By John D Ellis
Lewis Aubrey Walcott was born on the Island of Barbados c.1878 and served as a rating in the Royal Navy between 1906 and 1921.(1)
Little is known of his background prior to enlisting in the Royal Navy. However, both ancestry and findmypast provide evidence that indicates he was living in London before 1906. It is known, from his marriage certificate, that his father was a book-binder, (see reference 21) so he may well have been the Lewis Walcott, a twenty year old book-binder who, after falling on hard times, was admitted to Hackney Union Workhouse in November 1900.(2) Or, the Lewis Walcott of Barbados, a print compositor, boarding at a hotel in Lincoln’s Inn in 1901.(3)
In February 1906, Lewis Aubrey Walcott enlisted in the Royal Navy. He was given the number SS 102494, and was to spend his entire service as a stoker.(4) Stokers worked in the engine rooms of coal-fuelled ships. It was also a rank, i.e. “Stoker 2nd Class” and “Stoker 1st Class”.(5)
As a Stoker 2nd Class he served on:
HMS Archeron between February to June 1906 (the Acheron was a former frigate employed as a base ship); HMS Talbot between June and July 1906 (a cruiser); HMS Acheron between July and August 1906; HMS Pembroke between August 1906 and March 1907 (shore barracks at Chatham); and HMS Cochrane between March 1907 and February 1908 (a cruiser in the Home Fleet).
As Stoker 1st Class (which included an increase in pay in recognition of his experience and expertise), he served on:
HMS Bacchante between February 1908 and May 1910 (a cruiser in the Mediterranean Fleet); HMS Pembroke II between May and June 1910; HMS Hogue between June and August 1910 (a cruiser being re-fitted in Chatham after a coal-bunker explosion); HMS Pembroke II August 1910; HMS Indomitable between August 1910 and January 1911 (a battlecruiser); and HMS Pembroke II between January and February 1911.
In February 1911 he was discharged from the Royal Navy, however, he remained liable for recall as part of the Royal Fleet Reserve, (spending one week each year training with the Royal Navy). Military records do not provide any information for the period 1911-1914.
When the First World War broke out in August 1914 he was recalled. As a Stoker 1st Class, he served at HMS Pembroke II (a Royal Naval Air Service station at Eastchurch, Kent between 1913 and 1918), between August and September 1914. The website livesofthefirstworldwar.iwm.org.uk provides an address (9 Danton Road, Manor Place, Walworth), for Lewis Walcott during the period 1914 to 1918 but does not indicate when he resided there.(6)
He was then posted to the Royal Naval Division, (RND), a war time light infantry unit composed of Royal Navy and Marine reservists and volunteers not needed for sea service. He was not the only “man of colour” in the RND, as Walter Moore, (born in the Caribbean c.1888), was serving with the Drake Battalion in the division.(7)
Propaganda posters such as this portrayed war as a game and convinced many men to enlist. They were to find the reality of combat very different.
The Royal Naval Division was the brainchild of the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, and as such earned the nicknames “Churchill’s private army” and “Churchill’s little army”.(9)
Stoker 1st Class Lewis Walcott served in the Hood Battalion of the RND (like the ship HMS Hood, it was named after the various members of the Hood family who were renowned naval officers). The battalion numbered amongst its officers Arthur Asquith (the son of the Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, and later a Brigadier), Patrick Shaw-Stewart (poet and scholar, later killed in action in 1917 whilst commanding the battalion), Bernard Freyberg (Victoria Cross recipient and later Lieutenant-General, Baron Freyberg, Governor-General of New Zealand), and the poet Rupert Brooke (who died in 1915 whilst serving in the battalion).
