WW2 100 - 23 November 1939 - ‘You have done your duty nobly’: Seaman Charles John Sedgemore, Royal Naval Reserve, HMS Rawalpindi (1916-39)
A tribute in the Exmouth Chronicle of 2 December 1939
Image
credit: Francis Sedgemore
Charles
John Sedgemore died on 23 November 1939, while serving on HMS Rawalpindi
during the ill-fated encounter between his ship and the two German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau
in the Iceland-Faeroe passage. His death was the second of only two
Budleigh-linked losses in the first year of WW2.
Exmouth War Memorial, showing Jack’s name
The Devon Heritage website at www.devonheritage.org quite correctly identified him as Budleigh-born, but Jack, as he was known to friends, is not listed on the town’s war memorial, and appears as Sedgemore, J. on Exmouth’s.
Further confusion arises because his official birth entry shows the Registration District as St Thomas Rural District, an area with offices on Cowick Street in the city of Exeter. However, until 1974, St Thomas Rural District covered both Exmouth and Budleigh Salterton.
Thanks to the help of Roz Hickman, Head of Local History at Fairlynch Museum, it is clear that Jack was baptised at St Peter’s Church in Budleigh, on 2 April 1916. He was the son of Charles William Sedgemore, a fisherman, and his wife Louisa, whose address is given as 20 Queen Street, Budleigh Salterton.
The Sedgemore family. Photo from the Nick Loman Collection used in
Fairlynch Museum’s ‘Sea, Salt and Sponges’ exhibition (2012-13)
There
were many members of the Sedgemore family, and many of them were born or worked
in Budleigh as fishermen.
‘The Salterton lads, off to lend a helping hand’ is the caption for this photo.
The lads, seen here in 1914 on the platform of Budleigh Salterton Station, have
been identified as l-r. Walter Mears, Harry Rogers, William Sedgemore, Tom
Sedgemore, Charlie Pearcey, Frank Mears, Jack Pearcey and William Pearcey
At
least two of them served in the Royal Navy during WW1, as we can see from the above photo,
used in the 1914 exhibition at Fairlynch Museum.
Judging by the tribute written in the Exmouth Chronicle by Charles H. Uttley – a member of the Royal Society of Teachers and possibly one of Jack’s former teachers – Jack worked in Exmouth rather than Budleigh. The article refers to his fishing for crab and lobster, and to his work as a pilot for pleasure trips up and down the River Exe, one of the pleasure craft being called the Fairy Queen. Perhaps, somewhere, there is a postcard showing the boat.
Image credit: Francis Sedgemore
His
wife, Mary, pictured above with Jack, is described on the Commonwealth War
Graves Commission website as from Exeter, rather than from Budleigh.
HMS Rawalpindi, the ship on which Jack was serving when he died, was a P&O ocean liner on the London, Bombay and Far East routes which was requisitioned by the Admiralty on 26 August 1939 and converted into an armed merchant cruiser.
Model of the armed merchant cruiser HMS Rawalpindi. Image credit: T.C. Dring. Photograph MOD 381 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums
Without Jack’s service record, it’s not possible to say whether he had been working on the ship prior to the outbreak of war. Some of the crew had been working for P&O before being transferred to HMS Rawalpindi, and had been expecting to serve in the tropics, for which the ship was well suited. Many of them, recalled survivor Royston Alfred Leadbetter, recorded by BBC Southern Counties Radio in 2005, had been kitted out in white uniforms.
Instead, they found themselves in Scapa Flow, in the Orkney Islands. The ship was steam-powered, and Jack is described as working as a stoker, with the service number D/X 18702A.
Working in the engine room as he did, in what was seen as the heart of the ship, was a source of pride for Navy stokers and their Merchant Navy equivalent. And conditions had improved since the days of coal: the Rawalpindi was an oil-burning liner. But stokers had very little chance of survival when their ship was torpedoed.
HMS Royal
Oak Image credit: Wikipedia
Jack's first experience of war would have been to witness the sinking of the battleship
HMS Royal Oak, torpedoed by the German submarine U-47 on 14 October 1939. Of the ship’s 1,234 complement of men and boys,
835 were killed that night or died later of their wounds. The Scapa Flow naval
base had been considered impregnable to submarine attack, and the disaster must
have been a distressing and sobering experience for all who saw it.
Three days later, on 17 October, four Junkers Ju 88 medium bombers attacked Scapa Flow, and damaged HMS Iron Duke with several near misses. The veteran WW1 battleship had been used as a floating anti-aircraft platform at the Scapa Flow base. To prevent her from sinking, her crew had to run the ship aground.
Rawalpindi was set to work in the Northern Patrol covering the area around Iceland. On 19 October in the Denmark Strait, Rawalpindi intercepted the German tanker Gonzenheim, which had left Buenos Aires on 14 September. The tanker was scuttled by her crew before a boarding party could get on board.
