The history of those on the Dinas Memorial

[1882 - 1914]

‘Edwin’ or rather Ernest Albert Venn, was the first man on the Dinas Memorial to die in the War. He was born on March 19 1882 in Bristol, the son of John and Eliza Venn.

Ernest first joined the Royal Navy as a boy sailor in 1898 aged 16. After seven years and having served on a variety of ships, he left the Navy taking a job as a brickmaker and in 1906 married a Penarth girl Ellen Rosina Tarnton. By 1910 they had two sons, Ernest and Garnet and a daughter Maud, living in Cogan and then at Rose Villa, Eastbrook.

Ernest re-enrolled in the Navy in October 1911 as a reservist but in 1912 his wife Ellen died leaving him to look after his three children who were all under the age of five. He remarried in 1914 but in mid July, with war imminent, he was called up to begin his service as an Able Seaman on the Drake class armoured cruiser HMS Good Hope.

Good Hope left Portsmouth as war was being declared. She crossed the Atlantic via Nova Scotia and then sailed south to protect British merchant shipping, before joining in the search for the German East Asiatic Squadron, leaving Stanley in the Falkland Islands on October 22 for the west coast of South America via Cape Horn. She was sunk along with HMS Monmouth by the German armoured cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, at the Battle of Coronel on November 1 1914, off the Chilean coast. All 1600 hands from the two ships were lost. Bad weather prevented attempts to rescue survivors.

…there was a terrible explosion onboard between her mainmast and her after funnel…flames reached over 200ft lighting up a cloud of debris...Relatives were informed of the fatalities some two months after the event via a somewhat peremptory telegram. Ernest was 32 and is remembered at the Portsmouth Naval Memorial. (Panel 2)

The Battle of Coronel, November 1 1914, German battleships led by Vice-Admiral von Spee met and defeated a Royal Navy squadron of obsolete ships under Rear-Admiral Cradock, off the coast of Chile. Germany suffered no losses whilst the Royal Navy lost the two armoured cruisers. Spee’s fleet was subsequently destroyed at the Battle of the Falkland Islands. Cradock, then Spee both lost their lives.

Information kindly supplied to the Penarth Times by Derek Brushett who has researched the history of the Dinas Powys Michaelston Men whose names can be found on the war memorial.