Name
Herbert Thomas Goodall
25 September 1891
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
08/02/1917
26
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Stoker 1st Class
K/30789
Royal Navy
H.M.S. "Ghurka."
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
British War and Victory medals
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
PORTSMOUTH NAVAL MEMORIAL
United Kingdom
Headstone Inscription
N/A
UK & Other Memorials
Holy Trinity Church Wall Memorial, Potten End, Not on the Bovingdon memorials, Not on the Berkhamsted memorials
Pre War
Herbert Thomas Goodall was born on 25 September 1891 in Yorkshire, the son of Annie Rose Goodall.
On the 1911 Census he was working as a Groom (Domestic) and living at Westbrook Hay, Bovingdon, Hemel Hempstead, the home of Dudley H Ryder.
His mother's address as next of kin on naval records was given as Rose Cottage, Great Berkhamsted Common, Herts, and later at 36 Victoria Park Road, Cardiff when her name is given as Mrs Anne Sellick Goodall.
Wartime Service
He enlisted into the Royal Navy and served from 14 February 1916. He joined the crew of HMS Ghurka from 28 August 1916, which was a tribal class destroyer built in 1907and was part of the Dover Patrol during the First World War.
At around 7.45 pm on 8 February 1917 HMS Ghurka was sailing through heavy seas four miles south-east of the Dungeness buoy, Kent, when the ship hit a mine laid by the German coastal minelayer submarine UC-47 and started sinking immediately. Many of the crew died in the explosion, but others drowned before the nearest ship, the armed trawler Highlander, reached the scene after hearing the explosion. When it arrived only the destroyer's bow was above the water with her stern having touched the seabed. When the Highlander tried to launch her rescue boat it was swept away by huge swells but five men were rescued from the icy sea covered in oil. They were the only ones from the 79 crew which survived.
His name is commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial.
Acknowledgments
Brenda Palmer
Jonty Wild, dacorumheritage.org.uk, www.coastalheritage.org.uk,
