Tracing my Great Uncle
My grandfather’s eldest brother Ron died during world war two. Rumour has it his mother woke up on the night he died with a premonition of his death – and told her husband that Ron had drowned at sea; a while later they received confirmation of it.
Anyway, none of his brothers knew any of the details of what happened to Ron – other than being lost at sea, so during my research I decided to make an effort to discover what happened to him.
Thanks to the phenomenal members at the Family Tree forums we’ve managed to track down Ron, the ship he was on and what actually happened.
The ship he was on was a Catapult Armed Merchantman, with 1 Hurricane fighter on board, called SS Empire Lawrence. She served in several convoys before her final, PQ16. Older readers will know that means the Arctic… LINK tells us that her final convoy set sail from Reykjavik on 21st May 1942, bound for Murmansk, Russia. Her cargo on this voyage was explosives and ammunition. On the 25th May 1942, she launched the Hurricane and Pilot Officer A J Hay attacked a formation of Luftwaffe aircraft attacking the convoy. He was himself shot down in that attack. During the attack, SS Empire Lawrence was hit by a stick of bombs from the attacking Ju 88’s, and blew up immediately, with an enormous explosion. The ditched pilot was one of only a handful of survivors of the loss.
There is a first hand account of the event from the captain who picked up P O Hay, at LINK, as well as another at LINK . One of my favourite sites to search is LINK and that turns up some verbatim accounts of PQ16 as well.
From LINK ( go to 218.pdf)
The steamship Empire Lawrence was bombed and sunk by German aircraft on May 27th, 1942, off the North Cape on a voyage from Reykjavik to Murmansk. The captain, 11 crew and three gunners were lost.
Ronald Henry Swift is commemorated on panel 43 of the Tower Hill memorial in London, LINK which commemorates men and women of the Merchant Navy and Fishing Fleets who died in both World Wars and who have no known grave.
My aunt went to Tower Hill a couple of weeks ago and located the panel to take photos. I will upload the pictures as soon as I receive them.
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