Half way into Rawalpindi’s third patrol at 3.00 pm on 23 November, the alarm bells sounded. It was dark and freezing cold, and within a few minutes a gigantic spout of water rose up: Rawalpindi was being targeted by shells from two German ships which could be made out as grey shapes in the distance, about five miles away.
The Scharnhorst (top) and Gneisenau.
Image credit: Wikipedia
The distant shapes that the crew of Rawalpindi had seen were the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. The pride of Hitler’s navy, they had been launched only three years before, in 1936. No intelligence about their whereabouts had been received by Captain Edward Coverley Kennedy on the Rawalpindi, but he was able to signal the German ships' location back to base. Despite being hopelessly outgunned, the Captain decided to fight, rather than surrender as demanded by the Germans. He was heard to say ‘We’ll fight them both, they’ll sink us, and that will be that. Good-bye’.
The
wreck site of HMS Rawalpindi
The
position was hopeless. Rawalpindi did fight back, causing some enemy
casualties. But survivor Royston Alfred Leadbetter recalled that the ship’s guns, eight six-inch, made around 1900, were
standard for armed merchant cruisers of the Royal Navy at the time. His own gun
was one of two 3-inch dual purpose guns of 1917 issue, as was the ammunition.
The two coloured images of HMS Rawalpindi, showing the ship in peacetime and the above view of it listing to starboard before it sank, have been reproduced from Commander Nick Messinger’s excellent website at http://www.pandosnco.co.uk/rawalpindi.html
The next enemy salvoes demolished the ship’s wireless cabin and the bridge, and the order was given to abandon ship. Fires broke out everywhere. Within 40 minutes, Rawalpindi exploded and sank. A total of 238 men died, including Captain Kennedy. Thirty-seven men were rescued by the German ships, a further 11 were picked up by HMS Chitral. We don’t know how 23-year-old Jack lost his life during the terrible event.
The loss of Rawalpindi and its crew was a disaster and a personal tragedy for many families. But the affair has passed into national history, with Captain Kennedy's conduct being seen as in the best naval tradition of Nelson and even - going further back - to the epic story of the Elizabethan Sir Richard Grenville and his refusal to surrender his ship the Revenge to the Spanish in 1591.
This photo of Admiral Sir Charles Little at the Admiralty in London on 29 November, 1939, greeting and praising survivors from the sinking of the Rawalpindi, appeared in the Daily Post newspaper the following day. They had, he told them,' worthily upheld the traditions of the Navy'. Soon afterwards, according to the newspaper report, people noticed the group on Horse Guards Parade and ran towards them, shouting 'Well done boys!'
A positive aspect to the affair, as survivor Royston Alfred Leadbetter pointed out, was that meeting the Rawalpindi had frustrated the attempt of the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau to break out into the Atlantic undetected, and they were forced to return to Germany.
Former MP Brian Sedgemore, Jack's son, born in Exmouth
What a shame that Jack did not survive the war to follow with pride the careers of later members of the family. His daughter Margaret became a professor of musicology and organ, with a career that spanned three continents. Another family member was a police officer, part of the Royal Protection Squad looking after Princess Anne.
And he may have been amused by the career of his son, the barrister, politician and journalist, Brian Sedgemore who gained a reputation as a passionate and maverick MP. He represented Luton West and then Hackney South before abandoning the Labour Party after 35 years of membership to join the Liberal Democrats. As a journalist he worked for Private Eye and Granada TV. Notoriously, he was the MP who in the House of Commons in 1985 addressed Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson as ‘You snivelling little git’.
Having
lost their father at such a young age, perhaps Brian and Margaret Sedgemore were encouraged by Jack’s friend and maybe teacher Charles Uttley to apply to grammar schools in Exeter, and then, respectively, to Corpus Christi College, and St Hugh's College, Oxford.
Mary, Jack’s widow, was left to bring up her two children on her own, but remarried. And no doubt she was consoled to some extent by the outpouring of sympathy from the many people of Exmouth, like Charles H. Uttley, who wrote so sorrowfully about Jack.
A line from Mr Uttley's tribute is used in the title of this blog post. Here’s the tribute in full:
The next post is for Leading Stoker Frederick William Richards
(1901-40) (Service Number D/K 57749), who was
killed in action while serving on HMS Hunter, on 10 April 1940.
You can read about him at
Memorial, but have not been identified. Their first names,
date of death and service numbers are not known.
They are recorded on the Devon Heritage website as
'Not yet confirmed’
If you know anything which would help to identify them,
please contact Michael Downes on 01395 446407.
F.E. Newcombe
P. Pritchard
F.J. Watts
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