From Boy Seaman to Mayor
The Story of Lt. Cdr. J. H. Turner
by Richard Taylor

As his life drew near to its close in 1977, former Bournemouth mayor James Hugh Turner could look back on a long and fulfilling 95 years, spanning naval service in two world wars and a distinguished career as a local politician.

He joined the navy in May1897 as a slightly built, fresh complexioned 15-year-old. After surviving the tough life and rigorous discipline of the training ships, he went on to become a gunnery officer, rising all the way to lieutenant-commander, no mean achievement even in the early decades of the 20th century.

The son of tax collector Theophilus Turner and his wife Phoebe, he had been born in October 1881 at the family home at Rose Cottage, Upton Bishop, some three miles from Ross-on-Wye.

Between the wars he took charge of boys' training at a civilian nautical school at Penarth in South Wales, drawing deeply on his own experiences as a boy in the Royal Navy. When he retired from that, he moved to Bournemouth where he became mayor in 1949. Always a caring man with strong Christian convictions, he served with distinction in local government for many years and was especially well known for his work in the fields of health and the welfare of the handicapped.

When James Turner married at Alverstoke, near Gosport, in 1905, he was still only a seaman although he had seen plenty of service overseas as a gunnery rating. He was promoted to the warrant officer rank of Gunner in June 1911 and the following year he was posted to the 13,550-ton cruiser HMS Achilles with the 2nd Cruiser Squadron. The squadron visited Norway in June 1914 and was part of the massive fleet which was reviewed by King George V at Spithead the following month, almost on the eve of the First World War.

In November 1914 there was a gun explosion aboard Achilles, in which he may well have been involved, but the squadron was to face a far greater disaster in December 1915 when its ships were lying at anchor in the shelter of Cromarty Firth. Achilles' sister ship, the Natal, was rent by a series of explosions and within a few horrifying minutes she was turned into a blazing wreck before capsizing.

More than 400 officers and men n over half the ship's company lost their lives in a tragic incident which was later put down to faulty cordite. Officers of the watch on Turner's ship immediately launched their boats to pick up survivors. Two days later a memorial service was held aboard the squadron's flagship, Shannon, and wreathes were dropped on the water, a tribute witnessed by the whole squadron.

Achilles missed the momentous Battle of Jutland in May 1916 because she was refitting at the time, but Turner stayed with her until February 1917 when he went to the Portsmouth gunnery school at HMS Excellent where he passed both gunnery and torpedo courses.

He was commissioned as a lieutenant in March 1918 and the following month was posted to HMS Wallington, the RN base at Immingham where he was listed as the senior officer of HMS Oriflamme, the yacht which acted as base ship. He saw out the war at Immingham but then, in April 1919, he was sent to the 8,000-ton monitor HMS Terror, little more than a floating battery with two huge 15in guns. She proudly wore battle honours for the Belgian Coast for 1916-18, where she had been used to harass the flank of the German armies, and for the attack on Zeebrugge in 1918, when British naval forces sought to block one of the U-boats' exits to the North Sea.

After the Armistice, the Terror relieved another monitor, the Marshal Soult, as director and fire control training ship, arriving at Portsmouth in January 1919. In July of that year she was used in firing trials against the old battleship Swiftsure, activities in which Turner, as gunnery lieutenant, would have been fully involved. Over the next two years there were further firing trials, mostly against former enemy submarines and warships. Turner missed the last of these as he was ashore at the naval base at Portsmouth from November 1921 until he retired at his own request some eleven months later.

The next critical point in his career came in August 1923 when the management committee at the J A Gibbs Home at Penarth, a branch of the National Children's Home, decided to appoint a superintendent and nautical instructor. The home, set up in 1918, operated as a nautical school, preparing boys for careers in both the Royal Navy and Merchant Navy, as well as the army or other trades or professions. It was here that Turner took up the post of superintendent and later governor.

Today the former home is known as Headlands, a special school catering for the education of children in need. Its story has been researched by head teacher Phil Carradice who says that Turner was a man of considerable ability and skill. In an unpublished MEd thesis on the school, Mr Carradice wrote: "Eric Cook, son of the home's handyman, remembers him as being caring and approachable, while Harold Woodhouse, in his letters to Turner long after the latter had retired, continually stressed the advanced and enlightened nature of the regime at the branch. In a letter dated 2 May 1931, he commented: 'It seems to me that before long you will take up something to occupy your mind and hand, you were not meant to languish in retirement. If I were a millionaire I would start an NCH branch in Bournemouth and you would be Governor, and then we would not hear of your pining for the past.'"

Harold Woodhouse was one of two brothers who had been among the first admissions to the home in October 1918. He went on to gain a First Class degree at Cardiff University but, tragically, was killed at the controls of an RAF bomber over Germany in 1943. His brother, Leslie, joined the Navy and, like Turner, was promoted from the lower deck. He, too, retired as a lieutenant-commander. He remembered his mentor affectionately as a good friend and advisor.
In March 1926 Turner was promoted to lieutenant-commander on the retired list and just under two years later he retired to Bournemouth. It was to prove the opening of yet another major chapter in his life.

In 1932 he was elected to the Borough Council as a member for the Southbourne Ward and one mark of his continuing interest in the welfare of others came when he joined Bournemouth Blind Aid Society in 1934. During the Second World War he was recalled from retirement, serving as an assistant to the Director of Naval Ordnance. Little else is known about his contribution to the war effort, as Turner himself remained silent about his work. It seems, however, that at least some of the war years were spent on a secret assignment at Rothesay.

In 1945 Turner went back to his voluntary work in Bournemouth. He was elected chairman of the council's children's committee in 1948 when it was set up under the then new Children's Act. He held the post until he had to resign through ill health in May 1958.

He was elected mayor in 1949 and the local press reported at the time that, apart from his work on the children's committee, he had served on the health, education, maternity ansd child welfare, establishment and general purposes committees. He was vice-chairman of the health committee. He became an alderman in 1951 and in 1953 was awarded the Coronation Medal, small reward, it might seem, for all his work in local government.

April 1957, however, saw the announcement in the House of Commons that he was to serve on the government's advisory committee on the health and welfare of the mentally handicapped. In the same year he was elected a member of the Royal Society of Health, who made him a Fellow four years later in December 1961. In June of that year a plaque had been unveiled at the Turner Training Centre for the mentally disordered, named after him in Alma Road, Winton. Posts he held at this time also included the vice-chairmanship of the health committees of the Association of Municipal Corporations.

He died on 25 July 1977 in a Bournemouth nursing home. He was survived by his second wife and the funeral was at Punshon Memorial Methodist Church, where he had been a lay preacher. His obituary in the local paper reminded readers of his breadth of interests, which had included the presidency of Bournemouth Free Church Council.

But his life was not all work. He had founded Swanmore Bowling Club in 1932 and had gone on to sit in the president's chair for Bournemouth and District Bowling Association. The tranquilty of the local bowling greens was a far cry from the heaving decks of a British warship, but James Hugh Turner was a man to take it all in his stride.

This article was first published in the NHCRA Review in Summer 1997. The author is indebted to Phil Carradice, Mr Geoffrey P L Dufall, Lieut-Cdr Turner's son-in-law, and Mr Gareth Weeks, editor of the Bournemouth Evening Echo at the time the article was written.

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