Tag: Portsmouth Memorial

H.M.S. Hood: Remembering Able Seaman Stewart

Able Seaman Albert Martin Stewart, P/J 11960, Royal Navy, was lost with H.M.S. Hood on 24 May 1941 and is commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial.

Family report, naval casualty list, and CWGC record

Early Life and Family

Albert Martin Stewart was born on 2 July 1895 in Pimlico, London, his birth being registered in the St George Hanover Square district in the third quarter of 1895.[file:136] He was the son of Martin Stewart and Daisy Alice Deal, linking him directly into the Deal family line represented elsewhere on msyoung.org.[file:136] By the 1901 census he was living in Mortlake, Surrey, aged five, and in 1911 he was recorded at 11 Lewin Road, Mortlake, as an errand boy, a detail that places him firmly in the working life of suburban south-west London before his naval career.[file:136]

The family report later associates him with East Sheen, Surrey, and gives 11 Lewin Road, East Sheen SW14, as his home address at the time of death.[file:136] This continuity of address suggests a strong family connection to the Mortlake and East Sheen area over several decades.[file:136] No spouse or children are recorded in the report, so Albert appears to have remained unmarried, with his principal family identity preserved through his parents and wider kin.[file:136]

Naval Service

Albert served in the Royal Navy as an Able Seaman, holding the service number P/J 11960.[file:136] His rank indicates that he was an experienced rating rather than a new entrant, and the long span of service dates in the report, between 11 January 1929 and 24 May 1941, points to a substantial naval career extending well before the Second World War.[file:136] The family report also notes service linked to “Military Ship Concord, Transport Ship Hood”, but the decisive wartime record is his assignment to H.M.S. Hood at the time of his death.[file:136]

H.M.S. Hood was the Royal Navy’s famous battlecruiser, completed in 1920 and for many years the largest warship in the world.[web:138][web:144] She was a symbol of British naval prestige in the inter-war years and served widely around the globe before returning to the centre of events in the Atlantic war against Germany.[web:138] By May 1941 Albert was therefore serving not in an obscure vessel, but in one of the most celebrated ships in the Royal Navy.[web:138][web:141]

Unit Context at the Time of Death

The military unit context of Albert Stewart’s death is inseparable from the final action of H.M.S. Hood during the Battle of the Denmark Strait.[file:136][web:138] On 24 May 1941 Hood, accompanied by the new battleship H.M.S. Prince of Wales, engaged the German battleship Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen in an attempt to intercept them in the North Atlantic.[web:138][web:141] This was one of the most dramatic naval encounters of the war, because Bismarck represented a major threat to British shipping and prestige.[web:141]

During the action, one or more heavy German shells penetrated Hood and caused a catastrophic magazine explosion.[web:138][web:141] The battlecruiser broke apart and sank with extraordinary speed, leaving only three survivors from a crew of 1,415.[web:141][web:145] Albert was among those lost, and the naval casualty list for May 1941 records him plainly as “STEWART, Albert M, Able Seaman, P/J 11960, MPK”, meaning missing presumed killed in the loss of the ship.[web:140]

This context matters because Albert did not die through accident, illness, or in an isolated maritime incident, but as part of one of the defining naval battles of the Second World War.[web:138][web:141] As an Able Seaman aboard Hood, he belonged to the ship’s trained seaman branch, responsible for the skilled deck and operational duties that kept a capital ship functioning in combat.[file:136] His death therefore reflects both his personal service and the destruction of an entire fighting unit in a single catastrophic moment.[web:140][web:141]

Albert Martin Stewart was lost not merely at sea, but in the destruction of Britain’s most famous battlecruiser during one of the Royal Navy’s defining actions of the war.

Naval casualty list and Hood action summaries

Circumstances of Death

Albert Martin Stewart died at sea on 24 May 1941 at the age of forty-five.[file:136] His death is tied directly to the loss of H.M.S. Hood in the Denmark Strait, a disaster that shocked Britain and the wider Commonwealth.[web:141][web:144] The family report gives his place of burial simply as “At Sea”, which is historically accurate in the case of so many of Hood’s crew, whose bodies were never recovered.[file:136]

The severity of the explosion and the speed of the sinking explain why there were only three survivors and why commemoration on a naval memorial rather than burial in an identified grave became the fate of most of the crew.[web:141] For Albert’s family in East Sheen, as for hundreds of other families across Britain, the loss would have been sudden, absolute, and largely without the consolation of a recoverable resting place.[file:136][web:141] Probate was later granted on 30 September 1941 at Llandudno, marking the formal civil aftermath of a wartime death that had occurred far from home.[file:136]

Commemoration

Albert is commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial, the principal memorial for Royal Navy sailors of the Portsmouth command who have no grave but the sea.[file:136] The CWGC record identifies him as the son of Martin and Daisy A. Stewart of East Sheen, Surrey, ensuring that his family connection is permanently preserved in the official commemorative record.[file:136] His inclusion there places him among the naval dead of the Second World War whose names stand in lieu of known graves.[file:136][web:140]

The family report also notes his entitlement to the 1939–1945 Star and the War Medal 1939–1945.[file:136] These awards reflect his wartime naval service and confirm that, although his life ended in one of the war’s most famous naval disasters, his contribution is also part of the wider record of Royal Navy service in the conflict.[file:136] Online memorial projects and casualty lists further reinforce this remembrance by preserving his name among the crew lost with Hood.[web:139][web:140]

Legacy

Albert Martin Stewart’s life links late Victorian London, suburban Surrey, and the global naval war of 1939–1945.[file:136] From his beginnings in Pimlico and Mortlake, he entered a professional naval life that culminated in service aboard Britain’s best-known battlecruiser.[file:136][web:138] The family report identifies him as a fourth cousin twice removed to the researcher, so his story remains part of the living fabric of family remembrance rather than merely an isolated wartime record.[file:136]

Sources and Further Reading