Name
Stephen Joseph Gaffney
Conflict
Second World War
Date of Death / Age
24/02/1942
37
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Able Seaman
Merchant Navy
S.S. White Crest (Newcastle-on-Tyne)
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
TOWER HILL MEMORIAL
Panel 118.
United Kingdom
Headstone Inscription
NA
UK & Other Memorials
Not on the Hitchin memorials
Biography
His ship was the S.S. ‘White Crest’ of Newcastle-on-Tyne. This ship was built in 1928 and was of 4,365 tons. It left Cardiff on the 12th February 1942 and Belfast Lough on the 15th February bound for Buenos Aires with coal in Convoy ONS 67. On the 19th February contact with the convoy was lost during a heavy gale about 900 miles west Inishtrahull and was never seen again. The ship carried a crew of 47. It was presumed to have been sunk by a submarine at 43 45N and 42 15W. The German submarine U.558 attacked the convoy on the 24th February 1942 during which five ships were torpedoed in four attacks WNW of the Azores. The submarine escaped.
He has no known grave, but the sea and is remembered on Panel 118 of the Merchant Navy Memorial to the Missing on Tower Hill in the City of London.
He was the son of Richard and Florence Gaffney and husband of Mrs LEO. Gaffney of Hitchin.
Acknowledgments
David C Baines – ‘Hitchin’s Century of Sacrifice’, ‘British Merchant Vessels lost during 2nd W.W.’ by HMSO, ‘U-boat operations of the 2nd World War - Vol. 2’ by K. Wynn, ‘Dictionary of Disasters at Sea’ by C. Hocking
