Judith Johnson
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The Sinking of HMS Hythe - 28 October 1915

26/10/2012

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PictureCaptain David Salomons
There are countless instances in all wars of tragic wholesale loss of life. In this part of Kent, a terrible blow was dealt to the community of High Brooms,
Southborough and Tunbridge Wells when a large number of men died in an accidental collision with another British troopship, only seventeen days after
they had left from home to join the conflict in Turkey.

Ninety-seven years ago, on 28 October 1915, the troopship HMS Hythe was sunk approaching the Dardanelles. HMS Sarnia, another troopship steaming away from shore after disembarking her troops, collided with the Hythe, which went down in ten minutes. The Hythe was sailing without lights in order to avoid detection by Turkish batteries on the shore. There were 275 men on board including crew, and 154 of them drowned. 129 of these were men of the 1st/3rd Kent Field Company, Royal Engineers, from Tunbridge Wells, Southborough, and the surrounding region. Twenty-four of them are named on Southborough War Memorial.

The Company's initial training took place in Sheffield Hall, Draper Street, Southborough, then in the former gasworks in Speldhurst Road, later converted by Sir David Salomons at his personal expense into a well-equipped drill hall. Sir David was Honorary Colonel of the Kent (Fortress) Royal Engineers. The Company left their depot at Gillingham on 11 October 1915, and sailed from Devonport the following day in the converted liner Scotian, not
knowing that the government was already preparing to abandon the Gallipoli operation as a lost cause. During the voyage, Captain David Salomons, the only son of Sir David, wrote of his pride in the men, though fearing few appreciated the dangers into which they were sailing. The men were transferred to HMS Hythe, a converted cross-Channel ferry, on the morning of 28 October.

PictureFrederick Somers
The Company was formed from Territorials, so few of them were regular soldiers, though some, like Frederick Somers, 37, had served formerly in the Boer War. Fred worked as a plumber and was also a volunteer fireman.

The Army officers were allowed to enter the engine room for warmth for most of the journey, and the men crowded the decks, the drivers to the fore well deck and the sappers to aft during the passage. Accounts speak of being very crowded, almost shoulder to shoulder. Because of the weather and the choppy seas, an awning was erected from side to side of the
Hythe to provide some overhead cover against rain and spray, and many of the soldiers huddled underneath. The men did as many other soldiers have done when together and nowhere to go; they talked, sang popular songs, slept if they could or sat with private thoughts and wishes for the future. This was very much a  family unit, with many knowing each other through school, cricket team, football team, living in the same road etc.

Driver Fred Mills, from Speldhurst, was one of those who watched the disaster unfold and
survived. He saw the Sarnia bearing down on the Hythe just seconds before the collision. The Hythe’s crew had just time to give a warning blast on the siren  before the heavier ship hit them forward of the bridge, ploughing into the little vessel’s side, almost cutting her in two. The Hythe’s commander, sensing that the ship was about to go down, called to
Captain Salomons, “Come on, jump. This is your last chance. I am going now." But Salomons stood firm, saying, “No, I will see my men safe first”. He was seen with Company Sergeant Major John Carter, trying to launch a lifeboat. They stood on the bridge, Salomons exhorting his men to keep cool and try to save themselves. They went down with the ship as it slid under the waves.

Fred Mills recalled:"I think I can sacredly say that he died trying for others as he was with the other officers who were saved. Our Major had to take to the water only but for remaining almost to the last, and I am told he wanted the Captain to follow. One of the Sappers who was late himself in leaving the ship as she was sinking said the last he saw of him was trying to lower a boat. If he was not thinking of others one would imagine he would have gone straight for his own Life Belt of which he had a beauty and would be impossible for him to sink in that time. It is my own opinion if he had of thought of himself first he would have been saved, and if I am right he died a hero’s death and we honour him.”

A large number of men who lived along Silverdale Road in High Brooms died in the Hythe disaster. It is recalled anecdotally that the postman delivering news of their death along this road became so overwhelmed by the distress his delivery was causing that he turned back to his depot before he had completed his round.


PictureHarry Goldbaum
Harry Goldbaum, just seventeen when he drowned, was the Trumpeter for the unit, and gained his place because another boy's mother would not let him go as underage. Harry was believed to have worked on the Salomons estate in Southborough, his parents being resident in Stepney.

PictureThomas Godsmark
The family of Thomas Godsmark, twenty-one years old, believed that he drowned because he would not leave the horses in his care. Thomas Handley, nineteen years old, worked for the Co-operative Society in Tunbridge Wells and was a keen footballer, playing for St. Luke's Football Club. His father, a railway porter, had died in the Boer War in 1900.


PictureThomas Handley, seated, at family wedding
A marble plaque  was unveiled a year later to the day at the Drill Hall, Speldhurst Road on 28 October 1916. It had been commissioned and paid for by Sir David Salomons. It was removed in the 1950s to avoid damage to it, and traced, returned and placed in St Matthew's Church in High Brooms, Tunbridge Wells in October 1965. Rededication took place,
attended by five survivors of the Hythe, as a result of the naming of Hythe Close in London Road, Southborough.

The men are also commemorated on the Helles Memorial, on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey as well as their home war memorials in Kent. Two houses,
Hythe (No 8) and Sarnia (No 6), in Gordon Road, High Brooms were built in the 1930s for a survivor of the Hythe disaster, Edmund Cavie.


For many years, on 28th October, the survivors of the Hythe disaster, and the families of those lost, paraded from the Drill Hall in Speldhurst  Road (now
the site of the New Life Church) to Southborough War Memorial, to honour the dead, but this practice was discontinued in the 1960s, no doubt due to old age and a lack of public participation.

