ENGINE ROOM ARTIFICER ERNEST CECIL PATTEN: M6993
Royal Navy HMS Goliath
Cecil was born in 1892, the elder of two children born to Thomas and Alice Patten the second being his younger sister Minnie. Thomas was considerably older than Alice but had been a widower when he married her.
Thomas was a builder and contractor and the family made their home at 62 East Street.
When he was eighteen, Cecil was boarding with the Timms family in Dartmouth, Devon. Another eighteen year old – Edward Milton -shared the lodgings, and both young men were engineering apprentices.
The Dartmouth connection is significant, because Cecil joined the Navy as an Artificer – a qualified member of crew, trained in the maintenance and operation of the boilers – a vital job on board the steamships of the day.
Cecil signed on for twelve years’ service in December 1912 and saw service on several ships before he joined the crew of the battleship HMS Goliath in March 1915.
Goliath was one of the war ships giving supporting fire to the Allied forces involved in the landings at Cape Helles and Anzac Cove in the Dardanelles. The night of May 13th. was dark and cloudy and a German torpedo boat SS Mauvanet, managed to slip through the Allied destroyers protecting the battleship and fire off three torpedoes. These hit Goliath amidships and the vessel listed to one side and then turned turtle before most of the crew could get out on deck. She sank minutes later with only 180 of the 750-crew surviving.
Deep below decks in the engine room, Cecil stood no chance of escape.
He is remembered on the Chatham Naval Memorial.
Image: Crew members of HMS Goliath