Details of 44,000 British sailors who died at sea to be made available for ancestral research
Modern memory of the first world war tends to dwell on the army casualties of the western front, but now the records of 44,000 British sailors who died in the conflict are being put online to help ancestral researchers.
While the number of those killed at sea does not compare with the much greater battlefield losses, about half of the former were never recovered and a fifth of the fatalities were caused by disease.
One such man was Fred Blackwell, a 24-year-old laundry worker from Wimbledon, south-west London, who was killed off the coast of Denmark during the battle of Jutland from 31 May to 1 June 1916. The greatest naval engagement of the war resulted in the loss of more than 6,000 British men, six cruisers and eight destroyers.
As he watched the second cruiser explode and sink within half an hour, Admiral David Beatty famously remarked: "There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today."
Stoker First Class Blackwell would have known little of that. He would have been shovelling coal in the bowels of his ship, HMS Invincible, when it was hit by a German shell, exploded, split in two and sank in 90 seconds, killing all but six of the crew, including the vice-admiral commanding it. Blackwell's body was never recovered, just one of 1,026 members of the ship's complement to die that day.
The only memento his family has of Blackwell is a black-edged memorial card with a photograph of him in uniform and a mawkish verse: "Had he asked us, well we know,/We should cry Oh spare this blow;/Yes, with streaming tears should pray,/Lord we love him, let him stay".
Blackwell's record has been placed on the Ancestry.co.uk website along with that of a more famous victim of that afternoon's disasters: the 16-year-old boy seaman Jack Cornwell. The boy seaman became a hero for staying at his post beside a foredeck gun on HMS Chester, despite being mortally wounded with the gun crew lying dead around him. As his commanding officer recorded: "He remained standing alone at a most exposed post, quietly awaiting orders until the end of the action."
There was indeed something wrong with the bloody ships that day: design flaws made them vulnerable to explosion and, in Cornwell's case, the gun had inadequate armour, allowing shrapnel to cut down the crew. After he died two days later, Cornwell, who had only been at sea a month, was awarded a Victoria Cross amid a welter of public emotion for the boy sailor. The fund raised in his memory, however, refused to support his mother and she died destitute three years later.
Among the survivors of the fleet at Jutland was the future George VI, the stammering king, though 229 of his shipmates on board HMS Collingwood were lost. The battle was considered a strategic success because the German grand fleet retreated to port and never re-emerged.
Dan Jones, international content director of Ancestry.co.uk, said: "These records are a stark reminder of the harsh reality thousands of naval sailors faced when fighting at sea during the first world war. For the relatives and descendants of our nation's seafaring heroes, these records will help preserve the memory of their sacrifices."