Tribute From a Yorkshire Town
The Sinking of HMS Louvain - and the story of Arthur Farrar
by Richard Taylor

ARTHUR FARRAR, then 18 years old, had the muscle that the Royal Navy needed when they were recruiting stokers just after the turn of the last century.  

West Yorkshireman Arthur, whose parents later lived in Rastrick, near Brighouse n famous for its brass band n had always had a hankering for the sea and the navy certainly fulfilled its promise of giving him the chance to see the world. There were few parts of the globe he did not eventually visit.  

In August 1902, fed up with digging stone at a local quarry, he signed for 12 years in the navy, going immediately to Portsmouth to start training as a stoker, one of the toughest and dirtiest jobs afloat in the days when ships were driven by steam engines consuming hundreds of tons of coal.  

He had been born at Upper Edge, Elland, in 1884 where his father, Sam, was in charge of an engine, possibly at a quarry. When he enlisted in the navy, he was only just over 5ft 3ins tall, with light brown hair, grey eyes and a scar on his right hand, perhaps the result of a quarry accident. 

His first sea-going posting was in 1903 to the cruiser HMS Good Hope which was soon sent for duty in the West Indies. Two years later he was moved to another cruiser, HMS Terrible, a veteran with battle honours for the recent campaigns against the Boers in South Africa and the Boxers in China. 

In October 1905, the Terrible escorted the battleship HMS Renown which took the Prince and Princess of Wales n later King George V and Queen Mary on their cruise to India. The men who took part in this official royal event were awarded a commemorative medal by the Princess, a memento which, by all accounts, Arthur valued highly.  

In July 1907 Arthur returned to the Good Hope, then flying the flag of Rear-Adm Sir Percy Scott, the navy’s leading gunnery expert. The following autumn the Good Hope, with other cruisers of her squadron, paid an official visit to South Africa. After enthusiastic receptions at a number of ports, they set sail to show the British flag in South American waters. In December 1908 they returned to Europe but on their way back to England, the men were entertained to a bullfight in Spain. This and much else is included in the lengthy obituary which appeared in Arthur’s local paper, the Brighouse Echo, in 1918 after he lost his life when HMS Louvain was torpedoed in the Eastern Mediterranean. 

Early in 1910 Arthur had been posted to another cruiser, HMS Minotaur, just in time for her to sail for the China Station. It provided him with the opportunity for his second visit to both China and Japan. By the end of May 1912, however, he was back at Portsmouth for more training, preparing him for promotion to Stoker Petty Officer. 

As international tension increased in 1914, he was sent to the battleship HMS Queen which, when war broke out in August, was with the 5th Battle Squadron for operations in the Channel. On New Year’s Day 1915, when she was on patrol off Portland, a U-boat launched a torpedo at the Queen. It missed, but two other torpedoes struck the battleship HMS Formidable, sending her to the bottom with the loss of  nearly 550 officers and men. 

Another taste of action for the Queen and her crew came in April 1915 when she played in important role in the ill-fated Gallipoli landings. With other warships the Queen carried her share of an advance force of 1,500 soldiers from the Australian divisions. The story goes that she led the way with her band playing ‘Fall in and Follow Me’. 

In the face of fierce Turkish resistance, the troops were landed at Gaba Tepe in 36 boats, towed by 12 picket boats, followed immediately by eight destroyers carrying another 2,500 men and towing a number of transport ships’ lifeboats. 

According to his obituary in the Echo, Arthur n recently promoted to Petty Officer n commanded a tug landing Australian troops, an experience which, despite all the casualties around him, he survived without a scratch.

In May the Queen and other British warships were sent to the Adriatic to stiffen the Italian fleet, but in little over a year Arthur was on his way to chillier climes. Posted to the old battleship HMS Glory, he was to spent 14 months in Northern Russia where British forces in the White Sea helped to ensure supplies to Archangel and Murmansk. 

While Arthur was doing his bit to help Britain’s allies in the last days before the Russian Revolution, he would probably have received news that his 34-year-old brother Leonard, a lance-corporal in the Northumberland Fusiliers, had been killed in action in the Arras section of the Western Front. In late 1917 the family were able to meet again and no doubt together mourn Len’s death. Arthur had three weeks leave in November but when he returned in his barracks in Portsmouth he was allowed further leave at Christmas. He left home on Boxing Day. It was the last time his family were to see him. 

The next month n on January 20, 1918 n Arthur was a passenger on the Louvain, an armed boarding steamer often used to provide services to the Mediterranean fleet. He was due to join the destroyer HMS Welland and was being taken Malta to Mudros. Without warning she was struck by a torpedo fired from a German submarine, the UC22. As she sank, the death toll ran to 224; only 24 of those who lost their lives were from the Louvain’s own crew, while the rest were due for dispersal throughout the fleet. 

Detailed accounts of the destruction of the Louvain are hard to find but one appeared in a national newspaper in 1998. Harold Spriggs had been a 3rd Class Writer with the ship. As a 99-year-old clergyman, he later recalled the submarine attack and its terrible consequences: “I woke up in a dream world with bodies floating around me and muffled screams and cries for help. It was a deathly nightmare. I felt nothing... but somehow I was calm and knew I’d be OK. God was looking after me.” 

Arthur Farrar was not so lucky. His body was never recovered but his name is commemorated, among so many others, on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial n and, of course, on Brighouse’s own war memorial. 

He was remembered in other ways, too. A meeting in November 1918, called by the Mayor, Alderman J Wood, decided to provide a ‘memento’ for Brighouse men who had served in the army and navy during the war. In April 1919 it was agreed that the town’s tribute medal should be an oval in bronze, with the borough seal in the centre. 

It also bears the inscription: ‘A token of gratitude from Brighouse 1914-1918’.  The reverse of each medal is engraved with the soldier’s or sailor’s name, their regiment or ship; one was given to the next of kin of men who did not return. 

• Arthur Farrar’s service record, PRO; birth certificate

• Brighouse Echo, 1918 and 1919;

• The Times and Yorkshire Post, 1918

• The Mail on Sunday, 8 November 1998

• Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s registers

• 1891 census for Elland (via West Yorkshire Archives Service)

• Fifty Years in the Royal Navy, by Adm Sir Percy Scott, 1919

• Seas of Adventure, by E Keble Chatterton, 1936

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