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