Edwin Ernest Rumsey: Merchant Navy Quartermaster Lost in the North Atlantic

Early Life and Family

Edwin Ernest Rumsey was born on 20 December 1914 at Chilham, Kent, the son of Stanley Frederick Rumsey and Mary Ann Hogben. His birth was registered in the East Ashford district in the first quarter of 1915, a reminder that civil registration dates may differ slightly from the family’s recorded date of birth. [1]

By the census of 19 June 1921, Edwin was six years old and living at 29 Somerset Road, Cheriton, near Folkestone, where he was recorded as a grandson. The surviving evidence places his formative years in Kent, although later wartime records associated him with Canterbury, Tunbridge and, in one United States manifest, Chatham. [1]

He was unmarried and had no children. His death at the age of twenty-seven therefore represented the loss of a young merchant seaman whose adult life and working identity were bound closely to Britain’s wartime maritime service. [2][1]

Edwin Rumsey survived one Atlantic torpedoing in June 1942, only to be lost four months later when the Southern Empress was sunk in Convoy SC-104.

Merchant Navy Service

Edwin Rumsey served in the Merchant Navy as a quartermaster. In merchant service, a quartermaster was a deck officer’s assistant with responsibilities connected to steering, lookout duties, signalling and the routine operation of the ship. His wartime medals were the 1939–45 Star and the War Medal 1939–45. [2][1]

On 16 June 1942 Rumsey arrived at Boston, Massachusetts, as one of a group described as distressed seamen from the SS Port Nicholson. The American passenger manifest recorded him as a twenty-seven-year-old, single British seaman, with Tunbridge listed as his last permanent residence. [1]

The presence of Rumsey among these men followed the loss of the Port Nicholson, a British refrigerated cargo ship torpedoed by the German submarine U-87 about 100 miles off Portland, Maine, in the early hours of 16 June 1942. Survivors were landed at Boston, meaning that Rumsey had already experienced the destruction of a merchant ship before joining the vessel on which he would lose his life. [3][1]

The Southern Empress

At the time of his death, Rumsey was serving in the SS Southern Empress of Leith. The ship had begun life as the steam tanker San Jeronimo, built in Sunderland in 1914 by William Doxford & Sons. In 1928 she was acquired by the Southern Whaling and Sealing Company, converted to a whale factory ship and renamed Southern Empress. [2][1]

During the Second World War the vessel was employed on strategically important Atlantic supply work. In October 1942 she sailed from New Orleans for Glasgow, calling at New York on 3 October, carrying 11,700 tons of fuel oil and a deck cargo of twenty-one landing craft. Her cargo therefore combined essential fuel for the Allied war effort with specialist vessels intended for future amphibious operations. [4][1]

Among the landing craft lost with the vessel were HM LCM-508, LCM-509, LCM-519, LCM-522, LCM-523, LCM-532, LCM-537, LCM-547 and LCM-620, as well as HM LCT-2006. Their loss was significant not merely in material terms: landing craft were vital to the movement of troops, vehicles and supplies in amphibious warfare. [5][6][1]

Convoy SC-104

The Southern Empress joined Convoy SC-104, one of the slow eastbound Atlantic convoys travelling from Sydney, Cape Breton Island, towards Liverpool. The convoy crossed the North Atlantic during a particularly dangerous period of the U-boat campaign, when the German wolf pack Wotan concentrated against it from 12 to 16 October 1942. [7][8]

By the evening of 12 October, German submarines including U-221, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Hans-Hartwig Trojer, had joined the attack. During the night of 13–14 October, U-221 penetrated the convoy’s diminished escort screen and sank both the American freighter Susana and the British Southern Empress. [8][7]

The attack demonstrated the sustained threat faced by merchant seamen. Convoy organisation reduced vulnerability but could not eliminate it: ships moved slowly, visibility and weather were unpredictable, and a successful U-boat penetration could endanger heavily laden merchant vessels and all those aboard them. Eight ships were sunk from SC-104 during the October battle. [7][8]

The Southern Empress carried fuel and landing craft across the Atlantic; her destruction was both a human tragedy and a wartime logistical loss.

