Herbert Edwin Woodland: A Boy Sailor Lost with HMS Hawke

Early Life and Family

Herbert Edwin Woodland was born on 21 April 1898 at Blean, near Canterbury in Kent, the son of Thomas Woodland and Ada Laura Smith. His birth was registered in the Blean district during the second quarter of 1898, and he was baptised at St Stephen’s Church, Hackington, on 12 June that year. [1]

In 1901 Herbert lived with his family at the Black Boarded Cottages, 1 Giles Lane, in St Dunstan Without, Blean. By 1911 he was a twelve-year-old scholar living at Margate Hill Cottages, Acol, near Birchington in Thanet. These addresses trace the family’s movement within north-east Kent, from the Canterbury district towards the rural communities of the Isle of Thanet. [1]

Herbert’s naval record gives his birthplace as Canterbury and identifies him as a market gardener before he entered the Royal Navy. He was described as five feet one and three-quarter inches tall, with fair hair, blue eyes and a fair complexion. The slight discrepancy between Blean and Canterbury is not unusual in service records: Blean lay immediately north-west of Canterbury and could readily be described by the larger nearby town. [1]

Herbert Woodland was only sixteen when he was lost in the North Sea, one of more than five hundred men who did not return from HMS Hawke.

Joining the Royal Navy

Woodland entered Royal Navy training on 14 August 1913, aged fifteen, and was assigned service number J/26779 in the Chatham Port Division. He began as a Boy 2nd Class aboard HMS Ganges, the Royal Navy’s principal boys’ training establishment at Shotley in Suffolk, before being advanced to Boy 1st Class. [1]

The formal terms of his service were to begin on his eighteenth birthday in 1916, when he was expected to undertake a twelve-year engagement. Like other boy sailors, however, he entered the naval system before reaching adult age and could be drafted to a sea-going ship once training and wartime need permitted. [1]

On 15 April 1914 he joined HMS Hawke. The First World War began less than four months later, and the adolescent sailor was therefore caught almost immediately in the expansion of Britain’s wartime naval commitments. [1]

HMS Hawke

HMS Hawke was an elderly Edgar-class protected cruiser, launched in 1891. Though no longer a front-line ship by 1914, she was still capable of useful service in the North Sea and was assigned to the 10th Cruiser Squadron, a formation employed on the Northern Patrol. [2][3]

The squadron’s principal role was to help enforce Britain’s naval blockade of Germany. Its cruisers patrolled the sea routes between Scotland, Shetland and Norway, seeking to prevent ships and supplies from reaching German North Sea ports and thereby applying economic pressure upon the German war effort. [4][2]

In October 1914, the 10th Cruiser Squadron was deployed farther south in the North Sea, partly to guard against a possible German attack on a troop convoy travelling from Canada. The work was hazardous: ageing cruisers had limited protection against submarines, and effective anti-submarine methods were still in their infancy. [3][5][6]

The Threat from U-9

The German submarine which found HMS Hawke was U-9, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Otto Weddigen. It was already notorious in Britain for sinking the British cruisers Aboukir, Hogue and Cressy in a single action on 22 September 1914, with the loss of more than 1,450 sailors and Royal Marines. [2]

The sinkings revealed that submarines could threaten surface warships far more effectively than many naval planners had expected. Less than a month later, U-9 again demonstrated that danger when it entered the patrol area of the 10th Cruiser Squadron off the Scottish east coast. [3][2]

For the young men in the ship’s company, including Boy 1st Class Woodland, the strategic purpose of the patrol was inseparable from the personal danger. The blockade was a vital element of British war policy, but it demanded that ships remain at sea in waters where submarines could strike with little warning. [4][2]

Loss of HMS Hawke

On the morning of 15 October 1914, HMS Hawke was patrolling off Aberdeen with the 10th Cruiser Squadron. The squadron’s ships operated in line abreast, roughly ten miles apart. At about 9.30am, Hawke stopped to receive mail from her sister ship HMS Endymion. [5][3][4]

After recovering her boat, Hawke made 13 knots to regain her station. She was not zig-zagging and had fallen out of sight of the other cruisers when, at about 10.30am, U-9 fired a single torpedo that struck the ship. The impact caused a devastating internal explosion, and the cruiser capsized and sank within minutes. [2][3][4]

Herbert Edwin Woodland was among those lost. He died aged sixteen, still a Boy 1st Class, with no known individual grave. The official casualty list identifies him as “WOODLAND, Herbert E, Boy 1c, J 26779 (Ch)”, while the Royal Navy record confirms that he was lost with HMS Hawke in the North Sea. [7][1]

A single torpedo sank HMS Hawke in minutes; the ship’s loss exposed the vulnerability of Britain’s older cruisers to submarine attack.

