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Remembered Today:

HMS LOUVAIN


kin47

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Good confirmation. Clearly a typo of the surname. Shipwright A Cloke's record confirms the same 1 January draft to PELORUS. Perhaps LOUVAIN was planned to go on to Suda Bay after Mudros. Or the Suda Bay draft could have been forwarded in a different ship.

Edited by horatio2
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Wow...... Thanks, thats my grandfather who was known as “Edward”, I have photographed his handwritten account and attached 

 

Eric Saunderson

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Many thanks Simon, this confirms his written account about the sinking of the HMS Louvain and the service record I now have confirms the other major actions he wrote about. He was with HMS Canopus when it fired the first shot in the battle of the Falkland Islands on 8 December 1914 and he was on the HMS Achilles when they sunk a German Auxiliary Cruiser and received the princely sum of £1 12/2 prize money.

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Simon, do you know how many survivors there were from the Louvain?

 

In Edwards account he mentions he was travelling with “about 500 airmen  who were also making for Suda Bay.......... there was an air station on the just near from where the Pelorus lay at anchor.”

 

Eric

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2 hours ago, horatio2 said:

Good confirmation. Clearly a typo of the surname. Shipwright A Cloke's record confirms the same 1 January draft to PELORUS. Perhaps LOUVAIN was planned to go on to Suda Bay after Mudros. Or the Suda Bay draft could have been forwarded in a different ship.

 

Almost certainly the latter. Mudros served as a forward base for the Allied navies, so the port essentially served as a central hub. Drafts of men would arrive on the island (Lemnos) and be picked up by smaller vessels which ran between Mudros and various parts of the Mediterranean. Some even arrived at Mudros from India and East Africa via the Suez Canal...

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1 hour ago, Eric Saunderson said:

Simon, do you know how many survivors there were from the Louvain?

 

In Edwards account he mentions he was travelling with “about 500 airmen  who were also making for Suda Bay.......... there was an air station on the just near from where the Pelorus lay at anchor.”

 

Eric

Thanks for posting the images of your granddad's account. Very nice... According to the log of the HMS Colne they rescued 231 survivors in the water. The CWGC lists 207 names of servicemen who went down with the ship, so advanced maths tells me that there must have been a total of 438 people on board.

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Other sources give 224 lost and 278 survivors (= 502). These are the figures used by David Hepper in "Britsh Warship Losses" based on ADM.137/3715 and ADM.1/8523/119.

Some sources quote an unlikely 16 survivors, including such authorities as Wikipedia and IWM.

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2 hours ago, Eric Saunderson said:

In Edwards account he mentions he was travelling with “about 500 airmen  who were also making for Suda Bay.......... there was an air station on the just near from where the Pelorus lay at anchor.”

I think this number must be an error since there were only 500 on board in total. Only 20 or so RNAS ratings appear on the casualty list. The law of averages alone would suggest that '500 airmen' would have generated about 250 casualties.

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  • 9 months later...

Hello, am new to the site, and very interested in this particular ship, as I have found out that my Great Uncle perished when the ship was attacked, his name was Kames Sinclair Orme, listed as a Stoker PO?, and is listed as being on a war memorial at Portsmouth, his body was never recovered, any help with confirming these details would be a great help thank you

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Hi Bob,

TYPO... You mean James Sinclair Orme, b.5.2.1894,Liverpool, Baths Attendant. RN . SS111742. Service record here on Ancestry, confirms killed when HMS Louvain was sunk  20.1.1918. Stoker Petty Officer. Married Annie Blenkinsop 20th Dec, 1917

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageviewer/collections/60522/images/43343_1117_0-00370?treeid=&personid=&hintid=&usePUB=true&usePUBJs=true&_ga=2.65575657.671402484.1614762485-375430043.1602265084&pId=151993

jso

James Sinclair Orme, photo courtesy of public tree on Ancestry

Regards Barry

Edited by The Inspector
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  • 2 months later...
On 04/03/2021 at 07:00, Bob Jones said:

Hello, am new to the site, and very interested in this particular ship, as I have found out that my Great Uncle perished when the ship was attacked, his name was Kames Sinclair Orme, listed as a Stoker PO?, and is listed as being on a war memorial at Portsmouth, his body was never recovered, any help with confirming these details would be a great help thank you

 

Bob,

 

This is the information held in the HMS Louvain file at the National Archives on your Great Uncle James. Hope it helps,

 

Simon.

