Torpedoed twice - & remembered by the Battersea Flower Ladies - The story of sailor & policeman Frank Huntley 1882 - 1923.
by Richard Taylor

CHEERS went round the British fleet when the Armistice was announced on 11 November 1918. It was a moment when Folkestone-born sailor Frank Huntley could consider how lucky he had been.

He had survived the torpedoing of two of his ships, suffered the horror of seeing hundreds of his shipmates die and had been in action many times, including the British bombardment of the Turks at Gallipoli where his ship, the battleship HMS Cornwallis, had fired the first shot.

Francis Herbert Huntley had been born in 1882, the son of Charles Huntley, who owned stables in Folkestone. As a teenager he had worked as a blacksmith, but in 1898 he decided to join the Royal Navy as a Boy 2nd Class, going first to the training ship HMS Impregnable at Devonport.

Life in the navy’s training ships was tough, but Frank proved he was a bright lad and he was soon selected for training as a signaller.

His first seagoing posting came in January 1900, when he was sent to the 11,000-ton cruiser HMS Diadem, then serving with the Channel Fleet. More shore training followed at Chatham and in April 1901, now nearly 19 years old, he was rated Ordinary Signalman.

In the next few years, postings took him to the Far East, Australia, North America and the West Indies until he was discharged in September 1909 - but he went straight back into uniform as a constable with the Metropolitan Police.

Frank was one of the 10,000 policemen on duty in 1911 for the coronation of King George V and Queen Mary and, like most of those on duty that day, he received the official police issue of the Coronation Medal, one of five awards where were eventually to adorn his uniform.

He remained a naval reservist and when war broke out in August 1914 he was quickly back in naval rig. He was sent immediately as a leading signalman to the ill-fated HMS Hogue, then waiting at Chatham.

Later that month, the Hogue and other ships of the 7th Cruiser Squadron covered the disembarkation of the marines’ brigade, which landed at Ostend to help relieve pressure on troops retreating from Mons.

The squadron with its obsolete cruisers had been given the dangerous task of patrolling the Broad Fourteens area off the Dutch coast. On September 22, about 16 miles north-west of the Hook of Holland, Lieut Otto Weddigen in the tiny U9 had the trio of old, slow ships in his sights.

First to be torpedoed was the Aboukir. Her companions were standing by to take on survivors when Frank’s ship, the Hogue, was struck amidships. One of her funnels collapsed like a pack of cards and within in only three minutes she had a list of 40 degrees. She was on her way to the bottom.

Now the Cressey lowered all her boats, making herself a sitting duck, too. She paid the price for her humanitarian efforts and another of Weddigen’s torpedoes tore into her. Three ships sunk in one day; it was a devastating blow to the prestige of the Royal Navy.

There were many examples of courage that day. A later report by Commander Reginald Norton, of the Hogue, said: ‘All the men of the Hogue behaved extraordinarily well, obeying orders even when swimming for their lives, and I witnessed many cases of great self-sacrifice and gallantry.’

More than 1,400 men died that day. Most of the 800 who survived, among them Frank, were rescued by two small Dutch steamers and a British trawler.

In less than a month, Frank was sent to his next posting - the battleship HMS Cornwallis, of similar age to the Hogue. In February 1915 she fired the first shot in the preliminary bombardment of the Dardanelles and over the next two weeks saw plenty of action, exchanging shot and shell with the Turkish forts.

History has recorded the scale of the failure at Gallipoli, a plan which was the brainchild of the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill. By the end of the year the British were withdrawing and during the evacuation of Suvla Bay on December 20 the Cornwallis was the last ship to leave the Dardanelles.

The end was in sight, too, for the Cornwallis, now under orders to return home. On 9 January 1916, some 20 miles south-east of Malta, she was torpedoed and sunk by U32. Frank was still among her crew of about 670.

In this case, all of them, apart from 15 who were killed when the torpedo struck, abandoned ship safely and were taken aboard the destroyer HMS Beagle.

Frank sat out the rest of hostilities in HMS Cyclops, a repair ship which spent the whole war at the desolate Grand Fleet anchorage at Scapa Flow in the Orkneys. At least it meant there was little chance of being torpedoed a third time.

Early in 1919, Frank returned to the Metropolitan Police, where he served in the Wandsworth Division before moving to Lambeth in 1921. He was still in that division two years later when, on November 17, he left home at 9pm and paraded for duty at Kennington police station 45 minutes later. At 12.30am the following morning he was struck by a heart attack and fell dead on his beat in Lambeth Road.

On November 22 at 8am, a funeral cortege left Frank’s home in Prince of Wales’ Road, Battersea, with 28 police officers providing an escort on foot. After a mile or so, the rest of the journey to Folkestone was made by road with family mourners, including his widow Barbara and daughter Gladys. After a brief service at Christ Church, Frank was buried at Folkestone Cemetery.

Among the floral tributes were those from the Metropolitan Police and his colleagues in the force - and a wreath from the Battersea Flower Ladies to whom he was no doubt a familiar face as he patrolled the streets of London.

SOURCES:
Many sources were consulted in the process of piecing together Frank Huntley’s story, including various war histories. The story of the sinking of the Hogue and her sister ships is told fully by Alan Coles in ‘Three Before Breakfast’ (pub Kenneth Mason 1979).

Especially valuable in researching Frank’s civilian life were his Metropolitan Police record of service (PRO MEPO4/477) and other records held in the force’s own archives. The files of the South Western Star (London) produced an account of the inquest into his death and the Folkestone Gazette was consulted for an obituary and funeral report.

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