William George Playford was born on 30 March 1894 at Bilsington, Kent, the son of Javan Playford and Martha Jane Godden. He was baptised at Ss Peter & Paul, Bilsington, on 20 May 1894 and spent his childhood in east Kent before moving into service work as a young man. By 1901 he was living in Aldington with his family, and by 1911 he was in Mersham, recorded on Kingsford Street as a single servant and market gardener’s assistant. [1]
Playford’s early life was rooted in the Kent countryside, where agricultural labour and local service were common first occupations for young men. He had no spouse or children, so the surviving story is carried through his parents, his naval service, and the memorials that preserve his name. His military medals were the Victory Medal, British War Medal, and Memorial Death Plaque, the standard recognition for a serviceman lost without a known grave. [1]
He was a Kent farm worker who became a stoker in the Royal Navy and was lost at sea with his submarine.
Early Life and Family
Playford came from a family established in east Kent, with his father Javan Playford and mother Martha Jane Godden named in the family record. The move between Bilsington, Aldington, and Mersham suggests a family that remained within the local rural economy rather than drifting far from home. In 1911 his occupation as a servant and market gardener’s assistant shows him still at the start of adult working life, on the cusp of the wider disruption brought by war. [1]
The picture that emerges is of a young man shaped by the land and by practical labour. That background may have prepared him physically for the demanding environment of naval engineering work, especially below decks in the confined heat and noise of a submarine’s machinery spaces. The family home remained the emotional centre of his life, even after enlistment took him into the Royal Navy. [1]
Military Service
William George Playford enlisted in the Royal Navy on 13 October 1913 and became Stoker 1st Class, serving in the engine room artificers’ branch. His service numbers K/21054 and later K/21854 identify him within the naval system, and his role would have been to keep machinery running, tend boilers and engines, and maintain the submarine’s power plant under difficult conditions. Submarine stokers were essential crewmen: the boat could not move, dive, or surface safely without them. [1]
Playford served in HM Submarine C34, a C-class submarine built for coastal patrol and reconnaissance work. C-class submarines were not large boats; they displaced about 290 tons surfaced and 320 tons submerged, were about 142 feet long, and carried a small crew of roughly sixteen men. Armed with a single 18-inch torpedo tube and just two torpedoes, they were modest in size but important in Britain’s early submarine warfare system. [1]
Unit Context at Time of Death
By mid-1917, C-class submarines like C34 were being used chiefly for patrols and reconnaissance in the North Sea and around the northern approaches to Britain. Their task was to guard key waters, watch for enemy movement, and counter German U-boats threatening Royal Navy and merchant shipping. Although small and comparatively slow, they were part of the Royal Navy’s layered response to the U-boat campaign that was strangling British trade and testing the Navy’s anti-submarine defences. [2][3][1]
C34’s patrol area off the Shetland Islands was strategically important because it lay near the routes used by both Allied shipping and German submarines moving into the Atlantic and the northern seas. In this setting, British submarines were sent out to deter, observe, and engage the enemy where possible, despite the risks of operating on the surface and the limited defensive capability of early boats. Playford’s submarine was therefore part of a dangerous and relatively new form of warfare in which the hunter could quickly become the hunted. [3][1]
C34 was a small patrol submarine, but it served in one of the most dangerous maritime environments of the war.
Circumstances of Death
William George Playford died on 21 July 1917 off Fair Isle, Orkney, when HMS C34 was lost after being torpedoed by the German submarine UC-22. Later accounts indicate that the submarine had sailed from Scapa Flow on 16 July for an anti-submarine patrol between Orkney and Shetland and was struck the following day while on the surface. The attack was swift and catastrophic, leaving C34 sunk almost at once and taking most of her crew with her. [4][3][1]
The family record notes that Playford’s body was not recovered for burial. Although one survivor was later found from the boat, the loss was still one of the grim and sudden submarine tragedies of the First World War. The official date of death recorded by the Admiralty and CWGC is 21 July 1917, reflecting the point at which the vessel was declared overdue and lost. [3][4][1]
Burial and Commemoration
