On Chatham Naval Memorial is the name of 7581S Stoker Harold Pickard, serving on H.M.S. Natal with the Royal Naval Reserve who died 30/12/1915.

Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:-
Harold Pickard was born in Groby, Leicestershire on 20th May 1895 to artificial stone worker Thomas Pickard and his wife Sarah Ann (nee Swinfield).  He had older siblings George, Sarah, Albert and Mabel and two younger brothers Stanley and Walter.  The family moved to Stockton on Tees at the turn of the century where Sarah Ann died in childbirth in May 1900.

In the summer of 1901 father Thomas married Annie Haynes in Norton on Tees and they had three sons, Leonard, Reginald and John William.  By 1915 the family were living at 5 Calf Fallow Lane in Norton and Harold, aged 20, was working with his father as a concrete maker.

On 2nd May 1915 Harold enrolled with the Royal Naval Reserve and his first posting was on the SS Gibraltar, a prize ship captured by the Royal Navy from the Germans, working in the Aegean Sea. On 1st December he found himself on board the battlecruiser SS Natal part of the Grand Fleet, which had moved from Scapa Flow to the naval base at Invergordon in the Cromarty Firth on the east coast of Scotland.

As a gesture of Christmas goodwill the Captain invited civilians aboard for a film show on 30th December, but the party had only just started when a series of explosions tore the ship apart, and she sank within minutes with the loss of 421 lives.  One of these was Stoker Harold Pickard, whose body was never recovered.

The Stockton Herald, South Durham and Cleveland Advertiser 15/01/1916 reports:-
PICKARD – Harold, beloved son of Tom and Annie Pickard, 19 Hill-street West Stockton killed by explosion on H.M.S. Natal, December 30th, 1915. Mourned by all. He did his duty.

Acknowledgements: Barney Rice

Harold Pickard is remembered at Norton on N68.02, at Stockton in S138.18 and in our List of Ships’ Crews.