to Stoker 1^st  Class. On 31^st October 1911, he was assigned to HMS Weymouth, a brand new Town class light cruiser. With new Parsons turbine engines and a top speed of 25 knots she was as modern as the navy had. She was assigned to the 3^rd Battle Squadron of the Atlantic Fleet. Wallace Strachan left the ship in June 1913 when it was transferred back to the Mediterranean. After further training ashore, he was posted to HMS Good Hope as a Leading Stoker on 7^th April 1914. This was a significant promotion, for the month before he had passed his examination for Petty Officer. Thus, after 5 years service he was set for a steady career and advancement in time  to Chief Petty Officer.

     Good Hope was a superseded cruiser, a Drake Class armoured cruiser with triple expansion steam engines, which were, in marine engineering terms, a step backwards from the Parsons turbines on which Wallace had so recently qualified. She was relegated to the reserve in 1913 but was re-commissioned in April-May 1914 as the navy was stretched for resources. The rapid development of battleship technology meant that although Britain was numerically superior to  Germany in “dreadnoughts”, the earlier ones were already superseded and could not be risked in the North Sea. In  addition, dreadnoughts required screens of cruisers and destroyers to protect them, so the most modern–built ships were kept for the Grand Fleet and the North Sea, while Their Lordships chanced older ships on faraway stations. The reasoning was that Germany would not risk a modern battleship or cruiser unaccompanied, outside of the North Sea.

    In the Summer of 1914, Good Hope was put through her paces in Home Waters with the 6^th Cruiser Squadron before being transferred to the 4^th Cruiser Squadron in South American waters on the outbreak of war. She became, as the fastest ship of the squadron, the flagship of Rear Admiral Christopher Craddock. Kit Craddock’s task was to guard against the  break-out of the German East Asia Squadron, under Vice Admiral Maximillian von Spee, into the Atlantic via Cape Horn. Craddock’s squadron patrolled up and down the coast of South America, keeping a particular eye on the tangle of islands and channels around Tierra del Fuego and Cape Horn. On 22^nd October 1914, Good Hope left Port Stanley, handicapped by the arrival of an elderly cruiser, Canopus, which was notoriously mechanically unreliable. After coaling on 27^th October, Craddock sent a faster scout cruiser, HMS Glasgow up the Chilean coast as far as the port of Coronel to look for the Germans. Glasgow picked up radio traffic from the German squadron by the 29^th October near Coronel but was herself spotted by a German supply ship already in harbour there. Von Spee began to track down his slower enemies.

      On the morning of 1^st November, Craddock’s squadron were patrolling in line abreast at about 15 mile intervals. Glasgow made visual contact with the Germans in mid afternoon and shortly after 5pm Craddock ordered his ships into line astern ,with Good Hope in the van. Craddock set off to engage Von Spee. The Germans had 2 modern powerful cruisers, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau which had 9.2” guns. Good Hope had only 6” guns, so needed to close with Von Spee in order to use her own guns. As the sun set, Craddock had the sun behind him, which would blind the German gunners but at 18.50 the situation was reversed, as with sunset Good Hope would be silhouetted against the horizon and an easy target

    The end of Good Hope was swift and brutal. At 19.04 Spee ordered his ships to engage the British squadron, some 18,000 yards away. Good Hope was soon hit and her forward turret knocked out of action. Craddock had little chance but gallantly tried to close on Spee’s ships. At 19.42, Good Hope was only some 5000 yards from Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and charged straight at them- a”death or glory” move which, alas, proved to be the former. By 19.50 Good Hope was a floating hulk, Spee’s estimate being that she had been hit some 35 times. At that point her forward magazine exploded and blew the bow off. A witness, J.D. Stephenson, a Sick Berth Steward on HMS Glasgow (the only Royal Navy ship to survive) described what happened:

“For the enemy, firing at her was merely so much target practice, and while we,with feelings that can well be imagined, watched her thus being mercilessly battered,there came the roar of an explosion, a burst of flame lit up the centre of Good Hope, her funnels with the surrounding structure seemed to fly up into the air-then came darkness and empty sea where she had had been struggling  heroically against fearful odds”

  She drifted to a stop and sank during the night, being ablaze from end to end.

