HMS Viknor

New light on Viknor loss 

Two years ago (12^thJanuary, 2012) I noted the loss of HMS Viknor near Tory Island off the coast of Northern Ireland. Four local men were among the 295 casualties as all contact with the ship was lost. There were no survivors.

Now two years on and as a result of research by the Project the story of one of those lost can be told. Frederick Shaw Monks had an eventful life being born across the world in Australia in Maryborough, Queensland in November, 1887. However by the time of the Census of 1891 the family is back in England living at Monkton near Jarrow; and in 1901 we find them living in Wallsend at 85 Vine Street. Young Frederick is not with them then having been committed to the Training Ship Wellesley moored off the Fish Quay in North Shields. He had been ordered to be detained for 3 years and 9 months charged with ‘frequenting the company of thieves’. He was discharged from the Wellesley on 6th November, 1903; probably around his 14^th birthday.

His period of schooling and nautical training had obviously been taken to heart for by the time of the 1911 census he is recorded as living at the family home in Vine Street and his occupation is given as ‘Second Mate Merchant service’. As was common at that time members of the merchant navy were often listed as Royal Naval Reserves for employment in times of emergency. He was called for sea service in the Royal Navy on the outbreak of war and was commissioned on 20^th November, 1914 as a Sub-Lieutenant (Temporary). He was serving on HMS Viknor when she was lost with all 

hands .He is remembered on the Portsmouth Naval memorial.

The Navy records tell us that when commissioned his address was 126 Park Road in Wallsend.

That property still stands today and we will if possible place a plaque on the building noting his service and death – one of the almost 600 homes we hope will bear witness to the losses of the war from those listed in the Tynemouth Roll of Honour. Despite his troubled start in life he had obviously made something of himself and the fine photograph shows a confident man who had earned the respect and confidence of his employers and latterly the Royal Navy which called upon his abilities to serve his country in its hour of need.

The naval records show that the ship was lost off Tory island in severe weather, all those on board being drowned. No firm evidence of enemy action was found but a considerable number of bodies were washed ashore. An enemy submarine had sown a minefield nearby recently.

The loss of Frederick came soon after his uncle Frederick Richard Monks (aged 43) had been lost in the tragedy of the sinking of three cruisers on 22^nd September, 1914 (News Guardian-

22^nd September 2011). He had spent four hours in the water after his ship HMS Cressy was sunk – the last of the three victims of U9 off the coast of Holland - and died only minutes after being rescued.

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.

Project moves into 4th year

Project moves into fourth year as centenary nears

The Tynemouth World War One Commemoration Project began with a huddled meeting in the back courtyard of the Oddfellows Arms in North Shields in December, 2010. We were huddled outdoors, under infra-red lamps, as the worst winter in 50 years tightened its grip, because the Quiz in the bar prevented any discussion above a whisper. From that icy beginning, the outline, of what is now perhaps the nation’s largest community-based commemorative project dedicated to remembrance of the loss and suffering of a town in the First World War, began to take shape.

As 2014 opens and the centenary of the outbreak of the war draws near we are about to begin the major tasks connected with the staging of a number of community events. There are three important dates for the diary of anyone who wishes to participate in the marking of the great struggle of the years 1914-18. On 3^rd August we shall have a whole day event in Northumberland Square, including a formal service of remembrance.

From 1^st to 6^th September, at the Linskill Community Centre, we shall be staging the premiere performances of a play commissioned by the project and written by North East playwright Peter Mortimer. Death at Dawn is a fictional play based on certain of the true facts surrounding the life and execution in France, after court martial on charges of desertion, of William Hunter of Coronation Street, North Shields

Supported by the Arts Council England, North Tyneside Council and The Heritage Lottery Fund the play is a full-length drama which will engage audiences of any age from 14 years upwards- tickets available from 1^st May, 2014.

Finally, on the 27^th September, at The Sage - Gateshead, in conjunction with the Army Benevolent Fund, we will commemorate all the recruitment and service of the men from across the North East who responded in vast numbers to the call in autumn of 1914. A wide programme of music and readings with audience participation will include materials drawn from the project’s researches. Tickets for this event will be sold through the Sage- Gateshead from spring 2014– details to follow through this column.