Frank Stevens of Tonbridge has worked very hard to record the story of the Hythe disaster. His excellent book
Southborough Sappers of the Kent (Fortress) Royal Engineers includes a great deal of carefully-researched detail for anyone interested in reading further on the subject. Frank will be speaking about the Hythe disaster at a meeting of the Southborough Society on 15 January 2013.


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The Cinema Museum

14/10/2012

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PictureArt Deco doors, The Cinema Museum
My local childhood cinema was the Cranbrook Regal. I have many happy memories - paying my 2 shillings, seeing the ticket slide out of the flat slot on the   counter, climbing up the stairs clutching my Opal Fruits and chocolate-covered raisins to lean over the velvet barrier of the Circle and look down on the   front rows of the  'flea-pit' where the town's naughty boys sat. My brother Tim and sister-in-law Gloe used to go regularly, and on their return Gloe would regale us (no pun intended!) with scene-by-scene accounts of the latest films like Barbarella and Easy Rider. I   remember enjoying taking my nephew to see The Jungle Book - my Disney favourite. My brother Jonny and I wept through The Incredible Journey and
thrilled to Where Eagles Dare, on the edge of our seats by the Intermission. My mother took me to see Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, which we both adored, and somehow from that moment Maria Von Trapp (with Julie playing her) fused with my Mum. That's still a film I watch if I'm feeling in need of cheering up.  I also recall the gasp of revulsion from Mum and her generation at the scene in Sunday Bloody Sunday when Peter Finch and Murray Head had the first gay kiss on screen. Although she was a pretty broad-minded woman with liberal views, she found it quite shocking. I saw Zefirelli's Romeo and Juliet with a friend and her boyfriend, who was most embarrassed by my loud howling and sobbing at the tragic moment when Romeo took his own life, and I knew Juliet was only drugged and sleeping! The Regal was demolished some years back, and is now a Co-operative supermarket car-park, but the wall where posters were displayed is still there.

When I moved to London as a young adult in the mid-1970s, it was great to be able to buy a copy of Time Out, look up the list of films showing and track down something vintage like Les Enfants du Paradis. This was in the days before video, DVD or Internet, so sometimes you had to wait years to see a film again. I remember going to see Mel Brooks' The Producers at the Biograph, behind Victoria Station, managed by Henry Cooper's twin brother. It was in a double-bill with a French film, which may have explained the number of men in mackintoshes sitting on their own! We lived for a while near the Screen on the Green, Islington, a great little independent cinema. They used to serve pizza and coffee in the interval, and put together really interesting double-bills, old films partnered with new releases. We saw King Hu's superb A Touch of Zen there. There were still some huge old cinemas around - we took our small son to see the remake of Flash Gordon at a massive art-deco beauty in Holloway Road, with an ear-shattering soundtrack to match!

PictureCafe Chatica
I still love the thrill of going to the pictures, so it was with some excitement that I learnt of the existence of the Cinema Museum in London. We drove up there yesterday, as my husband had been invited, as author of  Niedermayer & Hart,  to join in a bookselling and signing event organised by Fantom Films (the connection being Martin's appearance many years back in a Dr Who episode).

London is an endlessly fascinating city, of which I never tire, and I'm always pleased to have the opportunity to see a new corner of it. We found a great little Colombian cafe, Chatica, under the arches at Elephant and Castle - bright and cheery - where we had coffee, and then made our way to set up at the Cinema Museum, which is located in what was the administrative building, or the Master's House, of the Lambeth Workhouse. Charlie Chaplin was brought to this workhouse at the age of seven by his mother, who was on the verge of
destitution, which makes a particularly apt connection for a cinema museum. Entering through the front door, we found ourselves in a nostalgic wonderland of cinema posters, display boards, ticket machines, art-deco doors, projection cameras and other artefacts, and climbed up narrow stairs (reminiscent themselves of so many old cinema buildings!) into a truly amazing high-ceilinged room - the former Workhouse chapel, where residents would be
required to turn up for services on Thursdays and Sundays.

PictureJames Hayter
The two co-founders, Ronald Grant and Martin Humphries, were at the event, and I explained that my father James Hayter had been a film actor, appearing in some 108 films during his career. The museum has a massive archive and collection of   posters, programmes, and other cinema ephemera, and Ronald kindly appeared with a wonderful surprise - he showed me a number of items catalogued under Dad's name, including a handwritten letter from Dad to a film critic, sent just before my father left for New York to play Friar Lawrence opposite Olivia de Havilland in Romeo & Juliet on Broadway; a newspaper clipping reporting my arrival, printed the day after my birth; and, most touchingly, a really smashing photograph of Dad which I had never seen - taken in his later years.
 
The Cinema Museum has a fantastically eclectic programme of events for film-lovers. Last night the actress Eunice Gayson was giving a talk and presenting her new autobiography. She was the first ever Bond girl - older readers may remember her from Dr No and From Russia With Love - who meets James in the casino and inevitably ends up in his arms! Last month there was an evening with Sir Donald Sinden, whose long and successful acting career includes one of my favourite films The Cruel Sea.  But it's not all nostalgia -the Museum and its programme of events is well worth a visit for film-buffs of any age. 
 
We couldn't stay for Miss Gayson - we were beetling back to Kent for an excellent concert of music and poetry in memory of the late and much-missed Gareth Buckett, a poet, artist and musician who died last year, given in aid of the Motor Neurone Disease Association. However, utilising a movie catchphrase from the eighties, I'll be back!

Picture
Extract from the Evening News, March 1956
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    Lifelong bookworm, love writing too. Have been a theatrical agent and reflexologist among other things, attitude to life summed up by Walt Whitman's MIRACLES.

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