Hardy, David

Rank

Master Mariner, serving as Chief Officer, Merchant Navy, SS Crichtoun (Leith)
Service Number

Merchant Seaman R 193143
Born

29 May 1918 at Kingskettle, Fife
Parents

James and Catherine M. Hardy (Blyth)
Date of death

Between 18 and 19 March 1945 (Aged 26)
Grave

North Sea
Other Memorials

Panel 33, Tower Hill Memorial, London.
Strathmiglo Churchyard, Fife..
Scottish National War Memorial (Edinburgh Castle.)


Other Information

His parents ran the Post Office in North Queensferry.

He seems to have gone to sea as 3rd Mate of the SS Baron Kelvin in December 1939.
He was 5 feet 9 inches tall, with blue eyes and brown hair.

David married Dorothy Heggie at Strathmiglo, Fife in 1945 and she later lived at Strathmiglo. They had a daughter Catherine who never knew her father.

The SS Crichtoun, Master, Malcolmson (1,097 ton steam cargo vessel, with a single triple expansion engine) was on a voyage from Leith to London when she was torpedoed by German E-boats and sunk off Lowestoft, near buoy 4AR, with loss of 22 of 25 aboard (Twenty of them merchant seamen crew and two of her four gunners).

She was probably one of the last two ships to be sunk by E-Boats, on the east coast route.

Hardy
David Hardy

Others in the crew included:-
Anderson, William, Able Seaman
Black, Samuel, Chief Engineer Officer
Cowie, Alexander Knight, Donkeyman
Farquhar, Alexander, Second Engineer Officer
Fox, Patrick, Fireman and Trimmer
Gillies, John, Fireman and Trimmer
Grant, Robert Graham, Cook
Irvine, David Robertson, Chief Steward
Laing, Charles Ramsay, Fireman and Trimmer
MacLeod, George, Second Officer
Mainland, James Robert, Able Seaman
Malcolmson, Laurence, Master
McPherson, Andrew Ian, Assistant Steward
McSherry, Andrew Colbertson Taylor, Ordinary Seaman
Rendell, Frederick Norman, Ordinary Seaman
Stewart, Gilbert, Quartermaster
Williamson, James John, Boatswain
Wilson, George, Fireman and Trimmer

SS Crichtoun
SS Crichtoun

Sources

Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
Scottish National War Memorial (Edinburgh Castle.)
National Archives. BT389/8/239 Certificate of British Registry, Crichtoun. R193143 Discharge Certificate.
www.wrecksite.eu
www.ne-diary.bpears.org.uk
Ancestry.com


Here dead we lie, Because we did not choose
To live and shame the land, From which we sprung.

Life, to be sure, Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is, And we were young.

[Here Dead We Lie, A.E. Housman]

When You Go Home,
Tell Them Of Us And Say,

For Your Tomorrow,
We gave our Today

[Kohima, attributed to John Maxwell Edmonds]

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