Casualties and Rescue

The loss was catastrophic. Contemporary and later accounts give the number of dead as approximately 524 officers and men, while only about seventy-four survived. The difference between published figures reflects men who were initially rescued but later died from their injuries, but all accounts agree that most of the ship’s company was lost. [3][4]

A raft carrying one officer and twenty-one ratings was located by HMS Swift, sent from Scapa Flow to search for the missing cruiser. A further forty-nine survivors in a boat were picked up by the Norwegian steamer Indesta. No such rescue was available to Woodland. [4][3]

The individual report records that 526 men went down with the cruiser, of whom 450 belonged to Chatham Port. Whatever the precise total adopted, the scale of loss was especially grave for the Chatham Division, to which Woodland belonged, and for the families in Kent who awaited news of their sons. [1]

Commemoration

Because his body was not recovered, Herbert Woodland is commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial. The memorial records the names of Royal Navy personnel who died in the First World War and have no known grave other than the sea. [8][1]

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission records him as Boy 1st Class Herbert Edwin Woodland, Royal Navy, HMS Hawke, and names his parents as Thomas and Ada Laurel Woodland of Margate Hill, Acol, Birchington, Thanet. The middle name appears as Laura in the family report’s parentage section and Laurel in the casualty entry; such spelling variations are common in contemporary records. [1]

His awards were the 1914 Star, British War Medal and Victory Medal. Together they mark a short naval career that began with training at HMS Ganges, passed through only six months of sea-going service in HMS Hawke, and ended during the first autumn of the war. [1]

Legacy

Herbert Woodland’s story is that of a boy from rural Kent whose life narrowed rapidly from school and market-garden work to naval training and wartime loss. He had no spouse or children, but his death was a profound bereavement for his parents and family at Acol. [1]

The destruction of HMS Hawke also forms part of the wider early naval war. It reinforced the lesson delivered by U-9 in September 1914: submarines had become a serious threat to surface warships, particularly older vessels conducting predictable patrols without anti-submarine escort or evasive manoeuvres. [2][3]

In 2024 the wreck of HMS Hawke, approximately 80 miles east of Fraserburgh, was formally identified after an expedition documented the site. It remains a protected war grave, a lasting underwater memorial to Woodland and the hundreds of shipmates lost with him on 15 October 1914. [2]

