Jonahs of the Titanic?

When the Titanic sank on 15^th April 1912 it sent shockwaves around the world, so many people involved in this shipwreck, so many names thrown around at the later inquiries. As the stories hit the newspaper stands and later became well known within the countless books, films, documentaries and even sheet music, many didn’t realise that some of these names were synonymous with shipwreck. For some of the survivors, Titanic wasn’t the first time they had been lost at sea, for others it wouldn’t be the last. Here are some people on board the most famous shipwreck in the world and their links to other sea disasters. Some of the survivors found themselves on the same ships as their former Titanic crewmates.

Charles Lightoller (4 sinkings) – Born in 1874, Lightoller suffered his first shipwreck in 1889 when a storm forced the sailing vessel Holt Hill to run aground. The crew were later rescued from an uninhabited island. After surviving Titanic, he went on to serve as First Officer on the liner Oceanic when she grounded and sank in 1914. In command of the destroyer HMS Falcon, she was accidentally sunk in a collision off Bridlington during a night time convoy manoeuvre where he fought overnight to save half of his ship that was still afloat. After being rescued he later took command of HMS Garry where he rammed and sunk the German submarine UB-110 off the Yorkshire coast. During the Second World War he took his yacht Sundowner to the Dunkirk evacuation and rescued 130 people from the beaches. He died in 1952 of heart disease.

Arthur John Priest (4 sinkings, 1 collision) – Possibly the largest amount of sea disasters claimed by one single person on board Titanic, Priest was a fireman for the great liners, surviving first the collision between the Olympic and HMS Hawke off the Isle of Wight in 1911, survived a gun battle between the German vessel Greif and his ship Alcantara where he was once again sunk, mined on the Titanic’s sister ship Britannic off the Greek island of Kea in November 1916 while working as a hospital ship, then a torpedo despatched his final ship the Donegal in the English Channel. After four sinkings and one collision, incredibly Priest would not die until 1937 when “the unsinkable stoker” succumbed to pneumonia in his bed in Southampton.

Violet Jessop (2 sinkings, 1 collision) – A stewardess on board Titanic, Violet had already been on board Olympic during the Hawke collision, was rescued from the lifeboat after Titanic went down and then found herself on the third sister Britannic when she was mined. She later wrote a biography about her life and had been referred to as “Miss Unsinkable.” She died of heart failure in 1971 at the age of 83.

Archie Jewell (3 sinkings) – After surviving Titanic, lookout Archie Jewell survived the Britannic sinking but was later lost in the sinking of Donegal.

George Beauchamp (2 sinkings) – Following his survival from Titanic, stoker George went on to serve on board the Cunard liner Lusitania when she was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland on 7^th May 1915 killing 1197 people. He survived once again and said later that he would “stick to smaller” vessels. He died in 1942 at the age of 72.

Captain Edward Smith (1 sinking, 1 collision) – Commanding officer of Titanic was also captain of the Olympic during the Hawke collision. A subsequent investigation blamed Olympic for the incident.

Frank “Lucky” Tower – This has since been proved to be an urban legend, a man who was said to have survived Titanic, Lusitania and the 1914 sinking of the liner Empress of Ireland in a collision in the St Lawrence Seaway. No Frank Tower appears on any list on either ship despite claims that it was a true story.

Throughout history there have been several incidents that have involved the same people. In 1991 a group of entertainers took charge of the rescue of their crewmates and fellow passengers on the liner Oceanos when she sank off the coast of South Africa. Several of those same people were on board the Italian liner Achille Lauro in 1994 when she was consumed by fire and sank off Somalia. 

HMHS Britannic, a ship that many Titanic survivors would later serve on when she sank in 1916

Britain’s Lost Tragedies Uncovered (and remembered)

Since the age of 11 I have had a fascination with disasters, particularly the lost ships of the world but this soon extended to air disasters and then it spiralled into an archive of information that I have now. As many people know I have written over a dozen books on disasters, starting with the Great Gale of 1871 in my home town of Bridlington which saw 28 ships sink in one horrendous day, over 50 lives were lost and the two town lifeboats put out of action.

