On Portsmouth Naval Memorial, Hampshire is the name of P/JX 145563 Petty Officer William Wilson Elston serving on H.M.S. Chanticleer with the Royal Navy who died 18/11/1943.

He was the son of Thomas William and Christina Elston and the husband of Lucy Evelyn Elston, of South Shields, County Durham.

Christine Davison has submitted the following:

William Wilson Elston was the son of Thomas William and Christina Elston.

His father was a colliery engineman employed to work the pumps underground and had been born in Sunderland; his mother was from Edinburgh.

William was the eldest of five children and was born at Tyne Dock, South Shields, on 4th October 1902. He had two brothers and two sisters.

William’s mother died in 1917, and at that time they were living at 64 Charles Street, Boldon Colliery. His father remarried in 1918 to Mary Ellen Jeffrey. .

In 1921, William was in the Royal Navy with his ship HMS Ramillies at Plymouth; his residence was given as Rame, Cornwall, and he was an ordinary seaman.

William seems to have left the Navy sometime after 1921, as a document shows him re-entering on 27 August 1935, “to complete time for pension”.

In 1921, his family were living at 9 Ashbrooke Terrace, East Boldon, and his father was working at Boldon Colliery. His father died on the 8th April 1922 from throat cancer. William remained in the family house, perhaps to look after his siblings and continued to live there after he married Lucy Evelyn Swanson in 1940.

William  was a Petty Officer on HMS Chanticleer. His ship was part of the Atlantic Conveys escort, and on the 18th November 1943 at 3.24 p.m., it was hit by an acoustic torpedo fired from U-boat 515, 400 miles East North East of the Island of San Miguel, Azores, 29 men died, including William.

William Wilson Elston is remembered at East Boldon on E46.01 and in our List of Ships’ Crews.