Chief Electrical Artificer Charles Thomas Stringer remembered 100 years on from sinking of HMS Hampshire

Stringer family grave in Brockley & Ladywell Cemeteries.   Photo courtesy of Billion Graves

Amidst the untidy contours of meadow grass close to the Brockley Road boundary lies the modest headstone of the Stringer family. It was a serendipitous discovery that led to the realisation that Charles Thomas Stringer with the rank of Chief Electrical Artificer, Second Class was aboard HMS Hampshire on its fateful voyage to Russia when it sank in fifteen minutes after hitting a German mine off Orkney on 5th June 1916.

Postcards of HMS Hampshire

 The 141 year old Royal Navy rank of Artificer, dating from 1868 and endorsed in 1903 by First Sea Lord Sir John ‘Jackie’ Fisher, worried at the time at Germanys advances in naval technology, a rank nicknamed ‘tiffs’ or ‘ tiffies’was only recently replaced in 2010 by the term Engineering Technicians!

 

Last photograph taken of Lord Kitchener on board HMS Iron Duke before transferring to HMS Hamsphire- 5th June 1916.

The name of arguably one of Britain's greatest war heroes, Field Marshall Earl Kitchener, Minister of War, will forever be inextricably linked with Orkney.  For it was here off the bleak 200 foot high cliffs of Marwick Head on the west coast that the 10,850 ton armoured battle cruiser Hampshire, carrying Lord Kitchener on a voyage on a top secret diplomatic mission to Archangel, North Russia, struck a mine and sank with the loss of 736 officers and men including Lord Kitchener who names are all listed here.  

HMS Hampshire (which had been present at the Battle of Jutland but not engaged directly in the action) had set out from Scapa Flow, earlier that fateful day with two destroyer escorts.  Because of severe north easterly gales the route for the voyage was switched at the last minute away from an easterly passage up the Orkney's to a westerly and more sheltered route up the west side along a route not regularly swept for mines.  It was thought that no German mine layer would dare to operate this close to the mighty naval base of Scapa Flow.

The storm centre however passed overhead and the wind backed to the northwest. Far from a sheltered passage Hampshire and her escorts now found themselves battling high winds and heavy seas.  The two destroyers struggled to keep up with the heavier Hampshire and soon were falling far behind.  They were ordered to return to base and Hampshire went on a lone pitching and rolling in the Force 9 winds, but maintaining a speed of 13.5 knots.

When she was about one and a half miles offshore between Marwick Head and the Brough of Birsay a rumbling explosion shook the whole ship tearing a huge hole in her keel between her bridge and her bow after she hit a mine believed to have been from the mine laying German submarine U-75.  The helm jammed and the lights gradually went out as the power failed.  She immediately began to settle into the water and clouds of brown suffocating smoke poured out from below decks. The crew streamed aft away from the explosion.  A call went out "Make way for Lord Kitchener" and he passed by, clad in a greatcoat and went up the after hatch.  He was never seen again and it is assumed that he went down with the ship.

The wreck of HMS Hampshire now lies in 70 metres, upside down and largely intact bar the bow section which has been devastated by the mine explosion and the more recent attention of salvage hunters.  For more information on the ship and her last fateful voyage go to http://hmshampshire.org/

Mike Guilfoyle

Vice-Chair FOBLC

'WILFUL MURDER' : THE SINKING OF THE LUSITANIA - MAY 7th 1915

'

The departure of the Lusitania on her last fateful voyage, New York, New York, May 1915. (Photo by PhotoQuest/Getty Images) Photo: Library of Congress

It was with a considerable frisson of excitement that I chanced, when looking at unrelated family headstones, upon the overgrown lettering at the foot of a family grave in Brockley cemetery (close to the former Catholic section) which identified two victims of the 1,198 (of 1,959 passengers and crew) who perished in one of the twentieth centuries greatest maritime disasters, the sinking of the Luxury Cunard Passenger Ship RMS Lusitania eastbound from New York to Liverpool off the coast of South East Ireland 11 miles from the Old Head of Kinsale on the afternoon of Friday 7 th May 1915. 

Launched in 1906 she was briefly the worlds largest and fastest passenger ship and was sunk by a torpedo(a controversial claim that a second torpedo was fired remains one of the many enduring conspiracy myths surrounding the sinking) when she crossed the path of the German submarine U-20 commanded by Kapitan-Leutnant Walther Schwieger,  at a point in the Great War when a U Boat exclusion zone was operational around Great Britain and Ireland meant that she was deemed to be a ' legitimate target'. 

The ship had sailed under Captain William Turner, in spite of advanced warnings in the American press from the German Embassy of the potentially deadly threat of U-Boat action and sank in the staggeringly fast time of just 18 minutes. Amongst the victims there were a 128 Americans including the tycoon Alfred Vanderbilt (whose body was never recovered). The international outrage that the loss of the Lusitania precipitated, resulted in a sequence of diplomatic and political events that would eventually lead to the USA entering the war on the allied side in 1917. At the hastily convened Inquest in Kinsale on May 10 th the Jury recorded a verdict of 'Wilful and Wholesale Murder'  for what was considered ' An appalling crime contrary to international law and the conventions of civilized nations'

OH MONTY' LAST WORDS OF VICTIM - CHASTINA AND MONTAGUE GRANT WHO ARE REMEMBERED IN BROCKLEY CEMETERY.

Chastina Grant aged 43 was travelling aboard the Lusitania with her husband Montague, to visit his three sisters in Liverpool, whom they had not seen in years.  The Grants were British citizens living in Chicago, Illinois, United States. She and Montagu lived at 1412 Hyde Park Boulevard in Chicago. The Grants were in cabin D-39 for the last voyage of the Lusitania.

On the day of the Lusitania disaster, 7 May 1915, Chastina and Montague Grant were on the sun deck , when they saw James Brooks on the boat deck below and called out to him. Brooks climbed the companionway to join the Grants.  They made plans to play shuffleboard and were waiting for a fourth to join them when Brooks noticed a white streak approaching diagonally from the starboard side.  Brooks said flatly, “That’s a torpedo.”

A solid shock went through Lusitania and, in Brooks’ words, “instantly up through the decks went coal, debris of all kinds . . . in a cloud, up in the air and mushroomed up 150 feet above the Marconi wires.”  This was accompanied by “a volume of water thrown with violent force” that knocked the Grants and Brooks flat on the ground.

Chastina weakly called for her husband, “Oh Monty.”

Brooks got up and ran between the second and third funnels to find Montague and Chastina lying on the deck on the starboard side.  Then came “a slight second shock” that enveloped him in steam.  He felt that he was going to suffocate.  When the steam cleared, the Grants were gone.  Both Chastina and Montague Grant were lost in the Lusitania sinking. Chastina’s body was also recovered, identified as “age 36 years, 1st Class passenger,” interred in Common Grave, Queenstown (Cobh) Old Church cemetery.  Montague’s body was also recovered as of Thursday, 20 May 1915. Following a funeral service at St Paul's Deptford he was interred in Brockley cemetery.

The centenary of the sinking on May 7th will be marked by a number ofseparate events.

Appreciation extended to Mike Poirier for information on Montague and Chastina Grant - he is the co-author of 'Into the Danger zone : Sea crossings of the First World War' http://www.amazon.co.uk/Into-Danger-Zone-Crossings-First/dp/0752497111

Mike Guilfoyle