The concert will be the culmination of our four years of research and activity, by which time we shall have opened our extensive database of biographical information to public access on the internet (anticipated launch – 28^th June, 2014) which will be available for viewing in North Shields Customer First Centre (Discover North Tyneside – Local studies section) for anyone not able to access the internet easily. The project will also have a major exhibition running on the second floor of the Customer Service Centre from early in July throughout the summer until late September.

Nearer at hand we have two events in January. At 6pm on Tuesday the 21^st of January, at Northumbria University, City Campus East, Emeritus Professor John Derry of Newcastle University will deliver the fourth in our landmark series of public lectures – ‘Ludendorff and Hindenburg – a brilliant partnership?’ Details of all the remaining five lectures can be found on our website.

The next in our very popular series of talks at the Low Lights Tavern, Brewhouse Bank, North Shields will be given by D. John Sadler at 730pm on Tuesday 28^th January. John will speak on ‘The Northumberland Hussars at the first battle of Ypres -1914’ – tickets (free) can be obtained from the Project workroom, Linskill Community Centre, The Low lights Tavern and Keel Row Bookshop, Fenwick Terrace – opposite Christ Church, North Shields. The Northumberland Hussars (nickname – the Noodles) were the first Volunteer Yeomanry Regiment (cavalry) to see action in the First World War.

Sad sequel for Shields families

Sad sequel for Shields families of first attack on British mainland in December, 1914

On the 16^th December, 1914 a substantial German naval force set out across the North Sea to test the Royal Navy’s response to their movement and to carry out a number of raids on North Sea coastal towns. An earlier attack on Great Yarmouth had been ineffective but this later incursion along the east coast was to prove more devastating, and an embarrassment for the Admiralty.

After separating as they crossed the Dogger Bank area, one element of the German raiders approached Scarborough, where a relatively unimportant seaside town was subjected to a bombardment which killed several people and caused damage to a number of significant buildings, including the Grand Hotel. The effect however was more psychological – here was an enemy able to penetrate the defensive cordon of the Royal Navy which ‘had ruled the waves’ for one hundred years.

The more significant target in military terms was Hartlepool, and while the ability to decode German signals meant the navy was aware of an approaching incursion by the the second substantial German force, the response from the land and naval defences of the town was to prove ineffective.

The Hartlepool attack killed 86 civilians and injured 424. Seven soldiers were killed and 14 injured from the garrison at the Heugh and harbour batteries – the first British soldiers to be killed on the UK mainland in the war. 1,150 shells were fired at the town, striking targets including the steelworks, gasworks, railways, seven churches and 300 houses. As in Scarborough to the south, people fled the town by road and attempted to do so by train. Retaliatory fire from the British forces killed eight German sailors and 12 were wounded At 08:50, the German ships departed, the British naval forces at Hartlepool had been unable to engage the enemy for reasons of size and range.

As a subsidiary part of this probing mission the German Light Cruiser Kolberg, part of the force attacking Scarborough, had laid a field of mines off the Yorkshire coast near to Flamborough Head which over the coming months was to cause the loss of several ships which disappeared without trace after setting off from North East ports for the south.

The ss Glenmorven left the Tyne on Boxing Day, 1914 and was lost with all hands – presumed to have struck a mine laid by the Kolberg. Crew members lost and connected to North Shields were William Bower aged 17 of Coburg Street, John Roberston aged 46 (born in Ceylon) whose address was given as Albert Edward Dock, John Todd aged 17, until recently an inmate of the TS Wellesley, who had been born in Morpeth and lastly Julius Charles Wedderkopp aged 44, a Steward on the ship who was born in Copenhagen and lived at Linskill Street with his wife Winifred (nee Nicholson).

The wide-ranging of origins of these four men is indicative of the very cosmopolitan and transient nature of the population of North Shields at that time. Tracing their histories is very difficult - any information relatives can provide is vital to the work of the project.

Armistice brought fighting to an end

Armistice brought fighting to an end but not the family losses.

