Bert Charles Potter (1876- 1914)

Post date: May 18, 2015 3:18:8 PM

Bert was born in November 1876 in Maidstone and enlisted in the navy on a 12 year contract in January 1897, subsequently renewed in 1909 for a further 5 years. His initial service number was Chatham 284614. He was a stoker serving on a number of ships at least up to June 1903 when, under the discharge column of his record (ADM 188/456/284614), it is noted "shore by purchase". He is described on his service record as being 5 foot 7 ¹/2 inches with brown hair, grey eyes and a fresh complexion. He married a Wateringbury born girl, Florence Woolgar, in the last quarter of 1903 and by the time of the 1911 census they had 3 children (Bert, Walter and William) and were living in Pierson's (or Pearsons) Cottage, Constitution Hill, Snodland. In the 1911 census he is described as a Labourer Water Fitter, although by then he had joined the R.F.R Chatham B. 2622 and re-enrolled.

Because of his marriage into the Woolgar family he was consistently regarded by the vicar of the time, Greville Livett, writing in the parish magazine as Wateringbury's first WW1 casualty, but he was not included on the Village's War Memorial, presumably because his association was not considered close enough.

He joined HMS Aboukir, a cruiser, on 2 August 1914 which was sunk by a German submarine on 22nd September and the official record notes "his body not recovered for burial."

A lightly edited Wikipedia account of the action follows:

On the morning of 22 September, Aboukir and her sisters, Cressy and Hogue, were on patrol without any escorting destroyers as they had been forced to seek shelter from bad weather. The three sisters in line abreast, about 2,000 yards apart, at a speed of 10 knots. They were not expecting submarine attack, but they had lookouts posted and had one gun manned on each side to attack any submarines sighted. The weather had moderated earlier that morning and Tyrwhitt was en route to reinforce the cruisers with eight destroyers.

U-9, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Otto Weddigen, had been ordered to attack British transports at Ostend, but had been forced to dive and take shelter from the storm. On surfacing, she spotted the British ships and moved to attack. She fired one torpedo at 06:20 at Aboukir that struck her on the starboard side; Captain John Drummond thought he had struck a mine and ordered the other two ships to close to transfer his wounded men. Aboukir quickly began listing and capsized around 06:55 despite counterflooding compartments on the opposite side to right her. By the time that Drummond ordered "abandon ship" only one boat was available because the others had either been smashed or could not be lowered because no steam was available to power the winches for the boats.

As Hogue approached her sinking sister, the ship's captain, Wilmot Nicholson, realized that it had been a submarine attack and signalled Cressy to look for a periscope although his ship continued to close on Aboukir as her crew threw overboard anything that would float to aid the survivors in the water. Having stopped and lowered all her boats, Hogue was struck by two torpedoes around 06:55. The sudden weight loss of the two torpedoes caused U-9 to broach the surface and Hogue‍ '​s gunners opened fire without effect before the submarine could submerge again. The cruiser capsized about ten minutes after being torpedoed as all of her watertight doors had been open and sank at 07:15.

Cressy attempted to ram the submarine, but did not hit anything and resumed her rescue efforts until she too was torpedoed at 07:20. She too took on a heavy list and then capsized before sinking at 07:55. Several Dutch ships began rescuing survivors at 08:30 and were joined by British fishing trawlers before Tyrwhitt and his ships arrived at 10:45. The combined total from all three ships was 837 men rescued and 62 officers and 1,397 enlisted men lost. Of these, Aboukir lost a total of 527 men.

In 1954 the British government sold the salvage rights to all three ships to a German company and they were subsequently sold again to a Dutch company which began salvaging the wrecks' metal in 2011.

Many of the crews of these ships were from the Medway area: West Malling lost 2 men; East Malling lost 3 men; Snodland lost 4 men (including Bert).

Three weeks later the same submarine torpedoed and hitting the magazine sank HMS Hawke, also not taking anti-submarine precautions, on which Ernest Hoper of Teston was serving. Ernest was killed along with 523 out of the ship's complement of 594.