On Tower Hill Memorial is the name of Pilot First Class Robert Chambers, serving on Pilot Cutter Protector (South Shields) with the Lighthouse and Pilotage Authorities who died 31/12/1916.
The son of the late Robert and Ellen Chambers and the husband of Margaret Ann Chambers, of 91, Baring Street, South Shields.
In South Shields (Harton) Cemetery is a family headstone which reads:
In loving memory of
Margaret Ann Chambers
who died March 10th 1936
aged 66 years.
Also Robert
beloved husband of the above
who was lost through the
foundering of the Pilot Cutter
Protector by enemy action
Dec. 31st 1916, aged 48 years.
Robert was a Pilot 1st class, and he was 48 when he died. He was born in South Shields, the son of Robert and Ellen. His father was also a pilot, and in 1881, at the age of 13, young Robert was already a pilot assistant.
Robert married Margaret Ann Bell in 1892 and by 1901 they were living in Baring Street, South Shields with children Robert, Caroline, William and Joseph.
On New Year’s Eve, 31st December 1916, the Tyne pilot cutter Protector was destroyed by a German mine at the mouth of the River Tyne, killing all 19 men on board. The 200-ton steamer was serving the port of Tyne, guiding vessels through hazardous, mined waters during WWI. The loss was a devastating blow to the tight-knit Tyneside maritime community, leaving 33 children fatherless.
The Protector was waiting to transfer pilots to ships entering the Tyne when it hit a mine, likely laid by German submarine UC-31, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Otto von Schrader.
All 19 men on board perished, including 10 pilots, four pilot assistants, and five crew members.
The crew was mostly from North and South Shields. Victims included 70-year-old pilot Robert Phillips and his grandson Ralph Phillips, representing the interlinked nature of the families involved. The youngest was 16-year-old cabin boy Benjamin Rumney.
Aftermath: The explosion was so severe that only one body, that of Robert Phillips, was ever recovered, found in March 1917.
“There was a noise as if it was a volcano and all they saw was a column of water and smoke and the pilot cutter was no more,” says Bill Watson, whose uncle Ralph Phillips and great-grandfather Robert Phillips were on board.
Sources; The James Hoy Archive; Northumbrian WW1 Project; Bill Watson 2012; BBC; Pilots Log; The British Newspaper Archive;
Robert Chambers is remembered at South Shields on S86.030, S86.062 and in our List of Ships‘ Crew.
Crews.
