Alfred, (service number K/8974) a Leading Stoker was 24 years of age when he was killed in action
against the German fleet in the North Sea at the Battle of Jutland, on 31st May 1916, HMS
Indefatigable was a battlecruiser of the Royal Navy and the lead ship of her class. She was an
enlarged version of the earlier Invincible Class with a revised protection scheme and additional
length amidships to allow her two middle turrets to fire on either broadside.
The job of Leading Stoker, meant that Alfred would have been in charge of the good working order
of the engines This would have included such things as, boiler tube leak drill; pumping flooding
and drainage; the steam engines; etc., a lot more than just shovelling coal as many of us would have
assumed was the task the stokers undertook. They were in fact highly trained boiler mechanics and
technicians.
When WW1 began Indefatigable was serving with the 2nd Battlecruiser Squadron in the
Mediterranean, where she unsuccessfully pursued the battlecruiser Goeben and the light cruiser
Breslau of the German Imperial Navy as they fled towards the Ottoman Empire. The ship
bombarded Ottoman fortifications defending the Dardanelles on 3rd November 1914. Indefatigable
was sunk on 31st May 1916 during the Battle of Jutland, the largest naval battle of the war. Part of
Vice-Admiral Sir David Beatty’s Battlecruiser Fleet; she was hit several times in the first minutes
of the “Run to the South” the opening phase of the battlecruiser action. Shells from the German
battlecruiser Von der Tann caused an explosion ripping a hole in her hull, and a second explosion
hurled large pieces of the ship 200 feet in the air. Only two of her 1,019 crew survived - Leading
Seamen Falmer and Elliot – according to one of these men, Captain Sowerby also survived the
sinking, but died of wounds before he could be rescued.