Playford has no known grave and is commemorated on the Chatham Naval Memorial in Kent. This memorial bears the names of Royal Navy personnel lost at sea with no known resting place, and it is an appropriate memorial for a submariner whose body was never recovered. His name is preserved there alongside those of thousands of other naval casualties from the First World War. [5][1]
For his family in Kent, commemoration would have come through the memorial plaque, medals, and the official notice of his loss rather than through a grave to visit. The CWGC record, together with later submarine remembrance sources, ensures that the story of C34 and her crew remains accessible today. In that sense, Chatham Naval Memorial acts as both a local and national place of remembrance for Playford and the men who died with him. [4][5][1]
Legacy
William George Playford’s life illustrates the way in which ordinary rural boys from Kent entered the machinery of industrial war at sea. He began as a market gardener’s assistant and ended as a stoker in a submarine that served in the dark waters off northern Scotland. His death reminds us that the war at sea was fought not only by battleships and cruisers, but by small submarines and the men who kept them moving in cramped, dangerous spaces. [1]
He also belongs to the story of early submarine warfare, when C-class boats patrolled British waters against a growing German U-boat threat. The loss of C34 off Fair Isle shows how exposed these little boats were when operating on the surface and how quickly a patrol could turn fatal. Playford’s name on the Chatham Naval Memorial ensures that his sacrifice is not forgotten, even though no grave marks the place where he died. [5][3][4][1]
Sources and Further Reading
- Commonwealth War Graves Commission: William George Playford
- Chatham Naval Memorial | CWGC
- Submarine Book of Remembrance: HMS C34
- RN Subs: HMS C34
- Harwich and Dovercourt History: Submarines in World War 1
Sources
[1] Individual-Report-for-William-George-Playford.pdf https://ppl-ai-file-upload.s3.amazonaws.com/web/direct-files/attachments/141549598/4ad6cfa8-fe44-4504-bd90-f35783b5b2ab/Individual-Report-for-William-George-Playford.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=ASIA2F3EMEYE745QYHFV&Signature=GKudIGXLAqZuSTy4A%2BbH6JNprXU%3D&x-amz-security-token=IQoJb3JpZ2luX2VjEIP%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2FwEaCXVzLWVhc3QtMSJGMEQCICLwPUIRj0Ua6zkqU34pggy1laM0Zp0cnh1AqtPATiPeAiBSkv9XDXAddz8ODGrez1Sdf1qKkGlhUE8SOLBiZE%2FAESrzBAhMEAEaDDY5OTc1MzMwOTcwNSIM0h3%2F35E9WdsgATGlKtAEoqQNXx%2BxNLRatN5oeuxaos5iJA%2B7f0rtY9V8x4OuMYysQce1lBaJGoiz1D9mywZmQu6XA3vFGBBTR0z4lvx2k9k5vUXf00A7fCHQzU%2BU13aiN3vx1L25b1Q6eUBfvD2vt2YnaX%2Br3JEnT9LQVw8ptd6dYJ9wohM9pdEyNKDX8Q7m9DVkYpQNYJJ3PRNhKt4niJrQD2gF72bn%2BJt%2B7HZXwpXUaFKN12PVk4lvTIfDoFCmJnmKFS4ogoA0a7QUx7nehw48e4g8UbsjknLVICl72gw5vLCNDQQBOcdRXSUJJUB7ZazUwfJwpnQ4uGF5FfPS9Q%2BYU0Y%2B7zImWY%2BGKtP8NO7w97Tx8HK8ETJ%2Fl94cHzjBF1ZeHfyl%2F3z0W9Q%2BI9Dyz4mTZknRQDs%2BarIqJ0kTUjaO%2B6hGY6nULJgIKwiPvZ1P%2BfiKW1PcriCW5feH5X9slVKso23%2BZfVX%2B5zJoYK82HJME%2BPdT%2F8JHXbmnCyRVo2agY9OuG9SW6weM5WX4sL1qmRpuozJ%2BdApNVnhlk0M7pOmh2zU4b8vQiLS%2FtNHiYdz109A1e5CTlVyzE0%2BREcrOrhBpdtYII118b5fs%2B0%2BqMZUYC6%2F0mN0t6LUNUK80dAsM2qpbdglVmayiYd3NSbjBkmrqz528mdnctvYtfeFzkCYWKY4j5Cff3mgC7HSMVGqtaYmNCJO4mDIl8NCRLftW3u2RvL4fl21KF7LBuHFEVwcvj5MLpvV1A%2B4fuqZo4EyQrvl%2BA6VWB2mU%2Fx870IzNk6LJupDeaawFt70haCd%2FzCAy%2BTSBjqZAQIXs3oWNdy3EzYAxJx01px8QJUXPBUqLLz4LiumFARf3YIJeURdt8ojwiYgNGCoXHOjqo5Kr8nhj%2Fb%2FzZkXbZxmkx6lP00NDmWsup6XhfE2SWTsqsm7DFe%2FBOUSyTGOGkxcxVmWI7JmOCuNiteb36JHzxeN6cTZ0l859NG%2ByvRTJ%2FXZjpr%2B8ptNViiI83RKxjdVjrDVGyQE%2Bg%3D%3D&Expires=1784228172
[2] Submarines World War 1 – Harwich and Dovercourt History https://www.harwichanddovercourt.co.uk/submarines-ww1/
[3] C 34 (I 64) https://rnsubs.co.uk/index.php?PageID=206
[4] HMS C34 (1910 – 1917) – Submarine Book of Remembrance https://submarineremembrance.uk/submarine/11383-hms-c34
[5] Chatham Naval Memorial | Cemetery Details | CWGC https://www.cwgc.org/visit-us/find-cemeteries-memorials/cemetery-details/142000/chatham-naval-memorial/
[6] Chatham Naval Memorial | CWGC https://www.cwgc.org/our-war-graves-your-history/explore-great-britain/south-east-region/chatham-naval-memorial/
[7] HMS C34 – Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_C34
[8] After the First World War, an appropriate way had to be found of https://www.cwgc.org/media/p1dn3uwh/chatham-naval-memorial-site-tour.pdf
[9] HMS C34 – LOSTINWATERSDEEP.CO.UK https://lostinwatersdeep.co.uk/hms-c34.html
[10] List of shipwrecks in July 1917 – Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shipwrecks_in_July_1917
[11] July 1917 – Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_1917
[12] SM UC-22 – Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM_UC-22
[13] Mate George Edwin TILLER – Submarine Book of Remembrance https://submarineremembrance.uk/people/32802-tiller-george-edwin
[14] HMS C34 – Submarine – NAVY – MARINE WWI – Guerre 1914 – 1918 https://milanpatrick8.wixsite.com/ww1-us-photos/hms-c34-submarine
[15] Naval Memorials – Chatham https://www.isle-of-wight-fhs.co.uk/naval-memorials—chatham
[16] SM UC-22 – Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM_UC-22