But as time went on there were many disasters that I would come across, many of them being so forgotten that there is no memorial, no books, no TV drama and in some cases it would only be an accidental acquiring of a newspaper report from over a century ago that would lead me to discover more. But despite many of these forgotten events, it came to my attention that there were some that had a memorial to their victims already placed. As with any tragic death, it is the relatives and friends of the deceased that are affected the most, not to mention if there are any survivors who have to suffer the PTSD for years to come. But as the years go by the stories get lost, so this is where I come in.

The History Press wanted a book of these largely unknown incidents and so the hard part for me was which ones to put into print. It was then a three year whirlwind of visiting places around the UK to try and find as much information as possible to add to their stories. The first one (I did the chapters in date order) was the Southampton fire of 1837. I had known about a tragic fire in the area since 1997 when I first visited the city but never looked into it any further. It turned out that just down the road from the blitz-damaged ruins of Holyrood Church was a warehouse that, on the night of 7^th November 1837, had a small fire that soon grew to be a raging inferno. The locals nearby tried to help extinguish the blaze but there was no hope. 22 people were killed, their names now forever engraved on either side of the entrance to the church.

Over 300 miles north is the seaside town of Whitby, a place on the North Yorkshire coast that I have visited on many occasions, not least to see the lifeboat house and the memorials to the sinking of the hospital ship Rohilla during the First World War. On the top of the cliffs stands Whitby Abbey, overshadowing a small church where there is a memorial to the lifeboat crew from 1861. Like Bridlington, Whitby suffered the same stormy problem exactly ten years and one day before the Great Gale of 1871. Only this time it was the lifeboat crew who died after heroically rescuing the crews of several ships despite overwhelming cold, storms and exhaustion. Of the 13 crew members, there was one survivor and that was Henry Freeman. He later went on to be coxswain of the RNLI lifeboat and his grave today reflects his heroic career as does the lifeboat museum in the town. 

The next memorial I wanted to write was that of the Hull Paragon railway station disaster. It was 14^th February 1927 that a mistake at a signal box caused two trains to be on the same track on a collision course. A train out of Hull and a train entering the station from the small town of Withernsea smashed into each other and caused carnage. Eight people were pronounced dead on the scene, four more would die later, most of them from Withernsea. The survivors were left with horrific injuries and walls had to be broken down in order to extract the victims from the railway lines and get them to hospital. Today the area is still in use, although the Withernsea line is long gone. A memorial plaque with an information board sits behind the Hull Royal hospital overlooking where so much sadness reigned 95 years ago. Due to the fact that I have since had further information on this disaster, and that I had already written about the other two disasters on this same line (Lockington in 1986 and Burton Agnes 1947), it is my intention to write a book solely on this crash.

Over to the Isle of Wight was another adventure to the museums and monuments of Britain, so many interested places including castles. But up on a hill on a quiet country road near the village of Brook is a scarred piece of chalk cliff, the site of the crash of a passenger flying boat. On 15^th November 1957 Aquila Airways flying boat City of Sydney took off from Calshot with 58 people on board, but immediately had an engine failure that caused it to be turned back. The aircraft slammed to the ground and what is actually incredible is that 13 people survived. This became England’s worst air disaster at the time and Britain’s second worst. At the foot of the cliff a memorial stone marks the spot where you can stand and look up at where tragedy struck, another plaque is in the nearby Brook church.

Now what is incredible about this next disaster is not that it occurred in a place just as quiet and peaceful, but that two similar accidents happened here almost fifty years to the day between each other. On 10 June 1925 a day out on board an open top coach turned to disaster when one of three in a line, carrying 23 passengers, suffered brake failure on a hill near Grassington, North Yorkshire. The coach smashed through the wall of Dibbles Bridge and landed upside down killing 7 people. Fast forward five decades, on 27 May 1975 and the exact same thing happened with a party of pensioners, the coach landing in the exact same place, only this time it became (and still is to date) Britain’s single worst road disaster with 33 killed. Most people came from the town of Thornaby and the town has put a lot of effort into making sure their residents are remembered by placing several memorials around the town, but the fact that the two disasters are so similar is nothing short of eerie, especially when you compare the two images. 

