On the Plymouth Naval Memorial is the name of Carpenter Frederick Charles McCarthy serving with the Mercantile Marine Reserve on board H.M.Yacht Iolaire who died 01/01/1919.

The son of John and Jane McCarthy, of West Hartlepool, Co. Durham.

Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:

Frederick Charles McCarthy, known as Fred,  was born in the summer of 1885 in West Hartlepool.   His father was Hartlepool engine fitter John McCarthy and his mother was Jane (nee Sleightholm) from Stockton who had married in 1877 and had five children, Ethel, William (died in infancy), John, Lillian and young Fred.  Their mother died in 1887 and by 1901 Fred was working as an ironmonger’s assistant, and was also a bellringer at Stranton Church.  Fred’s sister, Lil, emigrated to Canada in 1912 and married Hartlepool born man Percy Cass who served in the Canadian Army and was killed in action in France in 1917.

Fred served as a ship’s carpenter in the Mercantile Marine Reserve (MMR) during World War One. On New Year’s Day 1919 he was a member of the crew His Majesty’s Yacht Iolaire a small ship pressed into service to bring sailors who had fought in the war back to the Scottish island of Lewis. Iolaire sank off the island’s coast as it made its approach to the port of Stornaway. There were 280 men on board, including 24 crew, and at least 201, including Fred, perished. His body was never recovered.

In 2018 school pupils on the Isle of Lewis collected a stone from the home village of each of the 201 sailors lost on the Iolaire. These stones have been incorporated into a unique memorial in the form of a cairn in Stornoway town centre. Pupils made a plea for a stone from Hartlepool to commemorate Fred.

Fred McCarthy is remembered at Stranton on S139.03, at West Hartlepool on W111.054 and in W111.086, on a plaque to Bellringers in St. Nicholas’ Cathedral, Newcastle upon Tyne on NUT098 and on our List of Ship’s Crews.