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Articles
Extract from
"WHEN MY ANCESTOR DIED" by Marilyn Stephenson-Knight
Very many of the 1,459 sailors who
lost their lives in the infamous U9 submarine attack on the HMS Aboukir,
HMS Cressy, and HMS Hogue in September 1914 came
from Kent. Twelve, including my great uncle Coulson Crascall,
are commemorated on the Town War Memorial outside Maison Dieu
House in Dover.
Local newspapers the Dover Express and especially
the Deal, Walmer, Sandwich and East Kent Mercury (now the
Mercury) provide detailed information about local casualties
and survivors.
In Dover, the first news of the
disaster was given by a telegram publicly displayed in a shop
window. The papers record the distress of the relatives. Some
wives fainted, while others ran around in despair, having, just
over two weeks before, like Mrs Bailey of Deal, already lost
family through the torpedo attack on the HMS Pathfinder.
Particularly distraught was the widow Mrs Penn, again from Deal,
whose three sons were aboard the Cressy. The Mercury saw
blinds drawn and shutters half-closed throughout the town,
denoting "that yet another one has fallen for the sake of his
 country."
At first crew members believed the
Aboukir had struck a mine. Both the Hogue and the Cressy
went to her aid, lowering rescue boats. The Penn brothers,
Hubert, Louis, and Alfred, were amongst those hurling down
anything floatable - tables, stools, spars, sofas, even doors -
as makeshift buoys. It was only when the Hogue too was hit and
then sank within ten minutes that they understood it was a
submarine attack. By then it was too late for the Cressy to
avoid her fate. Corporal Pilcher on the foredeck heard a sudden
yell of "Go astern, sir!" as the crew saw a torpedo heading
directly towards them.
Hit amidships the Cressy heeled
by 10 degrees, but, with all watertight doors closed, seemingly
recovered. The second was the fatal strike, hitting the
starboard bows and shooting a fountain of water high into the
air as a magazine apparently exploded. It was then that the
captain ordered "every man for himself". Until that moment
gunners on the Cressy had stood by their posts trying to
locate submarines, while the Cressy herself was believed to
have rammed one. Such was the manoeuvrability of the single
U-boat in comparison with the three elderly armoured cruisers,
and such was the confusion of the attack, their crews believed
five submarines had attacked them.
The Cressy tipped onto her side,
and some hundred or more men scrambled up towards the keel until
they were washed away by a wave. Warrant Officer Rowe saw the
starboard propeller rise from the water, and watched as the
Cressy hung on the surface for five minutes before finally
disappearing. Having thrown floatables into the water to help
the other crews many men were lost from the Cressy as there
was little left for them to use. WO Rowe had to swim four or
five hundred yards before reaching any wreckage to cling to, and
Seaman Donald Hickman said, "I struck out with all my might to
get clear of the struggling mass of men". Mr Mills also was
swimming as fast as he could away from the ship, as he was
"afraid of being drawn down with her". He, like Donald Hickman,
had removed his clothes - he noticed that many of those still
dressed eventually sank.
 Some, said Hubert Penn, completely
"lost their heads". He heard "horrible and pitiful" cries as men
"gasped for breath" and saw that "all around were hundreds of
men, struggling and grasping at anything and everything", even
at the legs of those trying to swim. A Marine sharing a door
with Donald Hickman and three others lost his grip. Sinking, he
clutched at a sailor near him, nearly pulling him down too and
all but capsizing the table. Mr Mills had jumped into the water
with a buoy and invited four exhausted swimmers to share it with
him. Struggling to seize it they pushed him away, then "they
were drowning each other", and eventually three of them sank.
The water was icy cold, and rough
from the remains of a storm. Hubert Penn said that the plank to
which he was clinging "turned over and over". He and his three
companions, constantly ducked and with mouths filled with salt
water, could hardly hold on. The three were eventually dislodged
by a particularly large wave. Even those who could cling to
wreckage succumbed to the cold; Private Thompson shared a rum
breaker with a poor swimmer named Anderson for two hours before
Anderson could no longer move his legs and disappeared. Hubert
Penn was left alone amidst scores of dead bodies.