Loss of the Ship

On the night of 13–14 October 1942, north-east of St John’s, Newfoundland, Southern Empress was attacked by U-221. At 00.32 hours on 14 October she was hit by a torpedo; a further torpedo, described as a coup de grâce, sank her at 03.21 hours. The wreck lies at the recorded position of 53° 40′ north, 40° 40′ west. [4][1][2]

Rumsey’s official commemoration date is 13 October 1942, reflecting the date on which the fatal action began, although the vessel went down in the early hours of 14 October. He was among those presumed drowned. This difference in dates is common in overnight maritime losses and should not be treated as a contradiction in the record. [1][2]

The sinking killed the master, twenty-three crew members, twenty distressed British seamen and four gunners. Forty-four crew members, thirty-one distressed British seamen and two gunners survived; they were rescued by the corvette HMS Potentilla, transferred to the Norwegian whale factory ship MV Suderøy, and eventually landed at Liverpool. [1]

Rumsey was recorded as a quartermaster aboard the Southern Empress, rather than simply as a passenger, although the individual report also notes that he had travelled as a distressed seaman after the loss of the Port Nicholson. Taken together, the records show a professional seaman displaced by an earlier sinking who continued in wartime service and was subsequently lost in a second North Atlantic disaster. [2][1]

Commemoration

Edwin Ernest Rumsey has no known grave because he was lost at sea. He is commemorated on the Tower Hill Memorial in London, Part XIII, on Panel 100. The memorial commemorates Merchant Navy and fishing-fleet personnel who died during the Second World War and have no known grave. [2][1]

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission records him as Quartermaster Edwin Ernest Rumsey of the Merchant Navy, serving in Southern Empress (Leith), aged twenty-seven. It names his parents as Frederick Stanley Rumsey and Mary Ann Rumsey; the variation in his father’s name from the family report’s “Stanley Frederick” is best understood as a record discrepancy rather than evidence of a different family. [9][1][2]

His commemoration at Tower Hill gives a permanent focus for remembrance despite the absence of a grave. It places his name among thousands of merchant mariners whose wartime service sustained Britain’s lifeline across the seas and whose deaths occurred far from home. [10][1]

Legacy

Edwin Rumsey’s story links Kent—Chilham, Cheriton, Canterbury, Chatham and Tunbridge—with the North Atlantic battle. He was one of the civilian merchant seamen whose essential work exposed them to the same lethal naval war that confronted naval personnel, while often offering little protection from attack once a ship had been hit. [7][1]

His experience was exceptional in one poignant respect: he survived the loss of the Port Nicholson in June 1942, reached Boston with other distressed seamen, and then returned to sea. Within four months he was again aboard a torpedoed vessel, this time with no rescue. [3][1]

Remembering Rumsey restores an individual identity to the figures recorded in convoy loss statistics. His name on the Tower Hill Memorial represents a Kent-born merchant quartermaster, a son and grandson, and a young man whose life was ended in the Atlantic while carrying out work essential to Britain’s war effort. [1][2]

Sources and Further Reading

• Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Quartermaster Edwin Ernest Rumsey.
• Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Tower Hill Memorial.
• uboat.net: Convoy SC-104.
• Wrecksite: Southern Empress, formerly San Jeronimo.
• The Merchant Navy Memorial: Southern Empress casualties.
• NavSource: HM LCT-2006 and the loss of Southern Empress.
• The Mariners’ Museum and Park: SS Port Nicholson.
• Find a Grave: Quartermaster Edwin Rumsey.
• Ancestry: census, Merchant Navy, passenger-manifest and family-history sources cited in the individual report.

