Samuel Shearman: Bearsden's first casualty

 

Samuel Shearman was born on 6th June 1879 at Cloverhill Locks in the parish of New Kilpatrick.  His father, also Samuel, was an agricultural labourer.  His mother was called Mary (nee Melburn) and they had been married in Liverpool four years previously.  As his father was from Gatehouse of Fleet and his mother was from Dumfries, it is not clear what they were doing there.

Cloverhill Locks are located between Westerton and Drumchapel - you can see Switchback Road on the far right, with Canniesburn Toll top right; Great Western Road cuts across the bottom left.  At the time this area was undeveloped so farming would have been an important local employer.

From the map below, this is the approximate site of the houses at the lock as it looks today.

Cloberhill Lock is just to the right of centre at the bottom of the map.  Note Drumchapel Row in the top right.

Sam senior's jobs included pit labourer (1891 Census), 'roadman' (1901) and "surfaceman on roads" (1911).  By this time Sam's parents lived at 24 Drumchapel Row - but Sam junior and his three sisters had all left home (the youngest would have been 16).

This is Drumchapel Row as it may have looked when Sam and Mary lived there.  In modern terms it is on the right of Drumchapel Road as you drive away from Bearsden, just past the traffic lights at the junction with Kinfauns Drive.

Sam junior had left home by this point.  Most probably he left school in 1893, aged 14 and found work as a carpenter.  In 1899 he joined the Royal Navy for 12 years - in his paperwork, he is described as 5 feet, six and a half, fair complexion, auburn hair and grey eyes.  he served on 14 different sips in this time and his character was always rated as good or very good - although early on he had two 5-day periods in the cells.

On 28 November 1911 his 12 years was up but he signed-up for a further period.

By 1914 his rank was Leading Carpenter's Crew.  While this suggests he was on a wooden sailing ship, that is the wrong interpretation.  Ranks based on carpentry was the navy's term for those employed in the Artisans and Miscellaneous branch of staff, which included Engine Room and Electrical Artificers, Armourers, Carpenters, Blacksmiths, Coopers, Painters, Plumbers, Ropemakers, Sailmakers, Shipwrights, Wiremen, Sick Berth Ratings, Ship's Police, Naval Schoolmasters, Writers, Ships' Cooks and Stewards, Musicians, Bakers, Butchers, Lamptrimmers, Shoemakers and Tailors.  So Samuel was a senior rating in one of these branches but we don't currently know which.  (For this, I am in the debt of contributors to this forum.)

His ship was the HMS Hogue, an armoured cruiser (several rungs down from a battleship but bigger than a destroyer), built by Vickers in Barrow-in-Furness and launched in 1900.

The photo shows some of the problems with this class - it has only one big gun in the turret just to the left of the mast and while it has guns along the side of the ship below deck level these could not be used when the sea was rough.  All forms of modern technology were limited or non-existent - radio could be damaged by bad weather and there was no radar.

Samuel joined the Hogue on 31st July 1914, probably as one of the more experienced crew members because many others came from the volunteer reserve.

On September 22nd 1914 she was patrolling an area close to the Dutch coast.  Britain was at war and men and supplies were crossing to France by ship so the flanks (especially the eastern flank) had to be protected against German attack.  Four cruisers and a group of destroyers were assigned the task but a storm the previously day had forced the destroyers to return to English ports and one cruiser had been damaged by the weather and had to return as well, leaving three ships, the Hogue and two ships of the same type, the Cressy and the Aboukir.

In the early morning they were cruising roughly in a line with each other when at 6.20am the Aboukir was stopped by an explosion on her side.  The initial suspicion was that the ship had hit a mine and she began to take on water and list.  Boats were launched, anything that could float was thrown overboard as ad hoc life rafts and the crew began to abandon ship.  The other two ships started to come about and Hogue stopped to start picking up survivors.

This is a sketch made by an artist who interviewed survivors

A submarine was spotted and Hogue fired a few shots but was then struck by torpedoes as well and began to sink; many of her boats were already in the water rescuing the crew of the Aboukir.

Cressy came about and fired at the submarine, then tried to ram it, but seems to have given up, giving the German submarine the opportunity to fire off more torpedoes and achieve two hits.

Aboukir had sunk, Hogue and Cressy were sinking, taking hundreds of men down with them.  Hundreds more men would have been in the water.  There is no record of what happened to Samuel.

Fishing boats started the rescue work, before navy vessels started to arrive a few hours later.  Ultimately of the combined crews of 2,296, 837 were saved (roughly one-in-three).

A fuller but very readable account of this incident is available here (sadly the photos are no longer available but most can be found with a Google search) and if that is not enough there is a website dedicated to the topic here.

Samuel was remembered as a very kind son to his parents in a service at New Kilpatrick Church in June 1915.  He is commemorated on the Chatham Naval Memorial for men with no known grave along with 18,620 others.

The Milngavie and Bearsden Herald notes at this time his parents lived at Killermont, Bearsden - this would be Killermont House, at the present-day Glasgow Golf Club.  From the 1915 Valuation Roll there is a William Shearman living at Killermont Stables.