As we approach Remembrance Sunday the museum would like to draw attention to the three Addicks who fell in WW1
Below is an article by Steve Hunnisett of Blitz Walkers www.blitzwalkers.co.uk who posts on Charlton Life as
@Tom_Hovi Thanks Steve for the research and article.
Lest we forget
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By now, most supporters will be aware of the efforts of Club Historian Clive Harris, ably assisted by Ben Hayes, in tracking down the names of the three members of our club who fell during the First World War.
On a recent visit to the excellent Charlton Athletic Museum at the Valley, I noticed a freshly delivered memorial tablet which listed the names of the three definitely known Addicks who had made the ultimate sacrifice in the conflict that was described at the time as “The War to end All Wars”, a description that has subsequently been proved sadly inaccurate.
One name, or rather a ship’s name, immediately caught my attention when looking at the finely crafted plaque. This was the steamship Heron, a name I recognised as being a vessel from the General Steam Navigation Company, a London based short sea and coastal shipping concern that later became a part of the shipping company for whom I once worked, the P&O Group. So apart from the connection to Charlton Athletic, there was also a link, albeit a slightly tenuous one, to my first employer with whom I spent some of the happiest working years of my life. I had to learn more.
The name of the man lost aboard the Heron was somebody who had been involved with the Club literally right from the very start, for he was none other than Jim Mackenzie, the very first Honorary Secretary of the embryonic Charlton Athletic when the club was formed in time for the beginning of the 1905-06 season and whose name and address at 5 York Street, Charlton was given in the Kentish Independent newspaper advertisement of 27th October 1905, as the person to contact for those looking for a friendly fixture.
John Alexander Mackenzie, as his surname suggests, was a Scot who was born in 1890 in Dundee to parents William and Annie Mackenzie. Jim, as he was universally known, was the eldest of five children, with a younger brother and three sisters. By the time of the 1901 Census, the family had moved to 36 Cedar Grove, Charlton as Jim’s father William had taken a job as a Dockyard Labourer, no doubt at one of the many wharves that lined the Thames in the area at that time. By 1905, the family had moved to York Street, today called Mirfield Street and which connected East and West Streets (now Eastmoor and Westmoor Streets respectively) at the heart of the area from whence the young players of the newly formed football club were to be found.
As readers of Richard Redden’s excellent club history ‘The Story of Charlton Athletic 1905-1990’ will perhaps remember, Jim was Honorary Secretary of the Club during its formative years but in November 1908, at the age of eighteen, he decided to join the Merchant Navy, being engaged by the General Steam Navigation Company, often referred to simply as the GSN, or ‘The Navvies’. Although the company’s headquarters were at Trinity Square in the City of London, they also had a wharf and engineering works at Deptford and it was perhaps the locality of his new employers, together with the regular schedules and relatively short routes covered by the company that attracted Jim to this type of work.
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Despite his nomadic life in the Merchant Navy, Jim kept his roots in Charlton and surely must have kept in contact with his friends at the Football Club during his periods of leave. In the 1911 Census, the family had moved to 93 East Street but by the time the 1913 Electoral Register was printed, the family had moved again to a newer and larger home at 57 Delafield Road, adjacent to Charlton Railway Station and ironically a short walk from Charlton Athletic’s future home at The Valley.
The Heron was the second of the company’s vessels to bear the name and was an iron hulled steamship of 879 gross register tons delivered to the company in 1889 by Gourlay Brothers of Dundee, so coincidentally the Heron had the same birthplace as her Ship’s Cook and was just a year older. She was engaged on one of the GSN’s regular routes from London and other UK ports to Oporto, carrying general cargo as well as having provision for some passengers. Sadly, no photograph of the vessel seems to have survived the passage of time. The third Heron was built in 1920 and although she was a larger vessel than her predecessor, her general layout was quite similar.
The First World War saw the emergence of a new form of warfare at sea in the form of the submarine. At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, the submarine had been damned by many and the views of Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson RN, who described submarines as “Underhand, unfair and damned un-English” was typical for the time. Attitudes changed and by the outbreak of the War in 1914, submarines had been adopted by both the Royal and Imperial German Navies as an integral part of their respective fleets.
Early actions favoured the Germans, culminating in September 1914 with the loss of the British cruisers Aboukir, Hogue and Cressy with heavy loss of life. The repercussions the following year of the torpedoing of the liner Lusitania, including the deaths of 128 American civilians (at that time citizens of a neutral country), caused the Germans to scale back their submarine operations for fear of further alienating public opinion in the United States and thus drawing them into the war. The submarine flotilla was duly withdrawn from the commerce war and was given strict instructions to attack enemy warships only.
However, on 31st January 1917, with the war beginning to go against Germany and the effect of the Allied blockade having a disastrous effect on food supplies, the Kaiser ordered that unrestricted submarine warfare should be recommenced with immediate effect. As a countermeasure, the British reluctantly instigated a convoy system, initially only on the shorter supply routes to France and across the North Sea but later extended to cover the Transatlantic and Gibraltar routes as well.