Sources and Further Reading

Sources
[1] Individual-Report-for-Herbert-Edwin-Woodland.pdf https://ppl-ai-file-upload.s3.amazonaws.com/web/direct-files/attachments/141549598/30402f65-a26e-4500-8227-e1646e0bc049/Individual-Report-for-Herbert-Edwin-Woodland.pdf?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Checksum-Mode=ENABLED&X-Amz-Credential=ASIA2F3EMEYEXPKYEY47%2F20261015%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20261015T192501Z&X-Amz-Expires=3496&X-Amz-Security-Token=IQoJb3JpZ2luX2VjEAwaCXVzLWVhc3QtMSJIMEYCIQCJu0TBjgPDOGv6Yu4dzXhSZdadKXYs3m9awiShSUGrCAIhAMNDPkvJ115nljtG2k9mPc3yLZwK%2FIFDMqQSavlqz5YJKokFCNT%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2FwEQARoMNjk5NzUzMzA5NzA1Igya0ah3fSaluzwmF14q3QTEcG2kEywYAyW1I%2BzJM%2F%2F3%2Bok8cAIxkwLunQrODqoZZ8YMXbWWH2jCRLMlM7vhHAzGUZa83brTPAoS52TmDWcYHvTAw1DpKYz5%2F3gnA6fSD%2F7K4cp1gZTJKSEus0XY2J3%2Bm9UY45NupqZ9VkvYNgHQmA9fVc%2BgyQPa%2F%2F%2FKB1cLvak252jcT7KsD%2FTobtpiOlub1pJR2DJ%2FQb2kZ7eq2tfIYm9jL9o7qBU55cMFY%2FTiB%2FN9wSsQGJotyd150AfzbT2yefMCtIPiML1SWsv3UDtr2oNn%2Fd7MAIHGi0sFA8kZGPhDjOa4Q%2FBGBuWSNeJeRC9lBPjIE8e4z5LYQakC8pbq7Q1lpUzGQSQ0xV6oulrZba5mH2Pd1ZtwFA90T1on9fJPU7LKaCDCTZyLFZ2PkWb3I1o04xA9B3bICkt5uMmuMPWYMV5aYLW3o11cEgTlY02VKFvsr%2BnBYBUzF%2F90bdDnNu9QtrTRa6NL52LHqnSHdSg1ucRgzc6qt9xbsX0L8MdA%2F0mILcULpfd0zhj2WbWjQ6RLcPZX3QwvBiiW5JeSZs6qdUS20a%2Fnl9HDm04%2Bk%2Fj1ZYhEZV86UiaraaC%2FEojuxE6BUHNh6WX6%2FGHpoZnLbCIMAnl8mFTmcZP1VREcevTobmyQBVV8LXH9sVf%2Bnrc9qD6r9coRRXYaPJmaoS3no1KG6qnmq6PtZ3OfKLgFuXV%2FHOhfnNxmxFVthlDg8X9kG%2FeLhMb3j2ppviCt4kf8lsW8Jk6J8MMSSRzb1%2BhngHzxkm1Va40LIMc8WywBAwDd693XBWsAfR32kgW1BTDi0MTWBjqXASq9EoyOyPlwGpPYggPOkNV1FvdFyHM9eBMm4qYj55nycQOPErAW9jQDdcgvD7j61dynn7fdshNzaUUKm8%2Bj1j3tZkNrC6DVfiYZsSvOduOwLRf3bL5vHz79F4mxJeZBepl4xprhNrIFYF3a4OyopjReI5%2BG8i9VNvV2a34jWIPaeK9viddwkEP4Bl0wR1bAKDJPMmpRA3I%3D&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&x-id=GetObject&X-Amz-Signature=df4bb3bf792009419aab1b77699b63926b75de960b735e6e83ab27069035569f
[2] Identity of WW1 North Sea wreck confirmed as Royal Navy cruiser https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news/2024/november/08/20241108-identity-of-ww1-north-sea-wreck-confirmed-as-royal-navy-cruiser
[3] The Sinking of HMS Hawke | The Western Front Association https://www.westernfrontassociation.com/world-war-i-articles/2020/october/the-sinking-of-hms-hawke/
[4] Story: Loss of HMS Hawke – 15 October 1914 https://livesofthefirstworldwar.iwm.org.uk/story/71780
[5] HMS Hawke (1891) – Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Hawke_(1891)
[6] H.M.S. Hawke sunk by German Torpedo 4 Stockton men killed. https://heritage.stockton.gov.uk/media/1072/1914_october.pdf
[7] HMS Hawke, killed and died, casualty lists, October 1914 https://www.naval-history.net/xDKCas1914-10Oct.htm
[8] Boy 1st Class Herbert Edwin Woodland – A Street Near You https://astreetnearyou.org/person/2872394/Boy-1st-Class-Herbert-Edwin-Woodland
[9] HMS HAWKE – Lost in Waters Deep https://lostinwatersdeep.co.uk/hms-hawke.html
[10] Story: Loss of HMS Hawke – 15 October 1914 | Lives of the … https://livesofthefirstworldwar.iwm.org.uk/story/59641
[11] Wreck of HMS Hawke Found | Encyclopedia Titanica Message Board https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/community/threads/wreck-of-hms-hawke-found.59787/
[12] Volunteer Divers Find Wreck of WWI Cruiser HMS Hawke https://doughboy.org/volunteer-divers-find-wreck-of-wwi-cruiser-hms-hawke/
[13] Alfred Maddison & The Fleet Review – Haggbridge.com https://haggbridge.com/2023/07/alfred-maddison-hms-hawke/
[14] Wreck of HMS Hawke discovered off Aberdeenshire coast https://www.scottishhistory.org/blog/wreck-hms-hawke-discovered-aberdeenshire-coast/
[15] H.M.S Hawke is sunk – 15th October 1914 | Mitcham War Memorial https://mitchamwarmemorial.wordpress.com/2014/10/15/h-m-s-hawke-is-sunk-15th-october-1914/
[16] Loss of HMS Hawke and 78 Royal Marines Light Infantry https://www.royalmarineshistory.com/post/loss-of-hms-hawke-and-78-royal-marines-light-infantry

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