The Armistice signed on 11^th November, 1918 brought the fighting of the Great War to an end (except in East Africa where it continued for several more days). The joy for some at home however was often shattered by the continuing receipt of news that a loved one had died of wounds or was discovered to have died in a prisoner of war camp.

In addition, the poor state of health of many who had served in the war, brought on by the conditions in the battlefields, meant that many men succumbed to general illness. We do not know when Lieutenant George Frederick Ball was sent to Ireland at Balla, County Mayo, when he died in December, 1918 serving with the 2^nd/1^st Highland Cyclist battalion but many troops had been deployed to Ireland in the wake of the continuing political agitation and disorder surrounding the campaign by nationalists for separation from the United Kingdom.

The Shields Daily News announced on 10^th December, 1918 that George Ball, who was the younger son of Henry and Mary Ball, of 3 Milton Terrace, North Shields, and Lately Assistant Scout Master of the Christ Church Troop Boy Scouts would be interred at Preston Cemetery that week.

The Tynemouth Parish Church Monthly Magazine in January 1919, noted in its IN MEMORIAM. Section ‘Our sympathy goes out to the relatives of three of our promising young men, who have given their lives as part of the toll exacted by the War... Dec. 6th brought the news of the death in Ireland from pleurisy of 2nd Lieut. Geo. F. Ball, our Assistant Scoutmaster, who was exceptionally keen in all that he undertook. We shall miss them all tremendously, and to the relatives of each we offer our deepest sympathy. The friends of Geo. Ball had the melancholy satisfaction of a military funeral here at home, which was attended by a large number of Scouts’.

George Ball had attended Tynemouth High School and is remembered in the school’s Record of Service compiled by the Headmaster, Wallace Heaton who knew every pupil who served in the war and followed their lives during the war. (The school opened in 1904, and of 381 former pupils who were known by Heaton to have served in military or naval service, some 69 had died on active service or through war related causes).

Ball is named on several memorials including on the Honour Boards of the High School – now part of the Queen Alexandra Sixth Form College, on the bronze tablets set into the school gates (one of which was stolen in 2010), and on the Pulpit in Christ Church which carries the names of members of the parish who were regular attenders at the church before enlistment. His parents at least had the comfort denied to most of being allowed to repatriate his body for burial in Preston Cemetery (picture).

The toll of deaths from war related causes would continue for years to come and the last death recorded in the Tynemouth Roll of Honour is for a man who died in July, 1921 – just two months before the last qualifying date for the grant of an Imperial (now Commonwealth) War Graves Commission headstone. 

Toll amongst junior officers

Project research brings to light toll amongst junior officers

One of the enduring myths of the Great War was fashioned in the 1960s, when Alan Clark (author of ‘The Donkeys’) and other revisionist writers (e.g. Joan Greenwood – Oh! What a lovely war) were able to propagate the idea of an uncaring officer class willingly sacrificing the ordinary men in the ranks without a care for the numbers killed or maimed, in pursuit of foolhardy and impossible targets. This caricature of the reality of the war culminated in the extremely well-crafted fourth and final series of the Blackadder comedy. It is perhaps worth noting however that the final episode and denouement of Blackadder saw all the officers who were so mercilessly lampooned in an extremely humorous series rush to their deaths in a climactic which was reckoned to be one of the most emotive and moving in any broadcast drama.

The reality of the Great War was the loss of many more officers proportionately than of serving Other Ranks. 232 officers of Brigadier-General rank and above were killed or wounded in the war – 78 dying on active service. After the first 12 months of the war the losses of recently recruited junior officers, who had been drawn principally from a narrow elite group of leading public schools reached such a level that the army was forced, albeit reluctantly, to look further amongst the educated but not so socially narrow class of grammar school men to replace the burgeoning loss of young men who had offered themselves in droves from Eton, Harrow, Winchester and similar elite bastions of the establishment.

