Lt John Noble Shipton Dover Patrol

[stevenbecker]

Mates,

Can you give me any info on this man and his service in the RNR during WWI.

He gaining his commison from the AIF in Dec 1915 and served in a number of known ships.

He served in HMS Foyle, Swift, Broke and commandered HMS Milbrook which I am told are all Dover Patrol destroyers.

As such he served at Zeebruge in 1918 and in all actions with the Drover Patrol.

Thanks for any thing you may find.

S.B

[SteveE]

Steve

According to the London Gazette #30616 dated 6 April 1918, Lieutenant John Noble Shipton was Mentioned in Despatches.

Link to the Gazette is Here

Hope this helps

Steve

[stevenbecker]

Steve,

Thanks for the heads up, his record or himself in a later letter to the Australian Prime Minister on his appointment as commander of the Cinque Ports doesn't mention any awards during the Great War but does go into his career a little bit.

Have you heard of the HMS Foyle before?

Thanks again for the info now why as an officer of a Dover Destroyer in the Channel did he warrent a MID for an action against a U Boat.

Cheers

S.B

[Michael Lowrey]

Foyle sank after hitting an U-boat laid mine on March 15, 1917. Actually, she broke in two, with one section making it considerably nearer to port than the other piece. Perhaps the MID was in relationship to that.

Broke and Swift were famously involved in an action against German destroyers on April 21, 1917.

Best wishes,

Michael

[SiegeGunner]

Steve,

HMS Foyle hit a mine on 15.03.1917. The explosion blew off her bow section and killed 27 members of her crew. The remainder of the ship stayed afloat, but sank just short of Plymouth while under tow.

I can't find your man in the Naval Who's Who 1917 or him or HMS Milbrook in the index of any of several books on the Dover Patrol and the Zeebrugge Raid (including C Sandford Terry's commentary on Admiral Keyes's Z & O Despatches). Milbrook was a 'Moon' class destroyer, commissioned in 1915 - far too new for the Dover Patrol, which made do with older destroyers. She was at Jutland, as was Broke, and Swift and Broke were both at Zeebrugge, the latter commanded by Bertram Ramsey, who later commanded the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940.

Dover Patrol destroyers had many encounters with German surface ships and U-boats - but we need to know which one Shipton was serving on at the time of his MID in order to identify the particular action.

regards

Mick

[stevenbecker]

Mates,

Thankyou very much for clearing some of his story.

His service record is on the Australian National Archives site to veiw for free and includes a letter from him to the Australian PM when the man was after a pension from the Govt.

He goes into his service with the Dover Patrol but seams to miss being on Foyle when she sank or other detail you have given me.

He does make coment that his command of HMS Milbrook was in Early 1919 during her trails, but if she was commisioned in 1915 then why would she need trails in 1919?

The plot thickens.

Cheers

S.B

[SiegeGunner]

Steve,

Could you please post a link to his service record, as I can't find it and am presumably doing something wrong.

I thought his command of HMS Milbrook might be post-Zeebrugge or even post-war - so we need to look for him on one of the other ships in 1918.

Cheers

Mick

[kin47]

Hello

MILBROOK was commanded by Shipton from 4 January 1919.

An ironic sidenote to MILBROOK, after she was sold for scrap, she was broken up in Germany.

All best

don

[kin47]

Hello

A further bit. I have the Zeebruge and Ostende Honours and Awards list and Shipton does not appear, so his MID was for other service.

All best

don

[SiegeGunner]

Don,

Is your list the one in the Special Supplement to the London Gazette ? I can't find Shipton in any of my sources either, and am wondering whether he was one of the officers that shipped out or were moved on soon after Keyes arrived at Dover.

Tomorrow, of course, is Zeebrugge Day - St George's Day, 23 April 1918.

regards

Mick

[kin47]

Hello Mick

Not an answer.....

My Zeebrugge and Ostende list is the one published by Jayem Publishing in 1993, compiled by Mich Dalzell and edited by John Mock.

Checking the Gazettes, I found only one gazette for him.....supplement 30813, dated 23 July 1918. Sadly, I could not open it, apparently there is some problem at their end. I usually have no difficulty opening their files.

All best

don

[SteveE]

Checking the Gazettes, I found only one gazette for him.....supplement 30813, dated 23 July 1918. Sadly, I could not open it, apparently there is some problem at their end. I usually have no difficulty opening their files.

