| Description | Work completed by volunteer includes the following information:
Philip was born in Beverley the 26 Jul 1899 and baptised at St Mary's the 3 Sep 1899, the son of Harry E Ross, a journalist on the Beverley Guardian newspaper, and his wife Eva (nee Welburn), they married in 1893 and lived at 101 Grovehill Road, Beverley.
Philip joined the Merchant Navy early in the war. In Jun 1916, in the Mediterranean, his ship SS Olive was torpedoed, all the crew survived. The Beverley Guardian of 28 Apr 1917 reported that Philip's unnamed merchant ship had been torpedoed by a U-Boat in the Atlantic and he had had to spend three days in an open lifeboat before being landed at Liverpool. He was then given a temporary commission in the Royal Naval Voluntary Reserve and was gazetted on 18 Jan 1918. He served in the Mediterranean and was given Second-Command of a "submarine chaser" in the eastern Mediterranean. In late 1918 after the end of the war Philip's vessel was sent as part of the Danube Flotilla to the Black Sea via Constantinople and the Bosphorous, and then on to Sulina in Rumania where his vessel entered the River Danube to undertake minesweeping duties. Having cleared the mines Philip continued up the river as far as Belgrade in Serbia, arriving on 5 Jan 1919. He said in a report in the Beverley Guardian of 18 Jan 1919 that "we are going up the river to show the flag and cheer them up a little". The river froze and the crew were billeted in Belgrade for the rest of the winter. Philip left the service in 1920 and was awarded the War and Victory Medals.
After the war Philip went to work in industry, reaching the position of director in a manufacturing company in Huddersfield by 1925. On 2 Sep 1925 he and Mable Alice Gabbetis married at St Mary's, daughter of a farmer in Etton and then living at 176 Norwood. They moved to Huddersfield and had two children. They later lived in the Stockport area where Philip died on 11 Jan 1977. Mabel died in 1982.
Includes information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |