Brenda McMahon has submitted the following:-
John, son of John and Hannah was born on December 23rd 1893 at Tursdale. The couple had eight children together including Annie, Henry, Edward, Isabella, Thomas, Florence and Gladys. His father worked as a deputy overman.
By 1911 John junior also worked at the pit as a miner/pony putter later to become a miner.
John enlisted into the Durham Light Infantry shortly after war broke out. However within only a few days he had been transferred to the Royal Navy Division (Anson Battalion) as a stoker second class, number KP814. His first ship was HMS Victory which is a training establishment.
His character during his naval service was considered to be very good. He was 5’4” tall with dark hair, grey eyes and a fresh complexion.
Late 1914/early 1915 it appears John was wounded in the knee by a piece of shrapnel for which he received treatment for several months. When he was recovered from his injury he was posted to HMS Flirt on August 27th 1916 which was a Tribal Class Destroyer. This ship patrolled home territory only, which suited John’s situation with his injured knee.
The ship was assigned to the 6th Destroyer Flotilla which was based at Dover. Her task involved anti-submarine patrols, counter mining patrols and defending drifters of the Dover barrage.
“In October 1916 the elderly destroyer HMS Flirt was one of twenty-five of the Sixth Flotilla at Dover. On the night of 26 October 1916 ten destroyers from the German Flanders Flotilla, based at Zeebrugge, carried out their first raid into the channel. During the raid they sank the transport Queen and the destroyers Nubian and Flirt.
The Flirt was at sea supporting the drifters which operated the Dover Barrage. The Flirt first sighted the Germans early in their raid, at around 21.35, but her captain believed they were part of the Harwich Force and didn’t report the sighting, even though they had responded to his challenge by repeating the original signal, and not with the correct response.
The Germans moved on, and sank the drifter Waveney. The Flirt saw the gunfire of this clash at 22.15, and her captain believed he was seeing a clash between British destroyers and a U-boat. He ordered the ship to move towards the action, but instead found the Waveney. The Flirt’s captain decided to stop to rescue survivors. At the time destroyers were in view, but he believed they were French. They soon turned out to be German, and the Flirt was sunk with the loss of sixty men – everyone on board at the time. The only survivors were nine men from the crew of a boat that had been sent to aid the drifter Waveney II earlier in the clash” Information J Rickard (27 May 2019)
At the end of the shambolic night for the Royal Navy the British had lost eight ships sunk, seven more damaged, 45 dead, four wounded and 10 prisoners. The German Navy suffered no casualties and only minor damage to a single torpedo boat.
John George Bell is remembered at Tursdale on T62.02
