Sunday 2 November 2014

Captain Fryatt

Britain is a small place with a big history. One result of this is that every city, town and village has a claim to historical significance.  Take the villages of the Hamble River there.  Go to the churchyard in Hamble - there's the grave of Sir Edwin Alliot Verdon Roe, "the first Englishman to fly".  Go upstream a couple of miles and there's Bursledon - go to the churchyard and you can find the grave of "C" - the man who ran MI6 in its early days.  Carry on up the river to Botley and visit the church where two of William Cobbett's children were baptised. As was John Everett Millais' sister.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WSRANjAEP8

In 1919 my Grandfather had a brush with history when he acted as part of the guard of honour accompanying the funeral cortege of Capt Fryatt.  Here's Wiki:                                                                                                       Charles Algernon Fryatt (2 December 1872 – 27 July 1916) was a British mariner who was executed by the Germans for attempting to ram a U-boat in 1915. When his ship, the SS Brussels, was captured off the Netherlands in 1916, he was court-martialled and sentenced to death although he was a civilian non-combatant. International outrage followed his execution near Bruges, Belgium. In 1919, his body was reburied with full honours in the United Kingdom.
Here's some pictures, annotations by Grandad











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