Link to worldwide community

Link to worldwide community of commemoration aids project again

Just before Christmas the Prime Minister, David Cameron and the Irish Taosaioch, Enda Kenny made an historic visit to the battlefields on the Western front – the first by a leader from the Republic of Ireland; the more significant because it was made in company with the current Prime Minister of the former ruling government of the territorial area of the southern Irish state. The part played by the men of the whole of Ireland was extremely significant and was an aspect of the history of the south which has been largely ignored officially for almost 90 years in the modern state of Eire but is now being reassessed as the centenary of the Great War approaches. The huge Irish diaspora which settled on Tyneside and in the north east of England in the latter part of the nineteenth century is strongly represented in the sad catalogue of loss in our local communities. A further link across the Irish Sea for the Tynemouth Commemoration project was revealed over the Christmas holiday when we were able through our Twitter connections to secure a photograph of the gravestone of a local seafarer buried in the Old Church Cemetery at Cobh in County Cork on the southern coast of the Republic, where many if the victims of the ss Lusitania ‘outrage’ are also buried.

Benson Leck Blacklock was 3^rd Engineer of the tanker ss El Zorro lost through enemy action off Kinsale Head. A well-known local rugby footballer his sporting ability was celebrated in obituaries in the Shields Daily News. -4^th January, 1916: ‘News has been received of the death at sea of Mr Benson Blacklock, the well-known forward player of the Percy Park Rugby Football Club, thus adding to the already considerable list of the members of that organisation who have laid down their lives in the service of their country during the last 18 months. Mr Blacklock was not a member of His Majesty's Forces, but as engineer of an oil-carrying steamer carrying fuel for the fleet he was undoubtedly in the service of his country. The ship.. the steamer El Zoro,.. was carrying oil from Port Arthur to the United Kingdom, was lost off the coast of Ireland… Mr Blacklock and another member of the crew lost their lives,.. [he] was 32 years of age [and] was a son of Mr Benson Blacklock, an engineer employed at Smith's Dock, and served his time at the Shields Engineering Co.'s premises before going to sea. He was an enthusiastic football player, ever one of the foremost in the rushes of the Percy Park pack, and was a great favourite at Preston Avenue. He still kept up his connection with the game after going to sea, and when home from a voyage would don the jersey if the winter game was in progress.

SDN 11^th January, 1916. The funeral of Mr Benson Blacklock … took place at Queenstown on Friday. An Appreciation from an Old Percy Parkite. 'Bennie' Blacklock! What memories of many hard-fought Rugby matches does his name conjure up… Home and abroad he loved to chase the ball. Alas he and others who helped to make the name of Percy Park famous are gone from us. We mourn his loss but appreciate the fact that we had his friendship.

Now, through modern media, undreamt of in his day, we have been able to get a picture of his CWGC headstone in Cobh. The men of Tynemouth Borough lost in the Great War are commemorated across the globe. Those memorials link the communities in which they rest with their hometown to this day. We are grateful to Caoimhe NicDhaibheid of Sheffield and Cobh for her help in securing a picture of Blacklock’s gravestone to add to our database.