Tag: Portsmouth Naval Memorial

Samuel Dresser Dicks: A Biography of a Jutland Casualty

–

Stoker 1st Class Samuel Dresser Dicks, service number K17690, serving in H.M.S. Invincible, was killed in action on 31 May 1916 during the Battle of Jutland and is commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial.

Family report, CWGC record and naval history sources

Early Life and Family

Samuel Dresser Dicks was born on 18 August 1892 in Richmond, Yorkshire, the son of Thomas and Sarah Jane Dicks.[file:264] He was baptised a week later, on 25 August 1892, at Kirkby Ravensworth, Yorkshire, confirming the family’s roots in the rural north of England.[file:264] In the 1901 census he was living at High Grange, also called Hind’s House, Melsonby, and by 1911 he was recorded in East Layton, Forcett with Carkin, as an eighteen-year-old single servant, indicating a working rural upbringing before he entered naval service.[file:264]

Samuel later moved south and became connected with Dover in Kent.[file:264] He married Nellie Rosina Culmer at St Barnabas, Dover, on 28 April 1915, shortly after the outbreak of war had transformed the lives of young working men and women across Britain.[file:264] The couple had no children, and the report records Nellie as his widow at the time of his death, living at 28 Mayfield Avenue, Buckland, Dover.[file:264]

Naval Service

Samuel served in the Royal Navy from 15 January 1913 until his death on 31 May 1916.[file:264] His rank was Stoker 1st Class, and his service number was K17690.[file:264] His service is linked in the report to both “Victory II” and H.M.S. Invincible, with Victory II functioning as a shore accounting base while Invincible was the operational warship on which he served at the time of his death.[file:264]

As a stoker 1st class, Samuel belonged to the engine-room branch of the Navy, whose men laboured below decks to keep a ship’s boilers fired and its machinery running.[web:259][web:269] This was exhausting and dangerous work, especially in a fast capital ship such as a battlecruiser, where sustained speed and rapid manoeuvre depended on the continuous effort of stokers and engine-room ratings.[web:269][web:259] His medal entitlement—the 1914–15 Star, Victory Medal, British War Medal and Memorial Death Plaque—reflects active wartime service and the formal recognition given to those who died during the conflict.[file:264]

Unit Context at the Time of Death

At the time of Samuel Dresser Dicks’s death, H.M.S. Invincible was serving with the Grand Fleet as flagship of the 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron during the Battle of Jutland on 31 May 1916.[web:250][web:249] Jutland was the largest fleet action of the First World War and the principal clash between the British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet in the North Sea.[web:259] The battle involved enormous concentrations of men and ships, and it remains the defining naval engagement of the war.[web:258][web:259]

Naval history sources record that at about 6.34 pm on 31 May 1916, Invincible was struck by a shell that penetrated Q turret and caused a catastrophic magazine explosion.[web:250][web:259] The ship broke apart and sank rapidly, with only six survivors from a crew of more than 1,000.[web:250][web:266] Samuel was therefore among the vast majority of her company who were lost when the battlecruiser was destroyed in one of the most devastating single-ship losses of the battle.[web:249][web:250]

This is the essential military context for his death: Samuel was serving in a front-line capital ship at the centre of the greatest naval battle fought by the Royal Navy in the First World War.[web:258][web:259] The report’s phrase “Action against German Fleet. North Sea” refers directly to the Battle of Jutland and the destruction of H.M.S. Invincible in that action.[file:264][web:250] For family history purposes, this places his loss within a major national and imperial event rather than an isolated naval casualty.[web:258]

When H.M.S. Invincible exploded at Jutland, only six men survived, and over a thousand officers and ratings were lost with the ship.

Imperial War Museums community record and Royal Museums Greenwich article

Circumstances of Death

Samuel Dresser Dicks was killed in action on 31 May 1916 during action against the German Fleet in the North Sea.[file:264] The death notes in the family report record him as “Killed”, with the incident date of 31 May 1916, record number 6696/16, and duty location simply as “North Sea”.[file:264] His death was therefore one of the many immediate losses arising from the destruction of Invincible during the battle.[web:249][web:250]

The report also notes that his body was not recovered for burial, which was common in major naval losses at sea.[file:264] His widow, Nellie R. Dicks of Buckland, Dover, was the relative officially notified, a detail that anchors the vast tragedy of Jutland in one particular Kent household.[file:264] Like many naval wives and families, she was left with commemoration rather than a recoverable grave.[web:255]

Commemoration

Samuel is commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial, on Panel 18, because his body was not recovered from the sea.[file:264] The Portsmouth Naval Memorial records the names of Royal Navy sailors and Royal Marines of Portsmouth command who died at sea and have no known grave, including around 10,000 from the First World War.[web:255][web:268] For sailors lost in actions such as Jutland, the memorial served as the fixed place of remembrance that the sea itself could not provide.[web:255]

The report also includes his CWGC entry and Find-a-Grave memorial reference, preserving his name in both official and genealogical remembrance.[file:264] Within the family tree he is identified as the husband of a second cousin twice removed, demonstrating how military losses continue to be recovered through extended kinship research rather than only through naval archives.[file:264] His name also appears in casualty listings for H.M.S. Invincible, where the ship’s dead are remembered collectively as part of the Battle of Jutland.[web:249][web:257]

Legacy

Samuel Dresser Dicks’s story links rural Yorkshire, wartime Dover, and the Royal Navy at its moment of greatest trial in the First World War.[file:264] Born in the north, married in Kent, and commemorated at Portsmouth, his life illustrates the geographical reach of naval service and the way war bound together different regions of Britain.[file:264] His death aboard H.M.S. Invincible connects one family’s history to the most famous fleet action of the war at sea.[web:258][web:259]

Sources and Further Reading

Remembering David Anderson: A Royal Naval Stoker

–

Stoker David Anderson, Royal Naval Reserve, service number 2075T, serving in H.M.S. Invincible, was killed in action on 31 May 1916 during the Battle of Jutland and is commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial.