Like Lewis Walcott, many of the ratings of the Hood Battalion were former stokers. Men that Douglas Jerrold, the first historian of the division, described as “the backbone of the battalions”.(10)
Patrick Shaw-Stewart wrote of the platoon he commanded in 1915:
“I have got the queerest command – imagine it – a platoon of Old Stokers! They are very queer fish to handle after the lamb-like Scots at the Crystal Palace. Their appearance is rather like the Punch picture of the Landsturm, their language extremely fruity, and their cunning inexhaustible. But they have great “character”, and I dare say they may grow on me. But they have got a sort of standing grievance in the back of their old evil minds that they want to be back in their steel-walled pen, yelping with delight and rolling in the waist, instead of forming fours under the orders of an insolent young landlubber”.(11)
Lewis Walcott participated in the Siege of Antwerp (September-October 1914), and appears on the muster rolls as one of seventeen ratings in 5th Section, D Company of the Hood Battalion.(14)
The chief of the 5th Section was Leading Stoker SW Clark, and Lewis Walcott’s comrades were JW Andrews, A Blater, J Fitzgerald, VG Frost, P Gill, A Godfrey, J Hurle, JW Littler, E Oliver, G Osborne, H Ridgion, E Sargent, S Sargent, A Slater and C Tyler.(15) Frost, like Lewis Walcott and SW Clarke, was a stoker. John William Littler, was lost in July 1917, whilst serving as a stoker on the destroyer HMS Ettrick, when it was torpedoed by a German submarine 15 miles off Beachy Head. He is commemorated on the Chatham Naval Memorial.(16)
From December 1914 to late February 1915 the battalion were stationed in Blandford, Dorset. In February 1915 Winston Churchill inspected the Royal Naval Division.(17) Later the same month, the officers of the Hood Battalion were informed that the Dardanelles was to be their next destination.(18) On the 25th of February 1915, King George V, accompanied by Winston Churchill, inspected the division, during which he questioned the ratings of the Hood on rifles, marching and digging.(19)
Stoker 1st Class Lewis Walcott served in the Dardanelles (better known as the Gallipoli Campaign), Winston Churchill’s ill-judged attack on Turkey, which lasted from April 1915 until January 1916. Walcott received a bullet wound to the left leg on the 6th of May 1915 (The Hood Battalion fought at the Second Battle of Krithia between the 6th and 8th of May 1915). Despite the wound, he remained in theatre until August 1915.(20)
Returning to Britain, his service as a Stoker 1st Class continued:
HMS Victory IX (the 2nd Reserve Battalion) between August 1915 and January 1916 (the shore station, at Chatham, for the Royal Naval Division); HMS Pembroke II between January and April 1916; HMS Halcyon in April 1916 (a torpedo-gunboat stationed at Yarmouth); HMS Pembroke II between April and May 1916; HMS Prince George between May and September 1916 (a pre-dreadnought battleship in Chatham); HMS Pembroke II between September 1916 and January 1917; HMS Pembroke II between March and April 1917; and HMS Actaeon between April 1917 and March 1919 (a Royal Navy training establishment in Sheerness, Kent).
Whilst serving at HMS Actaeon, Lewis Walcott married Georgina Lawrence, at St Paul’s Church, Newington, London in October 1917 (the church was completely destroyed in the London Blitz during World War Two).(21)
In March 1919 he was demobilised with a financial gratuity. He was 5 feet 5” tall with black hair, brown eyes and described as having a mulatto complexion. This is the only indication in any record that he was “of colour”. He also had a scar on his left cheek.
Postscript.
In October 1919 the colours of the Hood Battalion were laid up in Newcastle Cathedral.
In 1920 Lewis Walcott was awarded the 1914 Star, (also known as “the Mons Star”), the British War Medal 1914-1920 and the Victory Medal.(22)
He briefly returned to service with the Royal Navy as a Stoker 1st Class at HMS Pembroke II between April to June 1921, for which he received a gratuity of £5.
On the 25th of April 1925 – ten years to the day after the Gallipoli landings, where the division suffered so many casualties – the Royal Naval Division war memorial was erected in London. Designed by Sir Edward Lutyens, today, it stands in Horse Guards Parade.