London has seen its fair share of tragedy over the years. I have already written about the Moorgate tube crash before and future projects include the sinking of the Marchioness on the Thames. But two fires just months apart would provide many headlines when an illegal drinking club was firebombed by a disgruntled customer and killed 37 people in August 1980 (the killer was jailed for life) and then in January 1981 a party in a house at 439 New Cross Road had fire brigades race to the scene to be met with carnage. To this day nobody knows exactly how the fire started, many people believe it was arson yet with no concrete evidence this is merely speculative as all signs point to an accident. 13 people died in the blaze, a friend of the deceased later committing suicide. A plaque on the side of the house today remembers the 14 who died. To this day the New Cross Fire is steeped in controversy.

One chapter that did shock me as being forgotten was the explosion at a valve house for the water company in the village of Abbeystead in Lancashire in 1986. During a tour of the plant, several locals were being shown around to allow their minds to be put at rest over fears that the station was causing a flooding issue nearby. What nobody knew is that there had been a build-up of methane gas that had been released over time and when a demonstration was taking place of the water pumping, this gas was released and all it took was a cigarette. A resulting explosion ripped into the tunnels and lifted the ground above their heads. 16 people were killed. A small plaque remembers those who died but the name Abbeystead is barely remembered by anybody other than those familiar with this tragedy.

When I talk of forgotten disasters, I don’t ever think that people live at the site of a place like this and don’t know a thing about it. But when I visited the village of Dunkeswick 20 years after twelve people were killed in an air disaster it shocked me that people can be so ignorant of their local area. We are talking about people living in the next field! But on 24^th May 1995 a dense fog rolled over the Leeds area and as Knight Air flight 816 took off from Leeds-Bradford Airport it soon became apparent that their artificial horizon was not working properly. The pilots could not tell which way was up, the Embraer Bandeirante plunged into a farmer’s field with no survivors. The nearest church at the tiny village of Weeton has a memorial in their grounds.

Each of these disasters made headlines at the time, for those involved in the rescue operations, the recovery of bodies or even surviving the injuries, they will never be far from their minds. But once the press have walked away and moved on to the next story, many of these tragedies will once again be left alone. Only the history books can now tell these stories. Nobody is alive that remembers the Whitby storm or can tell us what survivor Henry Freeman was like to talk to. I have written down as many as I can and my work will keep on going for many years to come. These disasters here have all been given memorials in one way or another. Many other stories in my book have nothing. The Hosier Lane family massacre of 1869 has nothing, the street itself devastated in a World War 2 air raid. The site of the Ronan Point tower block that collapsed in 1968 is not marked. An explosion in an underpass leading to Hull’s fishing docks has nothing but graffiti on its walls and the terrible memories of 19 people being burned, two of them fatally.

So today I continue my work and at this moment have already researched more about the Hull rail disaster, got funding for a memorial to a sinking ship during World War 2, got more books ready to be released and, of course, renewed my National Archives reader card ready for the next step. If anybody can help add further detail to my archive about any of these disasters, or indeed ones that I have never written about, then please get in touch via email - shipwreckdata@yahoo.co.uk - and I will reply. 

Britain's Lost Tragedies Uncovered was published in 2021 by The History Press, priced £12.99 and available in paperback as well as e-book. 

The Lost Ships of the Falklands War 1982

When war broke out in the South Atlantic in 1982 few could imagine just how much would happen in just a few months. From the initial invasion by Argentina of the island of South Georgia followed by the Falkland Islands in April, the British government wasted no time in sending a task force to retake the islands. By the time the Argentinian military surrendered on 14 June 1982 the seabed was littered with vessels.

Fenix – Argentine landing craft said to be the first casualty of the war, but very little is known about her. She has been photographed wrecked on a beach by several sources.

ARA Santa Fe – 25 April 1982. This Argentine Balao class submarine was originally the USS Catfish, launched in 1944 and sold to Argentina in 1971 and renamed. On 25 April 1982 she was sighted by a British helicopter after sailing from South Georgia following a mission to resupply and land marines. Depth charges were launched and the now surfaced submarine was riddled with small arms fire which made her inoperable. Going alongside Grytviken pier, the sub partially sank there and was later scuttled in deep water three years later.

ARA General Belgrano – A cruiser originally launched by the US Navy as the USS Phoenix she was famously photographed at Pearl Harbour during the 1941 Japanese attack, incredibly unscathed as the fleet burned around her. Sold to Argentina she was renamed 17 de Octubre then eventually General Belgrano. On 2nd May 1982 she was part of a task group escorted by smaller ships and unbeknown to her followed by the British submarine HMS Conqueror. With every intention to turn towards the Falklands to take part in hostilities, Conqueror was given permission to sink her. Torpedoes sank her leaving 323 dead, hundreds of survivors floated for hours before the escort ships even realised the vessel had gone down. In 2003 a National Geographic expedition failed to find the wreck in a search involving survivors of both Belgrano and Conqueror.

