| Description | Work completed by volunteer includes the following information:
Seaman Arthur Horton, aged 36, was lost at sea near Malin Point, off the north coast of Ireland on 23 Jun 1917. His ship, HMT (Trawler) Corientes, was on minesweeping patrol when it struck a mine from a German Submarine, U-79, and sank with the loss of all 13 crew members. Arthur served as a “trimmer” or stoker on the Corientes. Arthur’s body was not recovered, he is commemorated on the Chatham Naval Memorial in Kent. Arthur was awarded the 1914-15 Star and the War and Victory Medals.
The Corientes, a steam trawler of 280 tons, was built in Beverley in 1910 at the Cook, Welton and Gemmell shipyard for T W Baskcomb of Grimsby and taken into naval service in 1915. Arthur had been a member of the Royal Navy Reserve and in the first half of 1915 he joined the RNR (Trawler Section) originally established in 1910 to recruit and train fishermen for naval service minesweeping duties and anti-submarine patrols.
Arthur was born in Beverley the 19 Feb 1881. After leaving school he worked as a general labourer and then as a tanner’s labourer still doing this job in 1911. The Beverley Guardian of 7 Jul 1917 noted that he had been a steam trawler fisherman before the war at an unknown port. He was the youngest child of nine born to William and Jane Horton. Jane was from Beverley but her husband, William was originally from Wainfleet, Lincolnshire. William worked for the North Eastern Railway as a pointsman in the goods’ yard then as a signalman, possibly in the Flemingate Level Crossing Signal Box since the family home was at the “Flemingate Railway House”. After the death of his parents in 1905 and 1907 Arthur lived with his sister and three nephews at 30 Minstermoorgate. He was unmarried.
Arthur is remembered on the Hengate War Memorial and on the East Riding Memorial in Beverley Minster.
Includes photograph, information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |