Photo: Brian Chandler
In Preston Cemetery is a family headstone which reads:
William Carmichael
lost at sea on active
service Jan. 3rd 1918
aged 59 years
also his daughter
Frances Evelyn
died April 21st 1915
aged 10 years.
Rev, David Youngson has supplied the following:
William CARMICHAEL
Mercantile Marine
First Engineer SS Birtley
The son of the late Thomas and Mary Carmichael he was born at Walker on Tyne. A Marine Engineer residing at 58 Norfolk Street, North Shields he was Initiated on the 5th October 1899; Passed 22nd March 1901 and Raised on the 7th June 1901. He died on the 3rd January 1918 aged 63. The husband of Isabella Carmichael (nee Mowatt) of 5 Brennan Street, North Shields. He is Remembered on the Tower Hill Memorial, London.
SS Birtley (1438grt) was built in 1906 at Bill Quay by Wood, Skinner and Company Limited for Burnett and Co. of Newcastle. She was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine UB38 eight miles north of Flamborough Head on a voyage from Dunkirk to the Tyne in ballast (other records show the date as being 4th/5th January 1918). There were eighteen casualties.
William Carmichael is remembered in North Shields on N34.16, in Tynemouth on T36.14 and on our List of Ships’ crews