HMS Sheffield – 4th May 1982. The Type 42 destroyer commissioned in 1975 was the first British casualty after an air attack ended with an Exocet missile slamming into her side and igniting fires within the ship. 20 of her crew died, 261 others survived. The ship was taken under tow by HMS Yarmouth but after six days the flooding within became too much and she sank, the first warship sunk in conflict since the Second World War.

Narwal – Argentine fishing vessel damaged in air attack by aircraft from HMS Hermes 9th May 1982. The bombs failed to explode but enough damage was caused to see the vessel founder the following day.

Isla del los Estados – Argentine military supply ship that had only been in service for 18 months when she sank on 11 May 1982 after a battle with HMS Alacrity’s 4.5 inch gun killing all but two of her 24 crew.

Rio Carcarana – An Argentine cargo ship, she was attacked on 16th May 1982 by British aircraft and was soon on fire. Fearing the detonation of her cargo of munitions the crew were ordered to abandon ship, although she only sank days later when HMS Antelope despatched the derelict burnt out hulk by two Sea Skua missiles.

HMS Ardent – 21 May 1982. Type 21 frigate, attacked by Argentine aircraft in Falkland Sound, two bombs struck the ship but failed to explode. Several more bombs from other aircraft slammed into various points around the vessel causing major fires. HMS Yarmouth took off the survivors but 22 others were dead. Ardent sank the following day in shallow water.

HMS Antelope – On 21 May 1982 the Type 21 frigate came under air attack and fought back with SeaCat missiles, disabling one aircraft but not before a bomb penetrated her hull killing one crewman. Incredibly the bomb did not explode. Another attack saw an aircraft crash after coming under fire from Antelope's 20mm guns. Attempts to diffuse the unexploded ordnance still on board saw the bomb detonate on the night of 23rd May killing one member of the team and injuring another. The ship was ripped apart and sank in two sections, thankfully most people survived.

HMS Coventry – 25 May 1982. Air attack on Coventry, another Type 42 destroyer, resulted in explosion and fire following bomb strike. Of the three bombs that hit the ship, one failed to explode. 20 killed, ship capsized with very little time and survivors rescued by nearby ships in nearby task group. Wreck has been located and surveyed by Royal Navy over the last few years.

Atlantic Conveyor – 25 May 1982. Taken from civilian owners Cunard to be used as cargo transport, she was hit by two missiles the same day as HMS Coventry resulting in fires consuming vital stores which included helicopter parts. Vessel later sank with 12 killed. 

RFA Sir Galahad – Together with RFA Sir Tristram, these two Landing Ship Logistics came under air attack on 8th June 1982 in what was one of the worst incidents for the British of the entire war. Direct hits on both ships saw the death of 48 crew and soldiers with many more suffering horrific burns, the most famous being Welsh Guardsman Simon Weston who has since become the image of the Falklands survivor due to his facial burns and public story. Sir Galahad was later sunk in deep water, Sir Tristram carried back to Britain on the back of a heavy lift ship.

Foxtrot 4 – On 8th June 1982, she was one of four LCU landing craft from HMS Fearless and was transporting army personnel and vehicles down St Choiseul Sound when it came under attack from Argentine aircraft. Taking direct hit from a bomb, she was taken in tow before sinking. Six people were killed, there were 11 survivors.

Hercules – Not officially on the list of ships sunk during the Falklands War, on 8th June 1982 this Liberian tanker was bombed by Argentine aircraft in the mistaken belief that it was a British supply vessel almost 500 miles away from the conflict. There were no injuries to the crew who were later rescued and the ship was scuttled after an unexploded bomb was found in the tank. A controversy around this sinking has never fully been settled.

Bahia Buen Suceso – Argentine landing craft which was captured by British forces on 15th June 1982 and sunk as target by Royal Navy on 21st October 1982.