Both ancestry and findmypast provide evidence which indicates that Lewis Walcott settled in London after leaving the Royal Navy:
A Georgina Walcott, died, aged 75 years, in Camberwell, London in 1939.(24)
In 1939 Lewis Walcott, a widower, born in 1876 was residing at 36b Sturgeon Road, Walworth, Southwark, London (the same street on the marriage certificate of 1917 – see reference 21). He was working as a shell-examiner (“artillery” rather than “sea” one suspects), and the word “Admiralty” was written next to his name.(25)
A Lewis Walcott, aged 84 years, died in West Ham in 1960.(26)
References.
1)Royal Navy Registers of Seamen’s Services The National Archives (TNA) ADM 188/1108/102/494. www.ancestry.co.uk and findmypast.co.uk
2)Lewis Walcott, aged twenty and from the parish of Hackney was admitted to Hackney Union Workhouse on Wednesday 21st of November 1900. London, England, Workhouse Admission and Discharge Records, 1764-1930. London Metropolitan Archives (LMA). Reference Number: HABG/208/037. www.ancestry.co.uk
3)1901 England, Wales and Scotland Census RG 13/238/97/16. findmypast.co.uk: St Giles in the Fields and St George Bloomsbury, Lincoln’s Inn, London, Middlesex. Lewis Walcott. Boarder. Single. Male. 21 years. Born 1880. Barbados, West Indies. Numbers 1+3 Newton Street. (A hotel under the management of John F Lambert).
4)Royal Navy Registers of Seamen’s Services TNA ADM 188/1108/102/494. www.ancestry.co.uk and findmypast.co.uk
5)“Stoker” is the colloquial term for Royal Navy marine engineering ratings (enlisted, rather than commissioned, personnel). Ratings “of colour” were invariably limited to racially defined roles.
6)livesofthefirstworldwar.iwm.org.uk
7)Ellis, JD. “The Soldier”: Walter Albert Moore. “The Soldier” – Walter Albert Moore (historycalroots.com) For Lewis Walcott’s service in RN Division see Royal Naval Division service records 1914-1919. TNA ADM 339.
8)www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news-and-latest-activity/news/2016/november/14/161114-somme
9)Sellers, L. “The Hood Battalion: Royal Naval Division: Antwerp, Gallipoli, France 1914-1918”. (Pen and Sword Select. 2015). Kindle edition.
10)Ibid.
11)Ibid.
12)www.hobyanddistricthistory.co.uk/63rd-royal-naval-division/
13)www.militariazone.com/formation-patches-shoulder-patches/hood-ww1-rnd-brass-shoulder-title/itm12839#.YJguxIeSlPY
14)Sellers, L. Op-Cit.
15)Ibid.
16)www.cwgc.org/find-records/find-war-dead/17)Sellers, L. “The Hood Battalion: Royal Naval Division: Antwerp, Gallipoli, France 1914-1918”. (Pen and Sword Select. 2015). Kindle edition.
18) Sellers, L. Op-Cit.
19)Ibid.
20)For service in RN Division see Royal Naval Division service records 1914-1919. TNA ADM 339.
21)Marriage: St Paul’s Church, Lorrimore Square, Newington, London. 16th October 1917. Lewis Aubrey Walcott. 41 years. Bachelor. Stoker in the Royal Navy. Resident 36 Sturgeon Road. Father: Thomas Walcott (deceased) book-binder. Georgina Lawrence. 53 years. Widow. Resident 36 Sturgeon Road. Father: John Parker (deceased) Conductor London and North Western Railway. Both signed the marriage certificate. Witnesses: Edmund Charles Green and Elizabeth Georgina Parker Green. London Church of England Parish Registers; London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), London, England. Reference Number: P92/PAU1/032. www.ancestry.co.uk
22)UK, Naval Medal and Award Rolls, 1793-1972. TNA ADM 171/118. www.ancestry.co.uk
23)Royal Naval Division memorial, Horse Guards Parade, London. By Harry Mitchell. 2015. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Naval_Division_War_Memorial
24)England & Wales Deaths 1837-2007. findmypast.co.uk
25)1939 Register. Reference: RG 101/0521I/002/31. Letter Code: AULJ. findmypast.co.uk
26)England & Wales Deaths 1837-2007. findmypast.co.uk