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.