Joseph Henry Simpson

HMS Natal was a Warrior-class armoured cruiser built for the Royal Navy in the first decade of the 20th century. She escorted the royal yacht in 1911–1912 for the newly crowned King George V's trip to India to attend the Delhi Durbar. During the First World War the ship was assigned to the 2nd Cruiser Squadron of the Grand Fleet, but did not participate in any battles. Natal was sunk by an internal explosion near Cromarty on 30 December 1915 with the loss of at least 390 crew and civilians. Most of her wreck was slowly salvaged over the decades until the remnants were demolished in the 1970s so they were no longer a hazard to navigation. The remains of her wreck are designated as a protected place under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 as a war grave. Joseph's body was not recovered for burial and he is commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial. Note: CWGC record does not give a service number and Joseph is not recorded on the RN&RM War Graves Roll which suggests that he might have been a civilian serving onboard HMS Natal.

Article published 3rd January 1916 in the Nottingham Evening Post :- “A NOTTINGHAM VICTIM ON H.M.S. NATAL. “Amongst the men who lost their lives in the disaster to the Natal was Joseph Henry Simpson, the youngest son of Mr. Harry Simpson, lace manufacturer, of 38, Mapperley Road, Nottingham. The deceased was a clerk on board the ill-fated vessel.” Above is courtesy of Jim Grundy and his facebook pages Small Town Great War Hucknall 1914-1918 The Northern Times 8/11/2012 Launched in 1905 in Barrow-in-Furness by Louisa, Duchess of Devonshire, HMS Natal was a powerful cruiser of the Duke of Edinburgh class. In 1911 she had acted as the official escort to the temporary royal yacht carrying King George V and Queen Mary to the Delhi Durbar (a mass assembly at the Coronation Park in Delhi, India) and her ensuing Great War career was relatively peaceful, consisting mostly of patrolling the North Sea and keeping an eye out for the Hun. In 1915 she was briefly refitted at Birkenhead and immediately after this was completed she sailed for Scapa Flow in the Orkneys to re-join her squadron – which on the 5th of December steamed south to spend the festive season in the Cromarty Firth. As part of the festivities, on the afternoon of 30th December, the Natal’s skipper, Eric Black, hosted a Christmas film show on board the warship. Invited along to join the ship’s company were wives and children of his officers, one civilian friend and his family, and nurses from the nearby hospital ship Drina. Not many were able to accept the invitation; nevertheless a total of seven women, one civilian male, and three children came on board. Just as the party was getting under way a series of massive explosions tore the ship apart. How many died? We can’t be absolutely sure. Shortly afterwards the official number was 390 (including the film show host Captain Eric Black) but strangely this figure did not include the women and children who perished. Why? Was it because the Admiralty was embarrassed by the loss of non-combatants? We don’t know the answer – but in fairness the memorial to the tragedy (standing in Durban – in South Africa’s Natal Province which raised the money to build the warship in the first place) later gave the figure as being 400. Today it is thought to be around 421. While it is important to bear in mind the number of officers and men who would not have been on board that afternoon (because they were home on Christmas leave) you do wonder how many who were on Natal survived. Transcriptions in Invergordon Naval Museum of original naval signals provide part of the answer: "4.55 pm – from Achilles to Iron Duke and Benbow – we have 126 survivors from Natal on board, six in cots." "5.00 pm – from Drina to Flag – two officers and 43 men admitted and also one dead – request instructions with regard to future movements." "5.03 pm – from Drina to Flag – three nursing sisters belonging to Drina who were on board Natal are missing…" The icy waters and darkness of mid-winter will not have helped rescuers. And as the signals were already indicating, the suddenness and completeness of the catastrophe meant that most of the 421 dead were not recovered. Between the lights of Invergordon and Cromarty, they went down with the ship. When I was a boy I remember my Tain grandmother, that Christmas herself married to an officer in the Royal Navy and pregnant with his child, speaking of the horror of it. From a naval history perspective the explosions that destroyed HMS Natal were a terrible omen. Although German sabotage, or a seabed mine, were at first suspected, the subsequent investigation showed that Natal had been destroyed by internal explosions in the aft magazines. Cordite, the propellant that once hurled British bullets and shells, is notoriously unstable – and in the case of the Natal it was thought that, owing to a deterioration in its condition, or some unknown spark, that December afternoon it spontaneously ignited and utterly destroyed the ship. Only six months later, during the Battle of Jutland, similar devastating explosions were to completely annihilate three of Admiral Beattie’s battlecruisers and HMS Hood 25 years later in 1941. There are two small but strange asides to the tragedy of Natal. The first is that in 1912 she sailed to the USA bearing the coffin of Whitelaw Reid the US Ambassador to the Court of St James. After that her crew cheerfully nicknamed her "Sea Hearse". The second is that "Natal" is in fact the Portuguese for "Christmas" – because the region in South Africa was discovered by the Portuguese navigator, Vasco da Gama, on Christmas Day, 1497. One last thing – on that terrible day there was one survivor that was different: it was the ship’s cat, saved by Leading Stoker Thomas Robinson. How typically British.” Artefacts from HMS Natal are on display in the Invergordon Heritage and Naval Museum. Probate: Simpson Katie of 31 Richmond-drive Mapperley Park Nottingham (wife of Henry Simpson) died 21 September 1935 Probate Nottingham 5 November to Sir Bernard Swanwick Wright solicitor and Frederick Guy Wardle retired bank manager. Effects £5753 6s. 11d. Probate: Simpson Henry of Alexandra Hotel Gregory Boulevard Nottingham died 28 November 1948 at The General Hospital Nottingham Probate Nottingham 27 January to Frank Ernest Simpson builder and Frederick Guy Wardle retired bank manager. Effects £963 4s. 4d.