Notes: See Every Name A Story.
1. Following Britain’s declaration of war in August 1914, the first naval encounter occurred on the 6th when the cruiser HMS Amphion engaged a German mine-layer in the North Sea. The man who fired the first shot from the Amphion – and the first shot in regards to Britain’s participation in the war – was a Windy Nook man, Private John Brown-King of the Royal Marines. In the same action, in attempting to rescue one of his comrades he received the fatal wound from which he died a few days later in hospital”. Church leaflet
2. There are also typed pages telling the story of the Brown-King family in some detail, and adding that the father donated “many useful objects to the school museum in his son’s memory”, the school being Shipcote School at Deckham. This essay was written and signed by Joseph Armstrong, 87 Inskip Terrace, Gateshead, NE8 4AJ. He adds as Envoi that when a submarine was built and called “H.M.S. Amphion”, one of the civilians on board at the launching was John Lindsay Brown-King, nephew of the above.
3. HMS Amphion was a light cruiser of 3440 tons which was sunk by a mine in the North Sea. She became the first ship in the Royal Navy to be sunk in the Great War.
4. “A Windy Nook Hero. One of the first to give his life for his country’s cause in the present campaign was Private John Brown-King of Windy Nook, after three weeks of suffering in the Shotley Naval Hospital, as a result of injuries received in the blowing up of H.M.S. Amphion. His young life was cut short, not in the ordinary methods of civilized warfare, but by the cunning and devilishly-devised death-traps of the German which have demanded so heavy a toll on the North Sea. We know that the sympathy of all will go out to the parents of this hero in their bereavement.” (Heslop’s Local Advertiser)
5. See his Every Name a Story entry
