Military History

Ernest was killed in action at sea on 2 Mar 1918 when his vessel, HMS H5, was sunk in what turned out to be a "friendly fire incident". The following article detailing the events of that day is courtesy of the Western Front Association (of which we are a paid member) and the full article can be found here.

Lieutenant Cromwell Hanford Varley was assigned as one of H5’s first commanders. Operating for a time from Harwich, she sank U51 on 14 July 1916.  Later spending her time in the Irish Sea at Queenstown and Rathmullen, from September 1917, she joined a flotilla of submarines based at Berehaven in Bantry Bay and at Killybegs, Ireland working from the depot ships HMS Vulcan and HMS Ambrose. It was her role to intercept German U-boats operating around the Irish coast, and in the Western approaches and Irish Sea.

On 26 February 1918, H5 sailed from Berehaven, now under the command of Lieutenant A. W.  Forbes, with US Navy Liaison Officer Earle Childs on board for instructional purposes and was expected to return to port on the morning of the 6 March. It was only after subsequent investigations into the disappearance of H.5 and the ramming of an unidentified submarine in that location was it realised that the H5 had been sunk by the British merchantman SS Rutherglen.

The crew of H5 perished on the 2 March due to a number of unfortunate circumstances:

• The presence of U-boats in the Irish Sea meant that picking up survivors was a risk to any ship that attempted it. Previous experience of ships being torpedoed after stopping to help others led the British Admiralty to advise that ships should abandon survivors to save themselves.
• British submarines, like their German counterparts, varied greatly in their shape and size. Without special knowledge of British submarine outlines, observers had to rely on identification marks to discern friend from foe.
• Weather could exacerbate identification and in H5’s case it was night time, visibility was poor, and merchant traffic did not know of H5’s presence. Whilst the number of submarines lost to friendly fire in the Great War is low compared to the total sunk. (4 out of 56) almost all of those incidents involved a signal or insignia being confused, missed, or not identified in time.

Captain Nasmith, commander of SS Rutherglen, recommended leaving the Rutherglen crew under the impression that they had indeed sunk an enemy submarine. The ship’s muster were never told of the mistake and were even given a bounty for sinking what they thought was a German U-boat.

It was not until some 80 years later that relatives of the crew of H-5 learned on their true fate in that SS Rutherglen had rammed the vessel, and a commemoration service was held on 2nd March 2002 in Holyhead, Anglesey, North Wales which is ten miles from the wreck site and is, as is usual, designated as a controlled site under the Protection of Military Remains Act.