Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:-
Born on 4th January 1900 to merchant seaman George Wilyman and his wife Mary Jane Audas, the daughter of a Hartlepool sailor, it was not surprising that Alfred too went to sea. The 1911 census shows him still at school and living in Thornton Street West with his mother and four siblings, Charles, Ellen, Clarence and Sydney.
Alfred signed on as a boy sailor at the end of 1915 and served his time on the ships HMS Ganges, Maidstone and Pembroke. On his 18th birthday he signed up for twelve years and was taken on board the HMS Almanzora firstly as an ordinary seaman and then in August 1918 as an able seaman.
The Almanzora was part of the Northern Patrol (10th Cruiser Squadron), Central Atlantic Convoys and AB Wilyman would have left with the vessel from Liverpool on 12th February 1918 making for Rio de Janeiro, where they arrived at the end of March. After a general issue of soap and tobacco to the ship’s crew, the captain exchanged pennants with a Brazilian cruiser and set sail for Santos. Leaving Brazil on 20th April the next port of call was Barry, North Wales, which they reached on 12th May and remained for four weeks, before returning to Rio.
The next port was to be Avonmouth, the port for Bristol, where the ship arrived on 21st August and remained until 2nd September and then taking twelve days to make land in Sierra Leona, West Africa. It was to be on the next journey of the ship into Freetown on 1st November 1918, after several deaths on board, that Alfred Wilyman too died of pneumonia, with the funeral held at 3.50pm the following day.
Alfred Wilyman is remembered in West Hartlepool on W111.86, in the Northern Daily Mail List of casualties and on our List of Ships’ crews
