On Tower Hill Memorial is the name of Second Engineer Thomas Judge serving on S.S. Belgian Prince (Newcastle) with the Mercantile Marine who died 31/07/1917.
He was the son of Thomas and Jane Ann Judge (ne Shotton), of 195 Cleveland Road, Sunderland and was born at Hartlepool.
Linda Gowans has submitted the following:-
Thomas was born on December 4th 1892. He lived at 2 Beaumont Street, and attended West Hartlepool Throston Board Infant School for Boys. In the 1901 census the family, all born at Hartlepool, was at 33 Trent Street, Stockton. His father was a Blacksmith’s Striker and there were four children, Thomas being the second oldest. In 1911 they were at 83 Station Road, Norton: there are now eight children and Thomas is an Apprentice Fitter and Turner.
There is no record of the move to Sunderland, but Thomas’s address was given as 195 Cleveland Road on the notice of his death at sea.
Little is known about his career in the Mercantile Marine, but much about the circumstances in which he lost his life. At the time he was Second Engineer on Belgian Prince, a 4,765 GRT cargo ship completed in 1901 by Sir James Laing& Sons, Sunderland, for the Menantic Steamship Co. of Bristol as Mohawk. From 1912 she was owned by Prince Line of Newcastle and renamed Hungarian Prince, changed in 1915 to Belgian Prince.
On July 31st 1917 she was en-route from Liverpool to Newport News, Virginia, USA, with a cargo of blue clay when, out in the Atlantic Ocean 175 miles NW by W of Tory Island, Ireland, she was hit by a torpedo fired by German submarine U 55.
What happened next was an outrage even for the times. The crew were taken from lifeboats, which were then smashed, their lifejackets were taken away, and they were assembled on the hull of U 55, which submerged leaving them to be swept into the sea. Belgian Prince was scuttled by the submarines gunfire the following day. Her captain, Harry Hassan, had been taken into the U-boat before it submerged, and nothing more is known of him. Of the 41 crew only three survived, to be picked up by British patrol boats and cared for by Sailors Society. They included Chief Engineer Thomas Bowman, whose harrowing account can be read on the Society’s website. Strong denunciations appeared in print throughout the UK.
The Sunderland Echo 23/08/1917 told of Thomas Judge’s fate: he was on watch in the engine room and badly wounded in the head, but was not allowed a lifebelt, so he drowned. The Whitby Gazette of August 10th declared, Worst Crime Transcended. (The commander of U 55 went on to acquire notoriety in other times and places.)
One body from the Belgian Prince was washed ashore: that of Chief Officer Neil McDougall Morton, 27, husband of Jane Morton, 15 Beechwood Street, Sunderland. He is buried at Kilbrandon Old Church- yard, Isle of Seil, where the inscription his mother chose sums up the sacrifice of the Merchant Marine: He gave his life that we might not starve.
Thomas Judge is remembered at Sunderland on S140.009, S140.010, in S140.048 part 8 and S140.120, in the Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail Casualties Lists, in the Mercantile Marine Roll of Honour 1917 and in our List of Ships’ Crews.