Those sharing wreckage encouraged
one another by talking and by calling out to others. A "jolly
nice chap" clung to Mr Mills' buoy with him, and constantly
prayed to God to help them. Mr Mills believes He did, for after
losing consciousness he awoke to find himself aboard a Dutch
steamer named Titan. Like other survivors he'd been in the
water for around three hours. "It wanted a bit of sticking," he
said, and many, even after they were rescued, were too exhausted
and cold to survive. One lucky man was a parson. He was a
non-swimmer and it took two hours to revive him when he was
taken aboard a tiny fishing smack from Lowestoft, the Coryander.
Titan, Coryander, and another
Dutch steamer, Flora, picked up as many men as they could. The
Flora took to Holland where Donald Hickman said they were seen
as heroes and treated with great kindness. Private Thompson had
the devastating experience of being partially concealed by rough
waves and watching the Coryander turn away as he'd nearly
reached it. In a supreme understatement he declared himself,
"just a little bit downhearted". Fortunately a
coxswain on one of the lifeboats eventually spotted him, and he
and the coxswain then picked up another seventeen before finally
being rescued by the Coryander. The seventy-one survivors aboard Coryander,
as did those aboard the Titan, enjoyed hot drinks and fresh
clothes before being transferred to British destroyers and taken
home to England. In all 837 men were saved.
The accounts in the newspapers give
a background to how many of our forebears lost their lives. Such
events, tragic though they are, highlight a moment in time and
thus may also yield genealogical gems. Lists of casualties and
survivors give addresses and names of parents or wives, along
with the number of children. (Mr and Mrs Cambridge from Dover
were patriotically able to claim five sons in the navy and three
in the army.) It may even be possible to obtain images -
 both
papers have pictures of many of the seamen who were aboard the
three armoured cruisers.
Obituaries detail the schools
attended, service records and trades, and in some instances give
also other activities. From the Cressy, Willie Chittenden was
a treasurer and deacon at his Congregational Church, and also
sang in a choir. George Coleman helped with pleasure boats on
Walmer sea front, while William Sizer's task was the flipside,
for he was a member of the lifeboat crew and had helped rescue a
steamer from the Goodwin Sands on the very morning he was called
up.
Even character is mentioned -
Christopher Hood was kind and cheerful, and George Coleman was
fine-looking, popular, and a "good boy" to his mother. But on
the day of his departure for Chatham William Sizer was gloomy
and depressed. It was almost as though he'd had a premonition,
the Mercury stated, because he continually exhorted his wife
to take care of their baby and at Chatham
 he
insisted that the three of them should be photographed together.
"It would be nice for my wife to look at and keep in the event
of anything happening," he'd said.
And finally - Mrs Penn also had
photographs and a premonition. Hubert had been pictured alone
but Louis and Alfred were on an image together. Only Hubert
survived. He wrote a letter to his mother about their last
moments. Louis had already disappeared, but he and Alfred shook
hands and made a promise that if either were to survive he would
tell their mother that their last thoughts had been of her. They
then kissed and said goodbye, and Alfred jumped into the water.
The rolling of the Cressy as she turned on her side prevented
Hubert from following his brother. He never saw Alfred again.
As for Mrs Bailey, her worst fears
were realised. Her son Wallace, a few days before the tragedy,
had written to her about his brother, lost on the Pathfinder.
"The photo of poor old George in the paper looks good," he'd
said. "I expect you feel very upset about it." His own
photograph appeared just three weeks afterwards.
This article
first appeared in the Kent Family History Society Journal,
volume 12, number 7, dated June 2009
Illustrations:
casualties, top to bottom: Hubert Penn, William Sizer, and
Wallace Bailey, reproduced by permission of the Mercury
door of HMS Cressy, now at Chatham Historic Dockyard
For the final
fate of the U9 and her crew, with an illustration, see
here, at
the foot of the article
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