 

Orme.jpg.b9f5099d7dd18f577155282f0fb30a34.jpg

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  • 2 months later...

By way of another enquiry, would anyone know, if My Great Uncle would have qualified for the three medals often called to as Pip, Squeak, and Alfred

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On 28/05/2020 at 15:17, horatio2 said:

I think this number must be an error since there were only 500 on board in total. Only 20 or so RNAS ratings appear on the casualty list. The law of averages alone would suggest that '500 airmen' would have generated about 250 casualties.

I do understand at the time of the sinking it was the highest loss of life at Sea at the time  

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2 minutes ago, Bob Jones said:

By way of another enquiry, would anyone know, if My Great Uncle would have qualified for the three medals often called to as Pip, Squeak, and Alfred

He qualified for a trio and these medals were claimed by and issued to his widow.

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2 hours ago, horatio2 said:

He qualified for a trio and these medals were claimed by and issued to his widow.

Well Thank you very much for that information, that`s very interesting, am going to buy some replacements and add them to a frame with his Photograph,, obviously get in done professionally, as I am totally useless at that sort of thing, once again than you very much

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3 hours ago, Bob Jones said:

Pip, Squeak, and Alfred

Very minor correction: Pip, Squeak and Wilfred.

Good on you for taking the trouble to remember him in that way.

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Well apart from my Grandfather, whom I have yet to delve into, he was the first relation, I found who served in the 1st World War, my Grandfather I was always led to believe served in the Royal Navy in the First War, and the Merchant marine in the 2nd 

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21 hours ago, Bob Jones said:

I do understand at the time of the sinking it was the highest loss of life at Sea at the time  

The loss of HMS Louvain was indeed a terrible incident resulting in 224 deaths, but by that stage in the war her loss wouldn’t have even made the top-ten list of maritime disasters measured purely in terms of loss of life. In comparison, when  HMS Queen Mary was sunk at Jutland in 1916, the death toll was 1,245 - and the numbers killed on Lusitaniana, Indefatigable and Invincible were all upwards of 1,000 (as was the combined total from Cressey, Aboukir and Hougue which occurred as early as 1914). Then there were of course other allied naval and enemy ships sunk, including Italy’s ‘Principe Umberto’ (1,926 lost) and the German ‘Scharnhorst’ (860).

MB

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  • 5 months later...

Simon,

Mate can you show more of that list as this man showed up in the AIF, but details are a little different?

PURCELL-GILPIN    Geoffrey Richard    751    Pte    02 LHR    2R tos C Sqn 7-15 (G) disch to Royal Navy prom Lt RNVR DSC - for his actions on HMS Louvain when sunk by German U Boat UC 22 in 20 Jan 1918 in the Kelos Strait Aegean reported one of ten saved from 130 crew (224 lost) (British Midshipman RNR 4 years)
Can you confirm he was on this ship?

Cheers

S.B

Edited by stevebecker
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2 hours ago, stevebecker said:

Simon,

Mate can you show more of that list as this man showed up in the AIF, but details are a little different?

PURCELL-GILPIN    Geoffrey Richard    751    Pte    02 LHR    2R tos C Sqn 7-15 (G) disch to Royal Navy prom Lt RNVR DSC - for his actions on HMS Louvain when sunk by German U Boat UC 22 in 20 Jan 1918 in the Kelos Strait Aegean reported one of ten saved from 130 crew (224 lost) (British Midshipman RNR 4 years)
Can you confirm he was on this ship?

Cheers

S.B

Steve,

Yes, there is a reference to a Lieutenant G.P. Gilpin RNVR, on his way to join the Osiris II. By the way, the reference to the Kelos Strait is incorrect. The ship was sunk in the Kea Channel, although I have occasionally seen it also referred to as the Kea Strait.

Although the numbers vary, depending on which source you use, the log of the escorting destroyer (HMS Colne) reports picking up 231 survivors.

Hope this helps,

S.

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