The exigencies of war meant that there were frequent alterations to loading schedules and diversions to convoy assembly points. Thus on 27th September 1917, the Heron, having loaded a cargo of coal at Newcastle, topped up with general cargo in London, sailed from Falmouth bound for Oporto as part of Convoy O.F. 6 and was not carrying any passengers. The convoy comprised some forty ships, including another GSN vessel, Drake. On this occasion, the convoy appears to have been unescorted by any Royal Navy ship, although many of the merchantmen would have had a defensive armament of a single 3 inch gun and of course, there was the ‘safety in numbers’ aspect of a large convoy of ships that in theory would force the U-Boat to remain beneath the surface and use torpedoes - not always a reliable weapon in 1917 - rather than attempting to surface and sink the ships by gunfire.
On the night of 30th September whilst crossing the Bay of Biscay, the Heron’s company sister ship, Drake, was sunk by the gunfire of U-90, under the command of 34 year old Kapitanleutnant Walter Remy. The U-90 had only been commissioned on 2nd August 1917 but Remy was an experienced commander, having previously commanded the U-24 and who was already responsible for sinking over 31,000 tons of Allied shipping when he took command of his new U-Boat at the Kaiserliche Werft, Danzig. The U-90 was quite a large submarine for the time and displacing 998 tons, was actually slightly heavier than the Heron. She was armed with six 50 centimetre torpedo tubes, four at the bow and two astern and carried sixteen torpedoes. She was also armed with a 10.5 centimetre gun, with 240 rounds for surface attacks.
The entire crew of the Drake were able to take to the ship’s boats and were eventually picked up the following morning but two hours after her sinking, a single torpedo fired from U-90 slammed into the side of the Heron adjacent to the engine room with disastrous results. The impact of a heavyweight torpedo upon the small and elderly iron built coaster must have been devastating, as the Heron with her cargo of coal, sank like a stone.
Of the other twenty two crew members of the Heron, including the 27 year old Jim Mackenzie and of the vessel herself, there was no trace save for a few fragments of wreckage floating on the surface. Jim and his shipmates lay at position 46⁰ 27’ N, 11⁰ 14’ W, some 300 miles southwest of Ushant, in the Bay of Biscay.
The crew of the Heron represented the British Merchant Navy in microcosm, being a very cosmopolitan bunch. As might be expected, there were men from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales on board but there were also crew members from Denmark, India, Portugal, Sweden and Japan. Coincidentally, apart from Jim Mackenzie, there was one other resident of Charlton on board; Charles Davey the First Engineer was from Eversley Road, whilst the ship’s Master, Captain RS Bristow hailed from Beckenham.
The men of the Heron are commemorated on the Merchant Navy Memorial at Tower Hill, a stone’s throw from the GSN Company’s former headquarters at Trinity Square and where 12,210 British Merchant Seaman from the First World War who have no grave but the sea are remembered. Unfortunately, the panel bearing Jim’s name is located quite high up on the memorial and is difficult to photograph well but is clearly visible to those wishing to pay their respects.
The poem “No Roses Grow on a Sailor’s Grave” could have been written for Jim Mackenzie and it is a fine achievement by Clive and his colleagues at the Museum that one of the original ‘East Street Boys’ without whom we would not have a Charlton Athletic, will at last be commemorated at the home of the football club that he helped to set in motion back in 1905.
Published Sources:
Birds of the Sea: 150 Years of the General Steam Navigation Company – Nick Robins, published by Bernard McCall, 2007
Business in Great Waters – John Terraine, published by Leo Cooper Ltd, 1989
The Story of Charlton Athletic 1905-1990 – Richard Redden, published by Breedon Books, 1990
Unpublished Sources:
National Maritime Museum Archives – GSN/1/43 – Minutes of the GSN Company, October 1917
National Maritime Museum Archives – GSN/41/24 – GSN Newsletter issue 93
National Maritime Museum Archives – RSS/CL/1915/3444/12 – ss Heron crew list 1915
More more more
Jim Mackenzie (extreme right of photo)
Jim Mackenzie commemorated on the Merchant Navy Memorial, Tower Hill
Excellent.
Thanks for that.
Interesting read.
BTW the web address above needs tweaking slightly.
The current memorial put up by the museum with the help and donations of fans
Did we lose anyone during the Second World War?
Let me know, as my cousin would like to attend as several of the family were, and are serving fire officers, albeit now in Essex.
Thanks
Engrossing story, superbly researched and written.
I work as a park warden in Southwark and regularly patrol the three cemeteries there. I regularly make a point of stopping to pay my respects at the many graves and memorials dotted around these cemeteries but nothing brings it more to life than when I bump into a relative who has come to visit one of these graves and they tell me what happened. The last one was an Aussie fella who only found out his dad had a younger brother after his dad died earlier this year. Following his younger sibling's death during his first day of action at Gallipoli, the old fella never spoke about him again. The rest of the family only found out when they discovered some documents while clearing out his house.
RIP