IMHO this is a red herring and has nothing to do with John Noble Shipton. There is a hit for an Alfred John Shipton, Royal Berkshire Regt. in that particular Gazette but all the entries appear to be for Army personnel, nothing for the Navy.

Sorry

Steve

[stevenbecker]

Mate,

Sorry I have it preprogramed in and don't know how I can give it to you.

But the site uses;

NAA.gov.au

But if you call up the site National Archives of Australia,

Then look for WWI service records,

Then enter the mans name, his record should come up.

At lest thats how it works for me, but I am computer stupid.

Cheers

S.B

[SiegeGunner]

Steve,

Thanks, I've got him now. And after wading through endless pages relating to his enteric experiences with the 3rd Light Horse at Anzac, I finally got to the docs that give us some clues to his RNR service with the Dover Patrol. He doesn't seem to have suffered from excessive modesty: "I am most experienced and qualified to sit on any marine disaster enquiry. One of Australia's great sailors of my day." (Letter to Sir Robert Menzies, PM of Australia).

My reading of the papers is that he served in HMS Foyle until she was mined in March 1917, then in HMS Leven. He says he was "associated with ships such as the destroyer leaders Swift and Comdr Evans's Broke", rather than that he served in those ships.

Leven, commanded by Lt Cmdr A P Melsom RNR, was an old (1898) C class destroyer (so-called '30-knotter'), belonging to the 6th Flotilla. Apart from crumpling her bow in a collision with a transport ship off Boulogne, and escorting monitors to bombard the Belgian coast ports, she seems to have led a fairly uneventful life until her meeting with UB-35 on 26 January 1918 - the action for which Melsom was awarded the DSO and Shipton received his MID.

The only narrative account of the engagement that I can find is in a secondary source, Roy Humphreys's "The Dover Patrol 1914-18", pp. 139-140:

"The coal-burning destroyer Leven, commanded by Lieutenant-Commander A.P. Melsom, was usually employed running a mail and ferry service between Dover and Dunkirk, without ever sighting the enemy at close quarters. Melsom was always optimistic and alert to the possibility that one day his luck might change and he had acquired additional depth charges for that very reason. It was about 2230 hrs on 26 January when a lookout spotted a periscope awash almost dead ahead. Melsom gave the order to the helmsman to ram but the old ship was rather sluggish to answer the helm and just wallowed into a large trough, which sent a huge sheet of spray over the forecastle. 'Reverse engines!' Melsom shouted. Leven drew backwards for up to 200 yards before the captain ordered all depth charges to be launched over the stern. UB35, commanded by Oberleutnant K Stoter, had already dived beneath the surface. Leven rattled like a tin can when one after the other the depth charges exploded at intervals, culminating in a large air bubble surging up to the surface containing one officer and about six ratings. Although a boat was lowered to save them only one was boat-hooked to the side and he died soon afterwards. Melsom received the DSO but was more astounded by the performance of his crew and his old 30-knotter which stood up to his bellows and changes of direction without faltering. He was quite proud of them."

Other sources say that UB-35, commanded by Oberleutnant Karl Stöter, belonged to the Flanders Flotilla, based at Bruges, and had been disturbed, north of Calais, in the act of boarding a Greek freighter, the SS Epstotios. Two members of UB-35's crew left aboard the Greek ship when the U-boat crash-dived were later taken prisoner. Recent diving reports give the coordinates of the wreck of UB-35 as 51°03'N 01°46'E.

I can't find any mention of Leven at Zeebrugge on 23.04.18, but Shipton could perhaps have been there on another ship. Where he mentions Zeebrugge in his letter to Sir Robert Menzies, the reference is to bombardment of the port by the Dover Patrol's big monitors, which also took place on occasions other than the St George's Day raid.

Overall, it looks as if Shipton had quite an eventful career with the Dover Patrol, even if he didn't participate in some of its higher-profile actions.

Being able to view his complete service record online, for free, is a fantastic service - roll on the day when we can do the same with complete records from the National Archives here.

regards

Mick

[stevenbecker]

Mick,

Your blood's worth bottleing.

Thank you so much for explaining to me the details as his service now makes some sence.

I missed completely the name of HMS Leven (I claim old age) and the detail of his award of the MID is great.

He was just one of a number of Light Horse soldiers who I am checking out which gained commisions in the RN and Army during the war.

Thank you again mate.

