Lizard Point tribute by family of World War One rating

Exactly 100 years later, at that specific time and date, his great niece Henrietta Sandford and her husband Mike, from Helston, went to Lizard Point to pay their own tribute to the serviceman who had been serving with the Royal Navy at the time of his death.

James had been born and brought up in Middleton Junction, Greater Manchester, and was the eldest son of John and Mary Simpson. He had two sisters and a little brother.

At the age of 18 he had enlisted in the Royal Navy and trained as a wireless transmission rating at Crystal Palace, Sydenham.

He loved his family and wrote regularly to them, as well as keeping a diary, which now give a fascinating insight into his adventures. These included experiencing a Zeppelin air raid over London, his first time at sea in a trawler, being in action against a U-boat, sinking another U-boat but then being cast adrift in an open top lifeboat for 36 hours. He then went on two long voyages from Plymouth, taking ammunition to Gibraltar, Malta, Crete and Moudros Harbour.

It was on the start of this third mission that James’s ship, MHS Lady Cory-Wright, was torpedoed by the German U-boat UC-17. As the ship was carrying thousands of sea mines, torpedoes, depth charges and detonators, the ship was effectively a floating bomb. It sank 14 miles south south-west of Lizard Point.

There was only one survivor, who was found hanging on to a sea mine, and he was eventually able to write to James’s parents and tell them what had happened to their son.

Henrietta and Mike have been publishing the letters and diary entries from James, as a blog, for the last two years, on the 100th anniversary of when he originally wrote them. It can be found at ww1lettersblog.wordpress.com

Although the diary entries now end, after James was killed, the blog will continue until early May as it tracks the condolence letters, memorials and letters from the Admiralty as the family sought to discover what had happened to their son and brother.