    There were no survivors from Good Hope, the Battle of Coronel being a severe defeat for the Royal Navy, soon avenged at the Falkland Islands. 919 men were lost with Good Hope. Of Wallace Strachan’s fate nothing is known for sure. His last day must have pulled the maximum of professional efforts from him while Good Hope’s engines were run to their extremes as Craddock closed to engage. As Good Hope’s final charge meant the engines were still in action, then he was probably still alive then. But the severity of the explosion of the forward magazine would have killed him instantly.

 

[DavidOwen]

This is an intriguing story that has me hooked!

[seaJane]

I may have a go at de Verteuil tomorrow

Mind you don't reinvent the wheel, Mike - I'm sure my findings on him are somewhere handy, possibly even on this forum!

[seaJane]

 

Surgeon Fernand Louis Joseph Marie de Verteuil, born in 1879 at St. Pierre, Martinique, in the Windward Islands. He was of an old Breton family, his great-grandfather having joined the Royal Navy after fleeing France during the Revolution. Fernand retired from naval service in 1909, retaining his commission, and went to Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, where he married. He came back to Britain to rejoin the Navy at the outbreak of war, and died, aged 35, on 1 November 1914, when the GOOD HOPE went down with all hands at the Battle of Coronel. [very short version constituting a label to the accompanying picture, taken in 1904].

Edited 10 August , 2018 by seaJane

[horatio2]

the following man   seems to have survived  and been on a more regular engagement, so his record is there to be zapped on Ancestry,etc. (which I have not done as yet-lost the reference!)

 

Name Joseph, Cherriban. Official Number: K49017.

Unfortunately (but, perhaps, unsurprisingly) the engagement papers which this rating should have signed as K.49017 are not present in the ledger so we still cannot be certain what engagement he was on but almost certainly NCS.

As an aside, the preceding Maltese stokers all signed NCS engagements.

[David_Underdown]

Malcom, for the more general research a Good Hope man here: https://halfmuffled.wordpress.com/2014/11/01/able-seaman-alfred-bashford-19-november-1885-1-november-1914†/ (see https://livesofthefirstworldwar.org/lifestory/6164167 for the references).

[Malcolm12hl]

David

 

Thank you for the information on A/B Bashford - I am very grateful for any other information on GOOD HOPE or MONMOUTH crewmen.  As I am also just completing a short memorial book on the war dead of the parish of Thames Ditton, Surrey, and would be fascinated to know of any information you might have on Bell Ringers at St. Nicholas here in the village.

 

Mike and Jane

 

I am very happy to report that a typescript copy of the de Verteuil GOOD HOPE diary survives in the CO file at TNA which Mike dug up the reference to.  It is a fascinating document, and I will post separately on it when I have a bit more time.

 

Malcolm

[David_Underdown]

Although Thames Ditton appears to have been "in union" with the Surrey Association in its early days, and I can find reports in the ringing press from the 1880s and 1890s mentioning it or ringers taking part in Surrey Association meetings, I've not come across anything in connection with the First World War.  It is not mentioned at all in connection with Surrey Association roll of honour (which lists all members who served - or at least that was the intention), and there are none of its ringers listed on other ringers' memorials that would have covered it, ie the Central Council roll of honour, or the Winchester Diocesan Guild war memorial (the church then being part of the Winchester Dicoese, prior to the creation of Guildford Diocese).

 

The present bells were cast in 1962, so it's possible they'd just become too difficult to ring by the First World War, or the band was only capable of ringing rounds and calls changes rather than methods.

Edited 16 August , 2018 by David_Underdown

[seaJane]

8 hours ago, Malcolm12hl said:

 

I am very happy to report that a typescript copy of the de Verteuil GOOD HOPE diary survives in the CO file at TNA which Mike dug up the reference to.  It is a fascinating document, and I will post separately on it when I have a bit more time.

And I am very happy to hear the news!

 

Thank you Malcolm.