The antidote to the glib offerings of Clark and Greenwood can be found in the superb story of the junior officers at company level and below – ‘Six weeks - The Short and Gallant Life of the British Officer in the First World War’ [2010] by John Lewis-Stempel. He comprehensively punctures the myth of an uncaring and remote class of officers lolling about in gilded chateaux at the rear, as the men suffered and died in the horrors of frontline trenches. The facts of the courage and diligent caring for the men they led are the reminder of a time when duty and self-sacrifice were qualities taken for granted: so ingrained, that of all the combatant armies, only the British Army never suffered any significant loss of morale or disobedience by men in the frontline. This is attributed in large part to the British policy of employing junior officers in large numbers to lead dangerous tasks (e.g. wiring parties in No man’s land’); otherwise managed by NCOs in the allied and opposing armies.

The story of the former pupils of Tynemouth High School who took promotion as temporary officers is now being researched by a volunteer who recently joined the project. Already we have found that of 381 former pupils noted in the school’s Record of Service who were known to have been involved in military and merchant navy service during the war some 65 took commissions as junior officers in the army. Of these 19 were killed - almost 30%. This figure is consistent with Stempel’s findings and shows the true contribution of the junior officers in the four year-long struggle. Losses amongst junior officers reached such proportions that The Times was requested to cease publication of names of the dead so great was the loss amongst the sons of the establishment and consequent damage to morale.

We are fortunate that John Lewis-Stempel is one of the leading authorities who have come forward to deliver one of the lectures we arranged jointly with Northumbria University, He is giving his lecture – ‘The experiences of junior officers at the front’ at 6pm on Tuesday 3^rd. December at the City Campus East site of Northumbria University – School of Law and Business building. This is an opportunity to hear and put your questions to the author of the acclaimed story of the Captains. Lieutenants and Second lieutenants who it is argued won the war for the allies by their leadership and example.

You can register interest in attending any of the lectures at our website www.tynemouthworldwarone.org Lectures are free and open to the public on a first come basis, although pre-registration helps us to plan ahead.

The lecture by Dr Martin Pugh on Women in the Greta War (November 13^th) attracted a large audience; confirming the rising tide of interest in the war and the views of the leading historians of today who we have been able to secure for this landmark series of lectures.

Powerful picture from 1919

Powerful picture from 1919 resonates around the world

On Remembrance Sunday the project posted on its Twitter site a scene in a London street (pictured) on the first anniversary of Armistice day in 1919.This powerful image of national remembrance was re-circulated by more than 300 other Twitter sites such that more than 200,000 people will have received the picture – possibly the same number as those gathered on that London street 94 years ago.

The picture captures the overwhelming national solidarity that must have been engendered by the terrible toll of the previous four years. Now as we prepare to enter the centenary of the outbreak of the war on 4^th August, 1914 there is a palpable sense that the nation will seek to recognise and re-evaluate the loss and the changes wrought by that tragic episode in the history of the modern world.

Over the period of the centenary we will be reminded of the names of battles fought by the British, Dominion and colonial troops – many of which require little mention to reawaken sad memory amongst older generations who lost fathers, uncles and brothers in the well-known campaigns and battles on the Western Front. Of course the war involved our major ally France as well as Belgium and Russia. However it came as a surprise to me just how little recognition there is today of the major episodes that involved the French troops who suffered in equal measure with their British ally. The response of the other governments to the centenary (allies and foes alike) is different and it is fair to say that the centenary will not be marked in such definite terms as within the British and Commonwealth nations.

The most potent place name in modern French culture is Verdun – the fortification on the north east border area of France - the scene of fighting which was unparalleled in its ferocity and human toll and a place which has the same resonance for the French as The Somme and Passchendaele. The story of Verdun will be told at our next talk at the Low Lights Tavern, Brewhouse Bank, North Shields on Tuesday, 26^th November at 730pm. Tickets are still available from Keel Row Bookshop, Preston Road, North Shields and from the Low Lights Tavern.

Ian McArdle will examine the myths and the reality of this most important struggle; said to be one reason for the ill-fated Somme campaign – designed to take pressure off the French by forcing the German High Command to divert troops north to protect their front line in Picardy.

Correction – please note the lecture by Professor Gary Sheffield in March, 2014 will be given on 

4^th March –not 8^th March as stated in last week’s column.