Harold Worbey

Name

Harold Worbey

Conflict

Second World War

Date of Death / Age

08/04/1941
24

Rank, Service Number & Service Details

Stoker 2nd Class
C/KX 103863
Royal Navy
H.M.S. Capetown

Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards

Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country

KIRKEE NEW CEMETERY
4. J. 5.
India

Headstone Inscription

"THY KINGDOM COME THY WILL BE DONE"

UK & Other Memorials

Hitchin Town Memorial, St. John's War Church, Memorial, Hitchin Roll of Honour 1939 – 1945 (Book) St Mary’s Church, Hitchin

Biography

He worked at the Hitchin Bronze Powder Works before the war, and this is where he met his future wife. They had only been married a short time before Harold sailed just before Christmas 1940. 


His Service Number was C/KX 103863 and he was part of the crew of H.M.S. ‘Capetown’, a cruiser of 4,290 tons completed in 1922. The warship had 5 x 6" guns among its armament and \\-as capable of 29 knots using 8 Yarrow oil-fired boilers. An explosion in the boiler-room resulted in the death of Harold and caused three other casualties. The ship was damaged although it did not sink. The cause of the explosion has not been satisfactorily explained. 


Initially Harold was buried in a cemetery in Bombay but was later moved to Plot 4, Row J, Grave 5 in the Kirkee War Cemetery near Poona. A private inscription on the headstone reads "Thy Kingdom come Thy will be done". 


He was the husband of Winifred Hilda Worbey and the son of Arthur and Margaret Worbey, all of Hitchin. 

Acknowledgments

David C Baines – ‘Hitchin’s Century of Sacrifice’, Mrs W. Jackson, his wife at that time, ‘Dictionary of Disasters at Sea’ by C. Hocking