Family report, CWGC record and naval history sources

Early Life and Family

David Anderson was born on 15 February 1877 at Haddington, East Lothian, Scotland, the son of James and Agnes Anderson.[file:248] By the census of 1881 he was living in Prestonpans, first noted at C Wynd, High Street, and by 1891 he was in Penicuik, Midlothian, where he was recorded as a thirteen-year-old scholar.[file:248] These details place his childhood in the east of Scotland, within communities shaped by industrial employment, coastal trade and working-family migration between towns in the Lothians.[file:248]

By 1901 David was back in Prestonpans, recorded as head of his household at the age of twenty-three, suggesting an early assumption of adult responsibility.[file:248] He later married Annie Marie Horan in the Canterbury registration district in about June 1911, and together they had five children: David, Elizabeth, John, Henry Cook, and Robert Anderson.[file:248] At the time of his death his wife Annie was living at 13 Hope Terrace, Leith, Edinburgh, the address preserved in the CWGC-style family details included in the report.[file:248]

Naval Service

David served in the Royal Naval Reserve, the part-time reserve force that supplied trained seamen and stokers to the Royal Navy in wartime.[file:248] His period of military service is given as between 9 November 1914 and 31 May 1916, and his rank at death was Stoker, service number 2075T.[file:248] He served aboard H.M.S. Invincible, the famous battlecruiser whose loss at Jutland became one of the best-known naval disasters of the First World War.[file:248][web:251]

As a stoker, David would have worked in the boiler and engine spaces, part of the physically demanding labour force that kept a battlecruiser moving at high speed in combat.[web:251][web:259] Men in these roles were essential to the functioning of large warships, feeding coal, maintaining steam pressure, and working in extreme heat and noise deep within the hull.[web:259] His medals—the 1914–15 Star, Victory Medal, British War Medal and Memorial Death Plaque—reflect active wartime service and the official post-war recognition given to those who died in the conflict.[file:248]

Unit Context at the Time of Death

At the time of David Anderson’s death, H.M.S. Invincible was serving as flagship of the 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron during the Battle of Jutland, fought on 31 May 1916 between the British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet.[web:250][web:258] Jutland was the largest naval battle of the First World War, involving more than 100,000 sailors on some 250 ships, with over 6,000 Royal Navy deaths.[web:258][web:259] The battle remains the defining surface action of the war at sea, and the loss of Invincible was one of its most dramatic moments.[web:258][web:251]

Naval history sources record that at about 6.34 pm on 31 May 1916, Invincible was struck by enemy shellfire that penetrated Q turret and ignited the magazine.[web:250][web:251] The resulting explosion blew the ship in half and sank her almost instantly.[web:251] Of a complement of more than a thousand men, only six survived, meaning that David Anderson was among the overwhelming majority of the ship’s company lost with the vessel.[web:250][web:251]

This is the key military context for his death: he was not lost in an isolated naval mishap but in one of the central engagements of the war, aboard a front-line capital ship of the Grand Fleet.[web:250][web:259] The report’s brief phrase “Action against German Fleet. North Sea” is therefore shorthand for the destruction of H.M.S. Invincible during the Battle of Jutland.[file:248][web:250] For a family history audience, this places David’s loss firmly within a major national event whose scale and shock resonated across Britain in 1916.[web:258][web:259]

When Invincible exploded at Jutland, all but six of her crew were lost, making her destruction one of the most devastating single-ship losses of the battle.

Naval-History.net and Imperial War Museums community record

Circumstances of Death

David Anderson was killed in action at sea on 31 May 1916.[file:248] His place of death is given as the North Sea during action against the German Fleet, and his body was not recovered for burial.[file:248] This explains why he is commemorated on a naval memorial rather than buried in an identified grave.[file:248][web:255]

The family details preserved in the report describe him as the son of the late James Anderson of Prestonpans, Edinburgh, and the husband of Annie Anderson of 13 Hope Terrace, Leith, Edinburgh.[file:248] That wording is consistent with the formal language used in Commonwealth war commemoration and links his naval death back to his Scottish family roots and his widow’s home in Edinburgh.[file:248] In practical terms, the Portsmouth Naval Memorial became the surrogate grave for a sailor whose remains were never returned from the sea.[web:255]

Commemoration

David is commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial, panel 23, one of the principal memorials to Royal Navy sailors and reservists who died without a known grave.[file:248][web:255] The memorial at Southsea records approximately 25,000 British and Commonwealth sailors lost in the two world wars, including around 10,000 from the First World War.[web:255] For men like David, lost at sea when no body could be recovered, such memorials were created to provide a permanent and visible place of remembrance.[web:255]

The supplied report also notes a Find-a-Grave memorial entry and confirms his relationship within the wider family tree as the husband of a third cousin twice removed.[file:248] These genealogical connections help restore personal and family context to a sailor who otherwise appears only in naval casualty records and memorial registers.[file:248] His name also appears within casualty listings for H.M.S. Invincible, where the ship’s dead are preserved as part of the wider roll of Jutland losses.[web:249][web:257]

Legacy

David Anderson’s life links Scotland, Kent, and the Royal Navy in a way that is especially meaningful for family historians.[file:248] Born in East Lothian, married in Canterbury, and commemorated in Portsmouth, his story crosses several parts of Britain and reflects the mobility of working families in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.[file:248] His death aboard Invincible also connects this individual family history to one of the most famous naval actions of the Great War.[web:250][web:258]

Sources and Further Reading