LOUIS HERBERT - WWI AIR PHOTOGRAPHER
by Richard Taylor

 LOUIS HERBERT had a somewhat unusual role in the Royal Naval Air Service during the First World War when he continued to work as a photographer but in circumstances that were a far cry from his days in the Lake District.

He had been born on 16 February 1882 at Durham, the son of Henry Herbert and his wife Elizabeth. In 1886 the family moved to Westmorland and settled at Bowness on Lake Windermere where Henry later started his own photographic business. Both Louis, who went to the local grammar school, and brother Frank, his junior by eight years, joined their father in the family business.

In April 1906 Louis married Beatrice Holliday. When war broke out in 1914 Frank joined the army but Louis had his sights on the Royal Navy, possibly because he had been enthralled by the seaplanes that flew in pre-war years from Lake Windermere.

According to his niece, Louis had a reputation as something of a joker. He enjoyed playing the dame in specially-written pre-WW1 pantomimes with titles like 'The Pirates of Belle Isle', after an island on Lake Windermere. His father, Henry, who was a prolific amateur artist, painted the scenery and Frank was also usually in the cast.

During the war, Louis was first in the Y Section of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve which consisted of men enrolled under a deferred scheme for the Royal Navy. When called up, they signed active service engagement forms and were allotted fresh numbers under which their service was recorded. Louis's RNVR number had been Y16278 but when he joined the RNAS on 16 January 1917 at the age of 34 he did so under number F25160.

His first posting was to the training establishment at Crystal Palace and then in March 1917 he went to headquarters at Chingford before being posted two months later to HMS Queen II, flagship in the Adriatic. He spent nine months with No 6 Wing RNAS, much of it at the small Italian town of Trento, which was well inland. He must have enjoyed it there because later he named a pet cat after the town.

Under the number 225160 Louis transferred in April 1918 to the RAF with the rank of AM1 (Photo) and in August 1918 was posted to the airship station at Howden, in Yorkshire, followed by a move to Heaton Park, Manchester, where he seems to have stayed until he was demobbed into the RAF Reserve in February 1919, four days after his 37th birthday. His service papers show him 'deemed discharged' on 30 April 1920.

Despite his age he volunteered for four years in the reserve at Cardington as an AC2 Photographer on 12 May 1939 and on his officer's recommendation was promoted to Leading Aircraftsman the next day. His family say, however, that when he was called up he was put with others into tents, developed pneumonia and was invalided out within weeks.

Louis continued running a successful photographic business at Bowness on Windermere with brother Frank. When the business was sold in 1959 Louis and his wife moved to Threlkeld, near Keswick, where they renovated the Old Manse. Louis's father, Henry, died in 1924 and Frank in 1976. Louis, then a widower, died in 1970 and was buried at Bowness in a grave next to that of his son Jack who died as a teenager in a climbing accident.

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