Despite the ships above being sunk and out of action, there were many more on both sides that suffered damage, death and destruction in the course of their duties. These include HMS Glamorgan, HMS Plymouth, HMS Brilliant, RFA Sir Tristram, HMS Glasgow, ARA Guerrico, Alferez Sobral, Formosa, Piedra Buena, HMS Arrow, HMS Alacrity and many more. As with many wars that have come before and will so in the future, most people involved with the incidents here bear no ill feeling towards their former enemy. Pilots have met up with the crews of the ships they have bombed, crew of the Conqueror have shook hands with those who survived the General Belgrano and despite the long running Argentine claim to the islands, the people who live on the Falkland Islands cast their vote and today still remain under the flag of Great Britain.

Tragedy on board the Alfa America

© Joerg Seyler via ShipSpotting.com

On Thursday 28^th March 1996 a call came through to Humber Coastguard at Bridlington that an incident on board a huge oil tanker off the East Yorkshire coast required urgent assistance. Two people had entered a slop tank for routine checks and had become unresponsive, a call for Humberside Fire and Rescue was made at 2017 Hours and before long a number of rescue parties were making their way to the ship which was at anchor around three miles from Flamborough Head.

The ship was the crude oil supertanker Alfa America (IMO number 7716048), built in 1979 at the Mitsubishi yard in Nagasaki, Japan. Launched as the Nordic Faith, she was renamed Fina America upon her change of owners in 1983 before being sold again to Shinobu Shipping Co Ltd in 1994 where the name Alfa America was emblazoned on her bow. At over 51,000 gross tons, she had a deadweight of 90,000 tons and flew the flag of the Bahamas, carrying a crew from Croatia.

As the fire teams reached the ship by Sea King helicopter, the mine hunter HMS Hurworth also provided assistance as she neared the huge vessel. Providing a platform for teams to work from, the ships company also assisted with teams on Breathing Apparatus to back up the firefighting teams and rig fans for ventilation. As the fire teams made their way into the confined space of the waste tank, oil and waste coating every surface, it soon became apparent that there were both of the missing crew were dead and an RAF firefighter who had attempted a rescue and had become distressed now himself required urgent medical attention. A third crewman who had gone in after the first two was also flow to hospital.

The crew of the Alfa America were informed of the tragedy, but due to the complications of the compartment and the terrible conditions within the tank itself, the ship would have to continue its journey to Teesport (which it was already heading to after departing Hull) in order to get a team on board to recover the bodies. With a heavy heart, the anchor was weighed and the ship proceeded north to a very dismal port visit.

The two bodies were recovered and an investigation showed that it was an accidental overcoming of fumes that had caused the crewmen to lose consciousness in a confined space. The death toll could easily have been higher if it wasn’t for the fact at least one of the fire fighters from Humberside Fire and Rescue had experience working on tankers previously. The crewman and firefighter who were taken to hospital made a full recovery.

Alfa America faded from the news as quick as it had arrived, she was front page of the Yorkshire Post and a few other local papers, other than that very little was written. She was later sold yet again and renamed Alfa Ship (2002-6) and finally Sing Lee which was her final name before being towed to Bangladesh in April 2006 for scrapping. Ironically the deaths of two crewmen just a few miles from Yorkshire made less headlines than the controversy over her scrapping, as an article in the Bangladesh newspaper The Daily Star points out that Greenpeace had listed this ship as a hazard and therefore the Government would refuse to dismantle her due to the presence of toxic materials and environmental waste involved. She was eventually scrapped as planned.

Capsizing of a Hovercraft

One of the safest modes of transport on the sea is in fact the hovercraft, not technically a ship, or a boat but it is an aircraft which originally came under the regulations of the Civil Aviation Authority. Over the years these craft have shown that they can mix speed with success for both the civilian capacity (ferries) and military. But as with any mode of transport, accidents do happen and in this case a freak accident that had never happened before….and has never happened since.

It was a stormy day on Saturday 4^th March 1972, the waves were choppy out in the Solent (the body of water separating the Isle of Wight from the mainland). The passenger carrying SRN6 type craft, numbered 012, was departing its terminal on the Isle of Wight for the fast crossing to Southsea, just outside the entrance to Portsmouth Harbour. On board were 27 people including the pilot and, just by chance, one of the passengers asked a random question – How do you get out of here in an emergency? He was shown how to break the window and that satisfied his curiosity.

