Post by Administrator on Nov 7, 2022 14:54:03 GMT
Campaign for headstone to Barry war hero buried in unmarked grave
A Barry war hero who was buried in an unmarked grave is the subject of a new campaign to have his service remembered with a headstone.
Dr Jonathan Hicks has spent the past 20 years researching and writing about Barry and the Vale’s role in the two World Wars.
Here he tells the story behind an unmarked grave in Barry’s Merthyr Dyfan Cemetery.
IN THE corner of a plot beneath an old oak tree in Merthyr Dyfan cemetery in Barry there is an unmarked grave.
Sadly, it is one of many, but this one has a particular significance for in it lies one of Barry’s casualties of the First World War, a man who for several years during that terrible conflict ran the gauntlet of German U-boats to ensure vital supplies and food reached the people of Britain.
William Maxwell was a Glaswegian by birth, born in the city in 1858, but in 1910 he married Eliza Ann Rich from Barry.
They set up home initially in Station Street in Barry before moving to Fryatt Street.
In the years that followed William plied his trade on ships around the coast of Britain while Eliza ran the family home.
By October 1917, the First World War was entering its fourth year of bitter fighting.
There was limited success for the armies on either side of the Western Front, and conflicts were raging in other theatres around the world. The war at sea was also claiming many lives.
William had already experienced the horror of his ship being torpedoed by a German submarine - in the late summer of 1917.
Undaunted, he signed on for further service aboard the SS Eskmere.
The Eskmere sailed from Barry in early October 1917 with a crew of 28. Several of these men were from Barry.
Having unloaded her cargo in Belfast, the ship set sail with her tanks full of water - used as ballast to ensure stability for the ship at sea.
The crew of the Eskmere may have thought that there was no immediate danger of attack from an enemy submarine. However, Oberleutnant zur See Johannes Lohs, the commander of the UC-75, had other ideas.
Lohs ordered the submarine to surface and at 1.25 a.m. he fired a torpedo.
The torpedo hit the unsuspecting merchant ship and blew off the stern section, allowing sea water to rush in.
The captain ordered his men to abandon ship as it was quickly apparent that the vessel was sinking fast.
Nevertheless, the crew had the presence of mind to lower both the ship’s lifeboats into the sea. The sailors leapt from the stricken vessel and some boarded the starboard lifeboat, others the port side one
While one of the lifeboats remained the right way up, the seas were so rough that the other quickly capsized, throwing men into the water and trapping some underneath the upturned hull.
The Eskmere had sunk in less than five minutes and the survivors now spent an unimaginably awful night clinging to the upturned lifeboat, without food or water, soaking wet and in freezing cold conditions.
When the sun came up the following morning there were just eight men left alive. Four men in one boat were picked up by the steamer ‘South Stack’ on her run from Holyhead to Dublin and the others were rescued by the Admiralty drifter ‘Eglise’.
The crew helped right the lifeboat to search for any other survivors. Underneath there was just one body – that of Chief Steward William Maxwell.
William’s body was taken to Holyhead and a coroner’s inquest ordered. Once this had concluded with a verdict of wilful murder, his body was brought to Barry. He was one of 20 men who perished that night, five of them from Barry.
Each of the four other Barrians who perished that night are remembered on the Tower Hill Memorial in London as their bodies were never recovered.
They were:
Ordinary seaman William Lot Escott
Assistan steward Francis Morris Grey
Ship’s cook John T. Jones
William Frederick Smith
The names on the memorial are those of men of the Mercantile Marine, later the Merchant Navy, who died during the two world wars and who have no known grave.
Quite why William’s name is there is unknown, but having found his unmarked grave in Merthyr Dyfan Cemetery, with the help of cemetery worker Mark Erhardt, I have applied to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission for William’s final resting place to be marked with an appropriate headstone which will commemorate his brave service at sea and untimely death during the Great War.
LINK
Hopefully, they will agree.
A Barry war hero who was buried in an unmarked grave is the subject of a new campaign to have his service remembered with a headstone.
Dr Jonathan Hicks has spent the past 20 years researching and writing about Barry and the Vale’s role in the two World Wars.
Here he tells the story behind an unmarked grave in Barry’s Merthyr Dyfan Cemetery.
IN THE corner of a plot beneath an old oak tree in Merthyr Dyfan cemetery in Barry there is an unmarked grave.
Sadly, it is one of many, but this one has a particular significance for in it lies one of Barry’s casualties of the First World War, a man who for several years during that terrible conflict ran the gauntlet of German U-boats to ensure vital supplies and food reached the people of Britain.
William Maxwell was a Glaswegian by birth, born in the city in 1858, but in 1910 he married Eliza Ann Rich from Barry.
They set up home initially in Station Street in Barry before moving to Fryatt Street.
In the years that followed William plied his trade on ships around the coast of Britain while Eliza ran the family home.
By October 1917, the First World War was entering its fourth year of bitter fighting.
There was limited success for the armies on either side of the Western Front, and conflicts were raging in other theatres around the world. The war at sea was also claiming many lives.
William had already experienced the horror of his ship being torpedoed by a German submarine - in the late summer of 1917.
Undaunted, he signed on for further service aboard the SS Eskmere.
The Eskmere sailed from Barry in early October 1917 with a crew of 28. Several of these men were from Barry.
Having unloaded her cargo in Belfast, the ship set sail with her tanks full of water - used as ballast to ensure stability for the ship at sea.
The crew of the Eskmere may have thought that there was no immediate danger of attack from an enemy submarine. However, Oberleutnant zur See Johannes Lohs, the commander of the UC-75, had other ideas.
Lohs ordered the submarine to surface and at 1.25 a.m. he fired a torpedo.
The torpedo hit the unsuspecting merchant ship and blew off the stern section, allowing sea water to rush in.
The captain ordered his men to abandon ship as it was quickly apparent that the vessel was sinking fast.
Nevertheless, the crew had the presence of mind to lower both the ship’s lifeboats into the sea. The sailors leapt from the stricken vessel and some boarded the starboard lifeboat, others the port side one
While one of the lifeboats remained the right way up, the seas were so rough that the other quickly capsized, throwing men into the water and trapping some underneath the upturned hull.
The Eskmere had sunk in less than five minutes and the survivors now spent an unimaginably awful night clinging to the upturned lifeboat, without food or water, soaking wet and in freezing cold conditions.
When the sun came up the following morning there were just eight men left alive. Four men in one boat were picked up by the steamer ‘South Stack’ on her run from Holyhead to Dublin and the others were rescued by the Admiralty drifter ‘Eglise’.
The crew helped right the lifeboat to search for any other survivors. Underneath there was just one body – that of Chief Steward William Maxwell.
William’s body was taken to Holyhead and a coroner’s inquest ordered. Once this had concluded with a verdict of wilful murder, his body was brought to Barry. He was one of 20 men who perished that night, five of them from Barry.
Each of the four other Barrians who perished that night are remembered on the Tower Hill Memorial in London as their bodies were never recovered.
They were:
Ordinary seaman William Lot Escott
Assistan steward Francis Morris Grey
Ship’s cook John T. Jones
William Frederick Smith
The names on the memorial are those of men of the Mercantile Marine, later the Merchant Navy, who died during the two world wars and who have no known grave.
Quite why William’s name is there is unknown, but having found his unmarked grave in Merthyr Dyfan Cemetery, with the help of cemetery worker Mark Erhardt, I have applied to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission for William’s final resting place to be marked with an appropriate headstone which will commemorate his brave service at sea and untimely death during the Great War.
LINK
Hopefully, they will agree.