THE recent discovery of the wreck of the World War One warship HMS Hawke in the North Sea brings to mind the fate of one Helensburgh man in World War One.
The remains of HMS Hawke were found on August 12 by divers some 70 miles off the coast of Fraserburgh, at a depth of 110 metres.
HMS Hawke was a Royal navy warship, an Edgar Class protected cruiser, built at Chatham in Kent and fitted out with engines from the Fairfield yard on the Clyde.
She was launched in 1891 and was 118 metres long and 18 metres wide, with a draught of 7.3m, and was able to travel at a speed of 20 knots.
In the earliest days of the war she undertook blockade duties between Norway and Shetland as part of 10th Cruiser Squadron and in October 1914 moved further south into the North Sea to protect troop convoys from Canada.
The discovery of the wreck, which may now be designated as a war grave, was made by divers using research undertaken by Lost in Waters Deep, a group dedicated to locating shipwrecks and commemorating naval losses in Scottish waters during the First World War.
The team of divers, who have been searching for her for years, have described the wreck as remarkably well preserved.
HMS Hawke was torpedoed by a German U-boat on October 15, 1914. After being torpedoed she caught fire, capsized and sank in less than eight minutes.
It is believed that HMS Hawke, the seventh ship to bear that name, was the first British warship sunk in WW1. Of the crew, 524 souls were lost with only 70 seamen surviving the attack in the early days of the war.
More than one hundred of the sailors were under 18 years old, with the youngest aged only 14.
One of the sailors who lost his life was the ship’s surgeon, 24-year-old Helensburgh man Dr James Henry Watson.
James, known as Digby, was born in Helensburgh, where his father, Captain James Herbert Watson RN, was an Engineer Captain in the Royal Navy. He was born on August 31, 1890 in Southsea, near Portsmouth, and the family home in Helensburgh, where he lived with his mother Eliza Viets Smith, father, and sister Greta, was at Westwood, 17 Glasgow Street.
The family attended St Michael and All Angels Church in William Street.
Digby studied at King's School Canterbury, Edinburgh Academy (where he was known as ‘Bungy’) and then for an MA at the University of Edinburgh, where he played rugby for the first XV, as well as winning the middleweight boxing championship and winning the long jump in international competition against Ireland.
He was a rugby international; he captained Edinburgh Academicals 1912-13, played for the Barbarians and was selected, but never played, for Scotland. He was, however, capped three times for England in 1914.
At the outbreak of war, and newly qualified, he joined the Royal Navy as a surgeon and was posted to HMS Hawke.
He is remembered with honour on the Scottish National War Memorial, Chatham Naval Memorial, King’s School Memorial, Edinburgh Academy Memorial, the RFU Memorial at Twickenham, St Michael and All Angels memorial and on Helensburgh War Memorial.
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