Published at 13:05, Tuesday, 27 July 2010

VETERANS plan to give a dead sailor, who they believe may have been Britain’s first submarine service fatality, a more dignified resting place in Barrow.

John Henry Curtis drowned in Barrow docks while walking the gangplank between the dockside and Britain’s first ever submarine support ship, HMS Hazard moored in the Devonshire Dock in May 1902.

The unlucky submariner was returning from a night of drinking ashore when he toppled in.

The Royal Navy’s first submarines, the five tiny Holland-class boats, were being built and commissioned in Barrow from 1901 and were known as torpedo boats.

Members of the Barrow branch of the Submariners Association and the Submarine Heritage Centre project believed Mr Curtis, who was aged 33 when he died, was likely to have been one of the crew members for the Holland boats but their research had not yet been able to prove it.

The Evening Mail went to work and found just the evidence they were looking for in contemporary reports of the tragedy. Cuttings from the North-Western Daily Mail showed that Leading Stoker, Mr Curtis had been temporarily assigned to Torpedo Boat No2.

He is buried in a plot in Thorncliffe Cemetery but his resting place has no headstone. Now the veterans plan to commission one.

Terry Spurling, from the association, said: “We know quite a bit about this man, including the fact that he was serving, when he died, on board HMS Hazard.

“This vessel was commissioned in August 1901 for Special Service as a support ship for the new Submarine Service – ie the Holland vessels.

“We therefore asked ourselves the question, was this sailor in the unmarked grave a submariner? If he was then he could be the very first submarine casualty whilst in the service.”

Mr Spurling said: “Thanks to the archives at the Evening Mail we now know without any doubt that he was a submariner and that he must have been the very first submarine fatality.”

“Both the Submarine Heritage Centre and the Submariners Association intend to provide a headstone for the grave defining his name, etc and saying he was a submariner.”

Mr Curtis was from Cornwall but had lived in Barrow for a time before he died.

The veterans are trying to trace any relatives in the West Country who would be invited to a service of dedication for the headstone.

Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk