On Tower Hill Memorial is the name of  Second Officer 166597 Douglas Oliver serving on S.S. Gwynwood (London) with the Merchant Navy who died 04/02/1941.

Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:-

Douglas Oliver was born in Sunderland on 3rd November 1918 to Walter Jeffries Oliver and his wife Phyllis (nee Phillips) who had married two years previously.   Their first son Robert had been born on 25th September 1917.

The 1921 census shows that Phyllis and the two boys were living in Bristol, but of father Walter there is no trace.  Walter served in the Merchant Navy during World War 1, was he still at sea?

By 1939 the family had returned to Sunderland and was living in Roker Park Road.  Father Walter was working as a draper’s clerk, whilst son Robert was a wire rope tester/ inspector; two younger boys Howard, born in 1926, and Jack born in 1932 were still at school, and Douglas had followed in his father’s footsteps and become a merchant seaman.

The Gwynwood, a collier requisitioned by the army during the war, survived an attack when bombed by German aircraft on 26th January 1940 whilst off Barrow Deep in the Thames Estuary. She was not so lucky on her return passage to Sunderland, in ballast, when whilst at anchor in the Humber estuary on 4th February 1941 she was sunk when a parachute mine landed on the aft deck.  All the crew were lost including Second Officer Douglas Oliver.

Douglas Oliver is remembered at Sunderland on S140.159  and in our List of Ships’ Crews.