Stoker 1st Class

The Royal Navy used the rank structure Ordinary Stoker, Stoker, Leading Stoker, Stoker Petty Officer and Chief Stoker. The non-substantive (trade) badge for stokers was a ship's propeller. "Stoker" remains the colloquial term used to refer to a Marine Engineering rating, despite the decommissioning of the last steam-powered vessel some years ago.

Stoker 1st Class Horace Stanley Sharp

Submitted by Deejaya on

Stoker First Class Horace Stanley Sharp, K17954, Royal Navy, was killed instantly by a bomb dropped on Chatham Dockyard by a German aircraft carrying out a raid on Kent on the bright moonlit night of September 3rd, 1917. Six enemy aircraft had flown up the Thames Estuary to attack Sheerness, Thanet and Chatham, killing 107 Naval ratings and wounding 86 others.

Stoker 1st Class Charles Higgs

Submitted by Deejaya on

 

Stoker First Class Charles Higgs, K/7429, was lost when the armed boarding steamer HMS Fauvette hit two mines laid by a German submarine and sank in the Thames estuary, off North Foreland, Kent, on March 9th, 1916. He was aged 25 and one of 14 crew reported missing, believed dead.

The son of James and Elizabeth Higgs, of 230 Wellington Street, Luton, the former labourer joined the Royal Navy on July 21st, 1910. He had served in the Dardanelles from the beginning of naval operations there, serving on HMS Lord Nelson until transferred to the Fauvette.

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