Great War Memorial Plaque awarded to Stoker 1st Class William Robert Baldock, Royal Navy who was killed in action on 5th September 1914 when H.M.S. Pathfinder was sunk by the German submarine U-21, having no known grave he is remembered on the Chatham Naval Memorial.
Great War Memorial Plaque; (WILLIAM ROBERT BALDOCK)
Condition: Nearly Extremely Fine
William Robert Baldock saw service as a Stoker 1st Class (No. K/14609) with the Royal Navy during the Great War and was killed in action on 5th September 1914 when H.M.S. Pathfinder was sunk by the German submarine U-21. Having no known grave he is remembered on the Chatham Naval Memorial, he is noted as the son of Robert and Ellen Baldock of 76 Lannoy Road, New Eltham, London.
On the morning of 5 September, the German submarine U-21 observed HMS Pathfinder on a south-southeast course, followed by elements of the 8th Destroyer Flotilla. At midday, the destroyers altered course back towards the Isle of May while Pathfinder continued her patrol. Shortly thereafter, Hersing spotted Pathfinder on her return journey through his periscope and resolved to make an attack.
At 1543 U-21 fired a single 50 cm (20 in) Type G/6 torpedo at a range of 2,000 yards. At 1545 lookouts spotted a torpedo wake heading towards the starboard bow and the officer of the watch, Lieutenant-Commander Favell, attempted to take evasive action by ordering the starboard engine be put astern and the port engine at full ahead while the wheel was turned hard a port, the manoeuvre was not in time and the torpedo struck the ship beneath the bridge. The detonation apparently set off cordite bags in the forward magazine which caused a second, more massive explosion within the fore section of the ship, essentially destroying everything forward of the bridge. Broken in two, the Pathfinder instantly began sinking, dragging most of her crew down with her and leaving a massive pall of smoke to mark her grave. The vessel sank so quickly, in fact, that there was insufficient time to launch lifeboats. (Indeed, the remains of a lifeboat davit and rope can still be seen on the wreck, demonstrating the speed with which the vessel sank.)
One survivor of the sinking, Acting Sub-Lieutenant Edward Oliver Sonnenschein, described the sinking as such:
The ship gave a heavy lurch forward and took an angle of about forty degrees down by the bow. Water came swirling up to the searchlight platform. The Captain said, 'jump you devils jump !'. The Captain and his secretary remained with the ship until the very end but somehow both survived"
Also among the survivors was staff surgeon Thomas Aubrey Smyth, who lived at Bedeque House in Dromore, Co Down.
Recounting the experience in a letter to his mother, he said the explosion had blown a "great hole in the side of the ship".
"I was at the time in the wardroom, but ran up on deck immediately, and it was then evident by the way the bow was down in the water that she would sink rapidly," he said.
"I was then thrown forward by the slope of the deck and got jammed beneath a gun (which I expect is the cause of my bruising) and while in this position was carried down some way by the sinking ship, but fortunately after a time I became released and after what seemed like interminable ages I came to the surface, and after swimming a short time I was able to get an oar and some other floating material with the help of which I was just able to keep on the surface."
Fishing boats from the nearby fishing port of Eyemouth were the first on the scene and encountered a field of debris, fuel oil, clothing and body parts. Additionally, the British destroyers HMS Stag and Express had spotted the smoke and headed for the pall of smoke, only to find that what few survivors there were had already been rescued. (There was an anecdotal story that one of the destroyers had an engine problem when a water inlet was blocked by a leg in a seaboot.)
There is significant confusion regarding the numbers of survivors. On 6 September The Times declared that 58 men had been rescued but that four had died of injuries. The fact that it is impossible to determine how many were on board that day adds to the problem, but modern research indicates that in all probability, there were 268 personnel on board plus two civilian canteen assistants. There were just twenty known survivors.
Four more men died of injuries or exposure and are buried at Dalmeny in Fife and Warriston near Edinburgh. One unknown Pathfinder sailor is buried at Dunbar overlooking the scene of the sinking.
The explosion was seen by British writer Aldous Huxley (while staying at Northfield House, St. Abbs) who recorded the following in a letter to his father sent on 14 September 1914:
I dare say Julian told you that we actually saw the Pathfinder explosion – a great white cloud with its foot in sea.
The St. Abbs' lifeboat came in with the most appalling accounts of the scene. There was not a piece of wood, they said, big enough to float a man—and over acres the sea was covered with fragments—human and otherwise. They brought back a sailor's cap with half a man's head inside it. The explosion must have been frightful. It is thought to be a German submarine that did it, or, possibly, a torpedo fired from one of the refitted German trawlers, which cruise all round painted with British port letters and flying the British flag.
Despite the events of 5 September having been easily visible from shore, the authorities attempted to cover up the fact that Pathfinder had been sunk by a torpedo, insisting instead that it had struck a mine. The reason for this is unclear, but probably has to do with the Admiralty's position that submarines — a still new and largely untested weapons platform — lacked the capacity to sink a surface warship with a torpedo. A local paper, however, The Scotsman, published an eye-witness account by an Eyemouth fisherman, who had assisted in the rescue, that confirmed rumors that a submarine had been responsible. (However The Scotsman also reported that Pathfinder had been attacked by two U-boats and had accounted for the second one in her death throes. Admiralty intelligence later claimed that cruisers had cornered the U-boat responsible and shelled it to oblivion.) The sinking of Pathfinder by a submarine made both sides aware of the potential vulnerability of large ships to attack by submarines.