Cheers

S.B

[per ardua per mare per terram]

The Dover Patrol were engaged in several monitor bombardments of Z & O in the years before they decided to do the combined op on 23/4/18. These would have extensive screens of destroyers and light cruisers and also air/sea co-operation with the RNAS and often brought in support from the Harwich Force too. They haven't had much of a write up as far as I know.

[SiegeGunner]

Steve,

Thanks for that charmingly Aussie compliment - it makes wading through all those dysentery reports worthwhile ! You can't claim old age, by the way - I'm a year older than you !

Per Ardua etc,

Admiral Bacon devoted a chapter of his 'Dover Patrol' to coastal bombardments, but I don't think anyone else has given them much attention - unless one of the big monitor captains wrote a book that I'm not aware of. They always had limited success, largely because even the 15" monitors were outranged by the Tirpitz and Kaiser Wilhelm batteries, and because Ostend could not be bombarded 'properly' for fear of hitting the civilian population. That's why Bacon drew up plans for an attack on the Mole and lock gates at Zeebrugge (carried out in modified form by Keyes on 23.04.18) and for an amphibious landing at Westende/Middelkerke which would have enabled him to mount one of the experimental 18" guns on land within range of Zeebrugge. There was also always ambivalence about doing too much damage to the port installations at Z & O, as the Allies would have needed them if 3rd Ypres had succeeded and a break-through to the coast had followed.

regards Mick

[per ardua per mare per terram]

Gunner

Thanks for that, I thought he probably had written it up and there was a small section in the official history.Now to find a library with a lending copy of the unabridged edition!

I would guess that their success was on a par with the bombing of the period.

[SiegeGunner]

Most of the pre-Keyes era account in the OH comes from Bacon anyway, as the official records are missing.

'Coastal Bombardments' is Chapter IV in Vol I of the 2-vol edition of 'The Dover Patrol 1915-1917' and Appendix I at the back of Vol II is an account of the operations and coastal bombardments carried out in 1914 by the Dover Patrol under Bacon's predecessor, Admiral Hood.

Chapter VI of 'The Concise Story of the Dover Patrol' is entitled 'Bombardments', but it's not the same as the chapter in the 2-vol edition. I've never done a systematic analysis of the differences between the two editions, but 'Concise' is a bit of a misnomer for the later 1-vol edition. Some of the highly-technical stuff in the 2-vol set is omitted, but it actually contains quite a lot of new material, in particular about Zeebrugge and Ostend, and about anti-submarine measures in the pre-Keyes period. Bacon felt the need to respond to various writings (which criticised him) published after his own 2-vol book and took the opportunity of the 'Concise' edition to do so. If you can get hold of them, and if you have the time and interest, it is well worth reading both editions.

regards

Mick

[per ardua per mare per terram]

Mick,

Thanks for that guide to the 2 editions, I would have just ignored the Concise.' I've mostly encountered Bacon in his guise as Fisher advocate and over his role with Dreadnought.

[SiegeGunner]

If you can't find loan copies of the 2-vol edition, PM me your contact details and I'll lend you my spare set.

I'd like to know more about Bacon's period in command of Dreadnought - can you recommend sources ?

Pic below was taken during Dreadnought's gunnery trials in 1906.

[Guest Jane Rutter]

Hello

I have just joined this forum.

My grandfather Lt John Noble Shipton had quite an outstanding military/naval career.

Several years ago I noticed that you were asking about Grandpa.

My family has many documents & medals including an historical novel written by my grandfather which seems to contain some interesting accounts of his life as Sapper.

I hope to share this information- perhaps publish the book:

- would like to make his story better known

I hope this is of interest. I am on Facebook (another easy way to message me): JaneRutterFrenchFlute.

I just posted video of myself playing The Last Post on Flute as an Anzac Day tribute to my grandfather.

https://www.facebook.com/JaneRutterFlute/videos/vb.695756059/10154151430261060/?type=2&theater

Thanks

Jane

MY GRANDFATHER, (SAPPER) JOHN NOBLE SHIPTON, LIGHT HORSE BRIGADE: WOUNDED IN THE DARDANELLES CAMPAIGN, GALLIPOLI.

HE THEN HE SERVED IN THE DOVER PATROL, THE ROYAL NAVY.

HE WAS DECORATED FOR BRAVERY IN BOTH WORLD WARS INCLUDING A LLOYD'S MEDAL FOR BRAVERY AS A LIEUTENANT COMMANDER IN W.W.2.