In Newcastle upon Tyne (West Road) Crematorium is the Commonwealth War Grave of Lieutenant John Bone, serving on H.M.S. Drake with the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve who died 06/07/1945.
John Bone was educated at the South Shields High School. He leaves a widow.
John Bone, born 1906, died 6th July 1945, to father John Bone Snr., born 14th November 1868, baptised 6th December 1868, and his wife Jane Hetherington Reed in 1902, in Tynemouth Northumberland. In 1921, John and Jane Bone were residing, with their two children, John Bone and a Jane Hetherington Bone, born 1907, at 39 Trajan Avenue, South Shields, and John was a River Tyne Pilot. John Bone snr had obtained his Master certificate on 11th April 1896, at South Shields. Janet H. Bone, of 39 Trajan Avenue, died 17th November 1934, at 1a Clayton Riad, Newcastle upon Tyne. John Bone Snr., died, aged 97, on 23rd January 1966, in South Shields.
The Shields Daily News 09/07/1945 reports:-
Shields Pilot Dies Aged 39
A member of one of the Tyne’s oldest pilotage families and himself a member of the Tyne Pilotage Service before the war, Lieut. John Bone, R.N.V.R. has died after a short Illness in a Liverpool hospital.
Lieut. Bone whose home was 60 Vespasian Avenue, South Shields was 39. Volunteering for the Navy in 1939, he served with the Tyne Examination Service at the Naval Base, Dundee and was later sent to Malta from where he recently returned. He served for two years on Malta.
As a result of a wide sphere of outdoor activities he was very well known in the town. An enthusiastic fisherman, he had fished in most of the streams in Northumberland. He was an experienced yachtsman. An old and active member of the South Shields Amateur Rowing Club he was also well known, as a modeller of yachts and steamships and many of his finished models, correct to the smallest detail regularly graced the South Marine Park Lake.
Sources: The British Newspaper Archive; Barney Rice; Tyne Racing Club;
John Bone is remembered at Newcastle on NUT062, at Westoe in W101.08 page 14 and in our List of Ships’ Crews.
