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I have been engaging my dim intellect on a search for this ship today, 'HMS Invincible.' I was actually not really looking for the ship, I know where she lies, but for information regarding Acting Leading Stoker Henry Samuel Goodchild. The centenary of the beginning of the Great War arrives in August 2014 and I am trawling around for one or two local men named on the war memorial for the museum. Goodchild is one of them, as his parents lived in 72 Manor Street, just around the corner from me.
There is little concerning him online as far as I can see although the Commonwealth War Graves Commission site does tell us his parents address and that he was a native of Gorleston on Sea, up in Norfolk near Great Yarmouth. A quick glance informs me this was a poor little town that survived on fishing in the 19th century as far as I can see, life appears to have been very hard and the inhabitants poor. I presume that this brought them all the way to this area, I suppose at the turn of the century, in search of a better life. Quite what that employment would be I can only guess at. Henry Samuel's employment was as a stoker on his Majesty's Battlecruiser 'HMS Invincible!' This ship was built in 1909 yet by the war she was far from being the most modern amongst the fleet. Newer ships were faster and had updated equipment. However she saw service at the Battle of the Heligoland Bight and a major part in the 'Battle of the Falkland Islands' where, along with the 'Inflexible,' she sank both the 'Scharnhorst' and the 'Gneisenau.' However after playing her part during the 'Battle of Jutland' she herself received a barrage of shells courtesy of the German Navy, from both the 'Lutzow' and the 'Derfflinger.' German gunnery was accurate and several shells from each hit the ship. One pierced the 'Q' Funnel and the resultant explosion made its way to the middle of the ship. 'HMS Invincible' was rent asunder and withing 90 seconds all that remained were the front and rear ends of the ship sticking out of the water. Six men in the Control Top firing the guns, were flung clear and were found clinging to a raft cheering on the other ships in the chase, they were the only survivors.
So this morning I attempted to develop my limited knowledge of both the battle itself and Acting Leading Stoker Goodchild. I found out that he was only 'acting,' and this shows not only that he was capable and trusted by his superiors, but also the cheapskate way the services promote. 'Acting' means you possess the rank but not the salary, and many men, even of quite high rank, find that later the rank may be withdrawn and you revert to a previous position. Not all accept this with good grace! A stoker is usually considered but nothing other than shoveling coal into a boiler, an extremely hard job, however there was skill involved as the coal had oil sprayed onto it to increase the burn rate, and stokers had to attend to the engines as well as the boilers. He may well have had some technical skill therefore. Somehow I must discover when he enlisted, was it before the war? He was 29 when the ship went down so maybe the enthusiasm of 1914 called him to enlist. Gorleston was by the sea and possibly he had always hankered for the sea again, and pride in the Royal Navy was high, far too many men volunteered for the Navy in the end. It is always possible that he had already tried the fishing at Gorleston, maybe that made the family move! So all morning I searched the web, being sidetracked here and there, until I discovered nothing other than it was afternoon and I was getting nowhere. My eyes had begun to shrink into black dots by then and now I find I'm still writing about it now for goodness sake! Enough!
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9 comments:
Is Goodchild a relative?
Funnily enough, I was looking at those gunnery director pods high up on the mast, and musing about the men in them, thinking how often I've seen pictures of buckled masts, directors shut away.
The pods were, because of their high position, not heavily armoured, because too much weight would cause the ship to roll excessively. Nevertheless, Invincible's must have had some armour, as evidenced by the heavy steel tripod structure supporting them.
I thought of the men up here as being unenviably vulnerable, but in this case, they were lucky. Invincible blew apart, when a german shell penetrated the high-explosives magazine, A huge flash was seen by other ships, and it's likely that most of the crew died at that moment.
"At 18:34 another salvo from Derfflinger hit amidships. One shell hit the face of Q turret, penetrated the armor and burst inside, blowing off the turret roof. All of the Marine crew was killed except Bryan Gaston in an enclosed compartment of the rangefinder. Dannreuther in the foretop saw the turret's roof blown over the side. Either the flash from that explosion traveled down the trunk to the magazine or another shell from the same salvo penetrated the amidships magazine, which ran across the width of the ship and fed both P and Q turrets. The entire center part of Invincible was instantly converted into a huge fireball that rose to 400 feet. The entire amidships section of the battlecruiser was destroyed. With the ship blown in two, the separated bow and stern sections each had one end on the shallow seabed with the bow and stern jutting above the surface."
In an earlier engagement, that which sank the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau, the stokers are mentioned " Shells also wrecked the canteen and wardroom. Engine room stokers were quick to seize the opportunity presented by the wrecked canteen. About five minutes later a stoker came down with an armful of fags and tins of pineapple. The stokers were all smoking cigars and yaffling (eating) chocolate, pineapple, etc., looted from the wrecked canteen."
Your stoker Goodchild was probably very proud of the fact that he was a crewmember of one of the navy's elite new ships, one of the men who made its speed legendary.
Of all the possible employments in the navy at that time, the job of the stoker, heavy physical work in a furnace-heated confined space, below the waterline, seems to me the least attractive.
The coal blackened stokers were known as 'trogs', troglodytes, cave-dwellers.
Yet everything that the ship could do stemmed from their efforts.
Mo, Not a relative, I'm doing this for the museum. he is one of a number of men I am researching (doesn't 'researching' sound grand! I mean 'Googling!)
Soub, Yes indeed that's what I found. I forgot about the Trogs bit!
I was going to explain the final moments of the ship, but I see Soubriquet already has. And you.
I think the 100th anniversary of the start of the war is in 1917 though.
Max, I think the Greta War began in 1914. The films made afterwards begin only in 1917 for some reason!
I think if you'll check your history books, only places like Germany and Russia and Austria and France and Greater England and a few even lesser powers were going at it early on. Nothing to film yet.
Max. Typical Yank approach!
When I was a kid, I was given an elderly but fascinating book, I rather imagine its purpose originally was to persuade young boys that their future was at sea. "Britain's Glorious Navy".
Oh my.
Full of fold-out sectional drawings ans photographs of dreadnoughts steaming in line, of volleys, of broadsides, learned the inner workings of warships, I saw the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau defeated by British guns.
I was an expert on the first-world-war era navy by the time I was eleven.
The book remained on my shelves for another few lifetimes, until a friend admired it, and I gave it to him, along with "The Pirate Submarine, by Percy F. Westerman.
Yes I did forget to add the bit about the ship blowing up, which was kind of important. Writing when asleep is not good....
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