The small craft skimmed the surface of the Solent and slowed down as it approached the Southsea terminal. What nobody knew at the time was the tidal conditions mixed with the bad weather were causing deep troughs just outside the harbour and the craft started dipping side to side. As one side dipped down, the opposite side caught the strong wind and acted like a huge sail, silently flipping the hovercraft over until the entire craft was upside down.

Those who saw this from shore were shocked at what had just occurred. Emergency services were called as the craft, now flat and exposing the underbelly, drifted towards the landing site. But in the cabin, the passenger who had asked that vital question started breaking the emergency glass and getting people out to safety.

It didn’t take long for fire crews to arrive, boarding the craft and hacking away at the craft with axes to try and gain entry from above. By now survivors were coming ashore, the pilot remaining on board the crafts upturned hull to assist the fire teams. Helicopters searched for survivors who may have drifted out to sea and ferry those to hospital that were now on dry land.

Tragically five people died, one of them a young girl who had been taken on the hovercraft as  treat by her uncle who had also perished. One body was never found. SRN6-012 was taken into Portsmouth Harbour by the RFA Swin (right) and raised where an investigation began. The final blame was placed on the bad weather and it was clear that the pilot had taken all precautions and could not have predicted such a freak event.

The craft itself was repaired and put back into service away from the UK, eventually being scrapped years later.

It was 1997 that I first heard of this in an article in the Daily Mail “On this Day” section. I was shocked that there was very little about this in the public domain. The only other hovercraft accidents involved the much larger SRN4 The Princess Margaret hitting Dover harbour wall in 1985 killing four people, but it took years of research to finally get enough information together to finally publish a small book which I named Capsized in the Solent.

I did try to get a memorial plaque put up for the five who died, but sadly there was not only very little interest but people were actively expressing that one wasn’t placed anywhere and that the whole tragic event should be swept under the carpet. There might not be a plaque, but my writing hopefully gives people a chance to know what happened that day and how one man’s random question probably saved most of the lives on board.

It is inevitable that people contact me long after my projects are complete, but a recent interview with the BBC has led to two survivors getting in touch with me recently and already I am getting new insight into a long-forgotten tragedy which should always be remembered. 

Houndsditch Police Murders and the Siege of Sydney Street

The jewellers shop at 119 Houndsditch, London, was owned by a Henry Samuel Harris and in the cold month of December 1910 he had no idea that a plan was being hatched to rob his workplace and take the contents of the safe. This was being done by a bunch of criminals from Latvia and Russia who had spent the weeks renting the premises next door to the jeweller in order for their plans to take place.

The gang took their time with the plot, bringing equipment in over several weeks to cut through the building and the safe. A good robbery takes a lot of planning, and good planning takes time. On 16^th December the robbery plan was swung into action, but the amount of drilling and noise that was being made alerted people walking past and it was brought to the attention of a passing policeman.

Further suspicions were roused when a member of the gang was seen acting strangely and so further police officers were called, by now a group of them were gathering near to the shop. One of the adjoining houses was knocked on to see if there was anything going on, not realising that a previous officer had already done this and had alerted the gang to the police presence. By now the robbers were surrounded, but things took a turn for the worst very quickly.

The robbers decided to make a run for it and opened fire on the police officers, killing one and injuring two more. As they appeared in the street they shot their way out of the area, injuring a further two officers, but not before one of the robbers was wounded and had to be carried away by his associates. The injured police officers were taken to the London Hospital at Whitechapel, but two of them died the following day.

The deaths of Sergeant Charles Tucker, Sergeant Robert Bentley and Constable Walter Choate was now a huge murder hunt, a gang was on the loose that had cruelly cut down three police officers in their line of duty. Investigations showed that foreign gang members were to blame, cemented by the later discovery of the body of one of them as robber George Gardstein had succumbed to his injuries in the fire fight and his body left for the local doctor to discover after the gang had called on him for help saying he had been shot accidentally by a friend. The police were quick to find that he was the one injured in the shootout.

The publicity in this case was overwhelming, soon information came forward that brought up more evidence against the perpetrators, including that they were currently hiding out at No 100 Sydney Street. When the police went round to check on the morning of 3^rd January 1911 they were fired upon and this proved that they were the guys they were hunting for. Gunfire between the gang and the police went on most of the day, the military were called in to help what was now being called the Siege of Sydney Street and all eyes were now watching every move and reported in the press.

Home Secretary Winston Churchill turned up to see for himself the situation, but things were about to escalate even further when smoke was seen coming out of the building. The building was soon an inferno, the cause of the fire never being determined, but the shooting stopped and nobody was seen to leave the house. Eventually the fire teams gained access and found two bodies, but as the building collapsed it fell on several of the rescuers, one of whom died six months later.

Several people were put on trial for the crimes, but only one was found guilty of conspiracy which was later overturned. The main figurehead in this entire drama centred around a man known as Peter the Painter, a Latvian anarchist who many believe was not only not involved but may not have even existed, almost like chasing a ghost.

The whole episode was a tragedy that left 7 dead (3 police, 1 fireman, 3 gang members) and left a mark on the City of London police that remains today to be one of the largest loss of life of police officers at any one time. Today the sites no longer exist, World War 2 bombing raids putting paid to them, but two plaques honour the three officers and one fireman at the two locations. The City of London Police Museum has a fascinating collection of items relating to the loss of their three officers in their headquarters on Wood Street, London.

The Sinking of HMS Barham

Of all the warships in the Royal Navy that have gone down in history, the story of HMS Barham is one that has been told many times, not least because her demise was caught on camera so horrifically and a completely unrelated incident involving the supernatural led her to be in the news for what can only be described as a bizarre case of modern day witchcraft.

Barham was launched on New Years Eve 1914 on the River Clyde, one of five Queen Elizabeth class battleships that was 643 feet 9 inches long, around 33,000 tons and carried an impressive armament of four 15 inch guns on two forward turrets. With over 1000 crew on board, she was built in a time when the Dreadnoughts were the up and coming warship, more powerful and heavily armoured than anything launched before, and Barham was one of those ships. Not least because she had been launched as the world was plunged into war just a few months earlier.

After she was commissioned in October 1915 she found herself at the Battle of Jutland on 31^st May 1916 which was both a victory and a disaster for both sides. She was struck by German shells several times which left 26 of her crew dead and dozens more injured. Her war service continued and she was present at the final surrender of the High Seas Fleet in 1918.

21 years later she was part of the Mediterranean fleet when the Second World War was declared, so her mission now was to head back to British waters and join the home fleet. As she neared the UK at the top of Ireland she was met by several escort destroyers to add to the others that were already in a protective screen around her. But in the early hours of 12^th December 1939, as the fleet reached the Clyde approaches off the Mull of Kintyre, one of these escorts, HMS Duchess (below), was struck by the Barham and sank. 136 of her crew were killed, there were only 24 survivors. (For more information on this my book Collision in the Night tells the story of the Duchess.)

So Barham now sailed around the Atlantic and Mediterranean assisting with operations which included a U-boat torpedo striking her causing enough damage for her to put about and head for repairs. Soon back to sea she took part in several engagements where her guns were blazing against the enemy forces and in November 1941 she was heading out of Alexandria hunting for Italian convoys.

On 25^th November the submarine U-331 saw the fleet and fired four torpedoes at the Barham, three of which struck the ship in quick succession. The huge battleship rolled over slowly as crew fought to escape the sinking ship, but at this exact moment the warship Valient was doing something that would propel the death of the Barham into history. On board the Valient was a cameraman filming the ship for Pathé News. 

The Barham was rolling right over onto her side when suddenly the magazine blew up and hug
e pieces of the ship flew in every direction. The sight was shocking and the smoke enveloped everything around it. By the time the smoke had clearend, Barham had gone. 862 of her crew were killed, the nearby warships managing to rescue 487 survivors, two of whom would die later.

Meanwhile in Portsmouth a woman named Helen Duncan was conducting a séance in front of an audience and announced that a sailor had come to her and said that the warship HMS Barham had been sunk. The military immediately took an interest in this because nothing official had been released yet, therefore how she got that information was a mystery (this could have been simply hearing from a relative who had received an official death notice before it was made public). She was arrested and became the last woman in Britain to be tried for witchcraft and fraudulent spiritual activity.

The Barham wreck has never been found, but she lies somewhere in the Eastern Med. Maybe some day we will gaze upon her once again.

Memorials to the Barham are dotted around the country at various war memorials, one being at the National Memorial Arboretum which I visited in 2020.