Sources
[1] Individual-Report-for-Edwin-Ernest-Rumsey.pdf https://ppl-ai-file-upload.s3.amazonaws.com/web/direct-files/attachments/141549598/a7a3091a-5d10-4f80-ba89-b55385382a59/Individual-Report-for-Edwin-Ernest-Rumsey.pdf?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Checksum-Mode=ENABLED&X-Amz-Credential=ASIA2F3EMEYE3BXQZDPD%2F20261013%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20261013T120324Z&X-Amz-Expires=1074&X-Amz-Security-Token=IQoJb3JpZ2luX2VjENT%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2FwEaCXVzLWVhc3QtMSJIMEYCIQCiUnu8%2BtAoCto7jExAQyIXCblw1dHS1phdSHx1xV%2FYuwIhALVVxpO4MqRxp8JFMq8LgKO9Zap6XZIQjEUghOOnDJ%2FvKokFCJz%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2FwEQARoMNjk5NzUzMzA5NzA1IgxHw3mjRGkt1gs9fKgq3QT58BSxiAHtQRU2bD2gNE9pZpAd9OnJH7iieWuerZy2kYrlEP7nMi3UaA2qM2LWnvgTie8hjRTH59fZ2ogK8WG3tWXjeOfF1YIYF4cL%2BLYCr4u3siUdp0pBiZZB6ChunGDWdK5ateXgbjDB%2Fsm%2Fn%2BJ2QqVxMgNSkTLiiOs%2Bdny6va2%2FGRHO2nLQ2uF2i3TxcEnR5d7FXeKySbO4EbgyfY2zTXOsh%2BpYC9Cz4Oh1%2BFg6qtjYT5gwVYH5Ucs2GbDGCJBa3Ud19uZxuRmHOp4B7sFdKF43YWFOLnYICi8KTer%2BO5drHRDn33fjX1qki6K6qMKEF92du1fVS3oCIgemkG7FYbLYgIm1dHwWTaqXxCCpjcKdE4C63x3mPZjul%2FjQUphwnTAC4VuSxPOGFAhubV1KznEyscDMbG8azrKHd24%2BQEZ2KKccSnEn35tQS2iKx0%2BEWxSyjPtGmopV2WxFrtATJpJnN1RQq6b987wHnD4Zgqyb7v83kdRHvWChvPqZuh3oJzfmZKHMWbyaP1oYzpL1yAIBNwB0O94eD5O5V1DOQ4EL647hzw4zYjq7aJ0Aakwl0WWEYDyoGJG8jXrM0FghcFozAFhQDFRYD4aU6y3BNVTK1lOWgT6Nco0nzcG79Cmw3hQZjYz455MR7zXt43yA4AFbe%2ByRsSoxQ86sN9AjZoWGhVKRnYfLOdiL%2BEieR2o3%2FdMirFH3COLZmcsp1yryIt%2BeXm6dckVU75VxGzd9kuam%2FgqH9B24%2Ffi8QokSmu0%2F%2FNACG7I2uF5rA0OFG%2Btn0tYNS0Xp1UG1jUhenzDrqLjWBjqXAU8lRcAn%2FuwhXIfJPmxaJyKO0ooOGyXScuxNeV0EpSfziQPgLuQj88J73x8RijAi2U7HCu6OLXZL9TXe8UTNdqZlGaVZZyogVhNt98veu%2FO4aamfVCYz8bQ28n14INd9V7IEgOuesSpUtITPqdZICArAF5WL0L7wt7LJPd7K2YbLNrr6nsMArh0rrDOFBRzDO3UNCiTKi1M%3D&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&x-id=GetObject&X-Amz-Signature=7c76ae97b12c3c04c8967cb082b3bc37c0028ed1faca4604be3e8beff973bc70
[2] Losses in WW2 – The Merchant Navy Memorial https://www.benjidog.co.uk/Tower%20Hill/Sneaton%20to%20Southern%20Princess.php
[3] SS Port Nicholson (1918) – Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Port_Nicholson_(1918)
[4] WRECKSITE – SOUTHERN EMPRESS WHALE FACTORY (EX-TANKER) 1914-1942 https://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?31068
[5] Landing Craft Tank Photo Index https://www.navsource.net/archives/10/18/180006.htm
[6] 14 October 1942 – etherit.co.uk http://www.etherit.co.uk/1942/10/14.htm
[7] Convoy SC 104 – Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convoy_SC_104
[8] Convoy SC-104 – Convoy Battles – German U-boat Operations … https://uboat.net/ops/convoys/convoys.php?convoy=SC-104
[9] Monument: Mercantile Marine Memorial – WW2 – London Remembers https://www.londonremembers.com/memorials/mercantile-marine-memorial-ww2/inscriptions/32026
[10] MaritimeQuest – Daily Event for October 14, 2007 https://www.maritimequest.com/daily_event_archive/2007/pages/oct/14_engine_failure.htm
[11] Search Results :: Lloyd’s List https://www.lloydslist.com/search
[12] In Honor of the Port Nicholson | Shiprex https://shiprex.net/2012/11/05/in-honor-of-the-port-nicholson/
[13] The S.S. Port Nicholson – The Mariners’ Museum and Park https://www.marinersmuseum.org/2012/02/the-s-s-port-nicholson/
[14] Tower Hill Memorial, London, England – Surnames Ma – Interment.net https://www.interment.net/data/eng/greater-london/tower-hill-memorial-records-ma.htm
[15] SSR Continues Work On The Port Nicholson https://www.marinetechnologynews.com/blogs/ssr-continues-work-on-the-port-nicholson-700014