On Tower Hill Memorial is the name of Pilot First Class Charles Burn, serving on Pilot Cutter Protector (South Shields) with the Lighthouse and Pilotage Authorities who died 31/12/1916.

In South Shields (Harton) Cemetery is a family headstone which reads:

In loving memory of
Margaret Burn
died 10th April 1959, aged 86 years
wife of the late Charles Burn (Tyne pilot)
lost Tyne Pilot Cutter 1916.
Also Margaret Burn dear daughter
died 10th January 1963, aged 68 years.
Also dear son John Burn (Tyne pilot)
dearly loved husband of
Katherine Virginia Burn
died 1st July 1982, aged 79 years.

The eldest son of Charles and Catherine Burn, of 21, The Lawe, South Shields and the husband of Margaret Elliott nee Wright Burn, of 41, Tragan Avenue, South Shields. They were married on the 1st November 1893.

His father and four brothers were all born in South Shields and all pilots. He had five children under the age of sixteen when he died. He had five sons and three daughters.
In 1901 he was living in Roman Road, South Shields, with four children – Catherine, Margaret, Charles and Lancelot.

On New Year’s Eve, 31st December 1916, the Tyne pilot cutter Protector was destroyed by a German mine at the mouth of the River Tyne, killing all 19 men on board. The 200-ton steamer was serving the port of Tyne, guiding vessels through hazardous, mined waters during WWI. The loss was a devastating blow to the tight-knit Tyneside maritime community, leaving 33 children fatherless.

The Protector was waiting to transfer pilots to ships entering the Tyne when it hit a mine, likely laid by German submarine UC-31, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Otto von Schrader.

All 19 men on board perished, including 10 pilots, four pilot assistants, and five crew members.
The crew was mostly from North and South Shields. Victims included 70-year-old pilot Robert Phillips and his grandson Ralph Phillips, representing the interlinked nature of the families involved. The youngest was 16-year-old cabin boy Benjamin Rumney.

Aftermath: The explosion was so severe that only one body, that of Robert Phillips, was ever recovered, found in March 1917.

“There was a noise as if it was a volcano and all they saw was a column of water and smoke and the pilot cutter was no more,” says Bill Watson, whose uncle Ralph Phillips and great-grandfather Robert Phillips were on board.

Acknowledgments: Barney Rice.
Sources: James Hoy Archive; The Pilots Log: Find A Grave; Northumbrian WW1 Project; BBC; Bill Watson 2012.

Charles Burn is remembered at South Shields on S86.030 S86.062 and in our List of Ships‘ Crews.